Words Required

Many, many moons ago, Douglas Adams and John Lloyd turned an idle game into a book and private hilarity became public. That book was The Meaning Of Liff in which all of those idle words loafing around on place signs and street names were put to good use by being assigned to descriptions of things for which there weren’t any words yet. I don’t have the words to assign them to yet but here are some more things that I think are in need of a snappy name to cement them into the modern world.

- The low level haze of light gently illuminating a darkened room as the result of multiple devices charging.

- The impotent but fleeting burst of powerless fury at arriving half an hour early for a train which is subsequently cancelled.

- The mild disappointment and slight sense of anxiety (“did I offend them?”) accompanying the complete lack of response from a person you specifically tagged in a post. 

- The sense of satisfaction in refreshing a podcast feed and discovering a new episode.

- A combination of excitement and fear caused by constantly refreshing a web page while waiting for tickets to become available (concert, flight, festival, swingers party ballet) 

- The compulsive need to check a comment for views, likes, other comments. 

- The sudden realisation that you’re not actually up for going out at all anymore and will have to drink heavily to get through it. 

- An inability to sleep on an intercity train which is directly proportional to the inability to stay awake on a short run commuting train. (This is pretty much just me so I may name this one Baldyfellarism) 

- A sense of amusement that is rapidly replaced by panic when you wonder if your funny remark was either a) just a bit too far after all; or b) accidentally revealed something about the other person that was really supposed to be kept a secret. 

- The vague but frustrated stare off into the middle distance when you’re running out of items to add to a list in a blog post. 

- The part of a blog post where you, the writer, realise that it’s reached the end despite it sort of petering out and where you, the reader, suddenly realise that this is it and that it started well but basically ran out of steam.