Language of COVID: Part 2: The Retrospectoscope and De-bubbling!

Rats!

The moment you think you've covered everything and, lo and behold, along comes a load of words that you missed first time round. A feverish thanks to all the people who contacted me with these additions.

Here we go...

The R NUMBER - that was the biggest, glaring omission. The flipping R number! And I thought that R was a letter. Not so! It's a number!! As if I could forget that.

A year ago and no one in their right mind would have had the faintest idea what you were talking about if you started muttering dark things about a dipping R number. Now, we all just tut and nod our heads sadly, although I have yet to find anyone who can explain exactly what it is. All I know is that below 1 is not good at all, but above 1.4 and its peaches and cream and the pubs re-opening.

Boris seemed obsessed with the R number and snorted loudly at the nation that it would have a lot of BUMPY RIDES and RAMPS over Christmas. Poor old R number! Poor old me too. Not good to eat a big turkey dinner and then have bumps and ramps thrown at you.

And good old Matt Hancock. He used a brilliant word which I am appalled that I missed last time - the RETROSPECTOSCOPE! Yes, honestly, he really did use this wonderful linguistic creation. All I know is that I wish I had one. He also ruminated bitterly he did not have one, although Chris Witty did imply that they were thinking of buying one from the Chinese. Incidentally, in that same eye-opening press conference, the expression DOUBLE-DIP RECESSION was bandied about. Now normally I love absolutely anything where the words double-dip are involved. But a recession? Haven't we had enough already with businesses going bankrupt and a record number of people unemployed? And now it's all going double-dip? Really? What's left to dip our spoons into? The tub is empty! Well, mine is.

Oh yes... nearly forgot again. We now live in a TWISTED and BUCKLED COVID-LED society, said Boris, as emotions started to get the better of him. Yep, I don't think anyone would disagree with that one. He went on to say we MUST NOTJUMP THE FENCE OF SENSE TO REACH THE SUNLIT PASTURES AHEAD OR WE RISK TRIPPING ON THE TANGLED BARBED WIRE. Mmmmm. But I want to, Boris. I need sunlit pastures and mixed metaphors. I'm totally fed up with grey, damp, miserable evenings watching Pointless, The Chase and The One Show. Please - a little sunshine in your mixed-metaphored pastures. Maybe a trip to Barnard Castle would suffice. I don't think there's any tangled, barbed wire there, but then again, my sight is not that good!

And then there was Boris's stirring and unforgettable address to the nation.

This is exactly what he said - I kid you not. No exaggeration. Word for word, as Priti is my witness...

"IT IS NOW THAT THE ARMY OF SCIENCE IS COMING TO OUR AID WITH ALL THE MORALE-BOOSTING, BUGLE-BLUSTERING EXCITEMENT OF WELLINGTON'S PRUSSIAN ALLIES COMING THROUGH THE WOODS ON THE AFTERNOON OF WATERLOO!"

Well, I nearly spat my cocoa out. Wow! This was Boris's 'Fight them on the beaches speech'! This was a rallying cry to all stout Englishmen (and women) to gather round the flag and... and... attack the French!! I always knew it. It's those damn Frenchees again. With their cheap wine, onions, cheese and... stuff. Sharpe was right! He knew what to do with a Frenchman in a tall hat! It all makes sense now. It was the French all along! And the thing did start in a small village called... Wuhanville. Yes, of course, I remember it now. Read it in a tweet somewhere.

And our Prussian allies have now come to our rescue. Love the Germans! Our friends at last! Let's all celebrate over the New Year our new friendship... with movies like The Great Escape, The Guns of Navarone, Dunkirk and Ice Cold in Alex. Yes, that's the way to enjoy COVID. Let's watch our brave lads shooting Germans. What? But I thought Boris wanted us to shoot the French. OK OK Let's shoot them both! We're out of Europe now, so that's all right.

Mmmmm, I think it might be best to wash over that line of logic and just say that it's all part of Christmas tradition - to have wall-to wall war films about shooting those evil Germans. And what's wrong with that? Mmmmm. I seem to have drifted off the point. Sorry. Got carried away.

Let's calm down a little and have a bath. Yes, a bath. A BUBBLE bath. And it's back to our favourite word of the last few weeks. But I won't harp on about social or family bubbles. No, that's all behind us. This is different because now, like the virus, it has mutated. YES... MUTATED!

Drum roll ( incidentally, what's the term for a collection of bubbles? A Foam? A Relaxation?)

Drum roll again...

BUBBLING-UP is a cosy, new word that washed up in the flotsam of an Andrew Marr interview last week. This was rapidly followed by RADICAL BUBBLES, INDIVIDUALISED BUBBLES and BUBBLE ETIQUETTE. I was beginning to love scribbling down this whole new section to the bubble entry in the dictionary. Then came along two real beauties - DE-BUBBLED and DOUBLE-BUBBLING. Again, I wowed. Not sure what those two mean, but apparently we are all dreaming of them!

I should end this daft bit of nonsense, I think. It's all getting out of hand. So, what better than to quote the SAGE words of Matt Hancock two night ago? Again, I kid you not. Gospel.

INDIVIDUALISED BUBBLES SHOULD NOT DE-BUBBLE AFTER VACCINATION. BUBBLING-UP WILL CONTINUE FOR A WHILE YET. I WANT TO BE CRYSTAL CLEAR ABOUT THIS!

And that's where I will end. Not surprisingly, I'm off for a bath now with a copy of War and Peace, and my iPhone at the ready for an episode of Colditz.