Unusual Word of the Day: Zaftig

I love discovering new words, we stumbled upon this one after playing a game of scrabble and we were wondering what good words you could make using the letter 'Z'. So out came the dictionary and a fascinating perusal of the latter sections of our OED. My new favourite word is Zaftig, the Yiddish word for pleasantly plump or voluptuous, coming from the word juicy. I love finding out where words come from, this ones seems particularly appropriate!

I originally got this lovely photo here on a Plus Model Magazine, and I added my own definition on top. Feel free to share the love of zaftig ladies, just please link back to this post if you are using this image.

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Crossword Vol VII

Here is the latest edition of our free crossword compiled by the devilishly handsome John Elliott. If you feel you are going to tear your hair out head over to the solutions page.

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Review of How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

About last year sometime I noticed a lot of my female friends talking about How to be a Woman by Cailin Moran. I normally don't read biographies(and this is more a biography than a feminist bible-ignore what the dust jacket says) but I'm more than a little interested in feminism so it caught my fancy. Back in college I took  gender politics and sexual aesthetics modules and really loved them, I even when through a non-bra wearing and shaved head stage, so you can see that this was in my area of interest.

I hadn't read any of Moran's columns before and didn't realise that she was a well known British journalist and presenter. Mostly I like knowing nothing about a book beforehand, like my rule of not watching movie trailers or reading reviews before I watch a film; to not have any preconceived notions. I prefer to read reviews afterwards to see how a reviewers ideas tally with my own. So I'm glad that I wasn't expecting this to be the latest Female Eunuch or Beauty Myth, as it really isn't, they are far better written and well argued works of insight. This is more like one woman's memoir through her life explored through her experiences of being a woman. As a autobiography is genuinely laugh out loud funny, I really enjoyed her casual writing style and she has a comfortable and familial voice in her writing. The book reads like a chat you have in the wee hours when the bottle of vodka has come out of the back press. Embarrassing admissions and  observations like what do you call your vagina and breasts, to the etiquette of bikini waxing etiquette and botox. 

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A lot of what she is saying is not new or groundbreaking, it's one woman's voice, her bumbling journey through her life. She is reminding us that feminism is still important, and that we can't allow it to become uncool and a 70's hippy thing. In an age that teenage girls are growing up surrounded by porn, brazilians, Photoshopped goddesses, and starved icons we need to applaud any sane voice saying no this is not reality, this is not what we want our girls to look up to. If I had a teenage daughter I would want her to read this, just to show her that being a teenager is awful for most people, it takes a long time to like your self, but you'll get there in the end, and when you do it will be pretty great. As an a woman reading it, it didn't really teach me much, but it was comforting to hear a familiar voice, someone else who doesn't understand non existent pubic hair, the obsession with marriage and babies, and the need for overly priced handbags.

In short this won't change your life, but it will make you laugh, and hopefully a lot.

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Maeve Binchy Free Printable

A while back when Maeve Binchy died I made up this free printable of one of her quotes. It was really popular of Facebook and got a tonne of shares. Now that we have a website I thought I would post it here too. Feel free to share and repost it, just please link back to her for the original credit.

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A Review of The Long Walk by Stephen King

I consider The Long Walk to be one of Stephen King's finest books, and that's saying a lot because I really like his work*. This dystopian work was written in 1979 and is one of the most chilling novels I've ever read.  The premise is that 100 teenage boys start a walk, and the winner is the last man standing, one of the prizes being that you live to survive the race. There is no set distance, but if you stop walking you die, if you incur a penalty three time penalties you die, there is only one survivor. It's a horribly simple idea, and it's this single mindedness that is so chilling; there is no stepping away from this procession, you are with these boys as nearly all of them walk towards their deaths.

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The story is told through the eyes of Ray Garrity, one of the competitors, we are introduced to the other boys via friendships he makes and gossip that trickles down through the line. I found myself getting invested in other characters, rooting for them, and then it would hit home that there is only one survivor. This idea is made sharply poignant as various boys talk to each other about winning, in some ways blocking out the fact that for this to happen their comrades must perish. The huge truth of their near certain death is almost blinding, they can't talk about it, but they can think of nothing else; hope and despair are clung to with equal measure. Because of the omnipresence of death in this story we are forced to look at the futility of their struggle against all the odds, and question is it worth it. It's like King has boiled down the essence of our own daily struggles and our own inevitable death. In their blisters, aching legs, and cramping muscles we can see our own travails through life.

It's the small details that are most shocking in the book, after a short while you accept the horrifying premise that 99 boys will die for the sake of a televised competition. But the idea that they can't stop to take a crap seems like a cruel and needless punishment, that they might die because they took too long to relieve themselves, it brings a whole new meaning to stage fright!

I recently watched The Hunger Games(which I've yet to read) and was struck by the similarity to The Long Walk; a gameshow where teenagers compete for their lives, survival of the fittest, retaining humanity in an inhuman fight for your life. I'd love for this to be made into a film, but I'd hate to see it go the way of so many other of King's books like The Langoliers, Dreamcatcher, and The Tommyknockers, which were all truly awful.

I would highly recommend this book, it one of my favourite reads of this year so far, it was one of those books that I slowed down nearing the end as I didn't want to finish it.

*A somewhat uncool thing to say on front of people who consider themselves serious readers, but I find mostly they've never read his work and just him on the fact that he writes about the supernatural.

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Feeling Festive at The Milk Market

At the Milk Market yesterday we got into the festive mood and the traders dressed up in fancy dress. We love Halloween so it didn't take much to convince us.  John often does Celtic reconstruction demonstrations with his friend Andrew Clancy, so it seemed like an obvious choice of costume. All of the pieces have been authentically made in traditional methods. They sometimes call themselves experimental archaeologists as through practice they learn how things were actually made. My favourite bits were the handmade jewellery, cloak pins and bags. They are really comfortable to wear, and to be honest I felt a little sad when i was taking them off.

Thanks go to Pat Browne from Munster Images for the pictures. He has had a very successful and prolific event photography business for quite a while. Recently they've branched out into doing Google mapping for businesses, which is just like streetview but inside your business. Meaning that customers can come and 'walk around' your business online before they ever see it in real life, nifty huh? Have a look at an example here.

 Me, John and Gobnait

 Rose

Toni

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Crossword Issue VI

Just in case you didn't get a copy at our stall yet here is Issue VI of John's crossword. Give it some time before you go peeking at the answers, you will be chuffed with yourself if you persist. But just in case here is a link to the answers.

Enjoy!

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Scary Reads for Halloween

It's that time of year when you can smell the dry cold in the air, there are leaves rustling around your feet and every shop window is packet with monsters and ghouls. Halloween is my favourite time of year, it means I have excuse to spend loads of time making an outlandish costume, which I can then flounce about town in. It got me thinking about all the creepy books I've read over the years. Here are just a few;

Shrine by James Herbert: I read this in my early teens, and don't really remember a huge amount of it, except the overwhelming feeling of dread every time I picked up the book.  It's about a deaf mute little girl who after seeing visions can hear and speak again. It was a compulsion to keep reading, somehow I thought I could prove that there was no boogeyman under the bed if I just kept reading. But with a book as opposed to a film it's a much slower eking sense of terror, there is no such thing as ripping off the plaster quickly. Even the front cover freaked my out, look at her!

It by Stephen King: This is another one of my early teen reads, thanks to my much older brother's book collection I read a plethora if inappropriate books quite young. It is to blame for a large number of people of a certain generation being terrified of clowns. They are creepy anyway, but he dialed up the notch to about 11. It's the usual mix for King with the ensemble cast fighting the supernatural; in this case a clown that terrified a group of teens and has now returned to them in adult life. When a book follows you around during the day and makes you terrified of simple things like a drain plug you know you are onto a winner.

The Body Artist by Don DeLillo: This is not meant to be a scary book, and it wasn't, not in the way the two previous ones are. But I found it unsettling. DeLillo is lauded as a giant in literature, his writings are an exploration of prose, the self, and are an experiment in reading. The Body Artist isn't really about much, there is a woman in a house who has recently lost her husband. The book is like a wisp of their relationship,and their roots in their house, her deceased husband is very present by his absence. A third presence enters the story(non story), he is never fully described, he is just there, sometimes he speaks in different voices, yet he has no voice. It was this character that gave me a major case of the willies. I had to stop reading it for a few weeks as I was too scared by this non entity, I went back to it eventually, which I'm glad of as it was a beautiful quiet book.

So what books have given you the heebie jeebies?

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Unusual Word of the Day: Accubation

I'm quite partial to unusual words, they always draw my attention when I'm reading, but sadly I tend not to come across them often enough. How can you not love words like defenestration, amanuensis, and blatherskite? So I'm starting a series on this blog to celebrate all the obscure words out there, it might even make me use them a bit more frequently!

Today it's accubation!

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Paper Bags for Bazaar Tales

Look at our fancy new paper bags for our market stall! We got a great deal by going to JJ O Toole's in Raheen industrial estate, it was something like €10 for 150 bags. Then I got the sticker paper from Dealz for €1 and printed up a few sheets of the labels. Next week I'll probably go to Justin Herberts to get a bunch of the labels printed, as ink costs a fortune to print at home. He always give a great deal on bulk printing prices.

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