Day Two: crosswords
On the face of it, crosswords shouldn’t be fun. Taxing my worn out brain for pleasure? Pffft. Also, spelling is not my forte and you’d be surprised how much this can screw up your game. But despite this, I’ve always found them strangely cathartic. Maybe it’s that I get a disproportionate thrill from plucking random words from my subconscious that I never knew were there (peevish, anyone?). Or could it be that I always associated doing the crossword with being an adult (something that I still aspire to be). Either way, there is something quite marvellous about a lazy Sunday morning spent huddled over a steaming cup of coffee with the paper in hand. Though I’m not sure if my love of crosswords was wholly responsible for my love of words and language, I have very special childhood memories of ‘helping’ my mum with the weekly crossword, thesaurus and dictionary on my lap. Did you know that there are nine different alternatives to the word bigot? Me neither, but it’ll come in handy next time you play Scrabble or are trying to compose a sternly worded letter to your local MP. Besides, big words make you sound smarter, right? Right.
sinceileftyou 