knick or knack (14/2/24)

aside

I was going to write about my knick-knacks drawer (or should that be singular, ‘knick-knack’ drawer?... answers on a postcard please to…) and how, strangely, it doesn’t contain a single knick nor a solitary knack, although there are loads of trifling trinkets, odd oddments, thingy-tools, a thing for this and things for that, you might say, a motley crew of the cunning, ingenious and downright dextrous some of which might be called artefacts, unmatched screws, different-sized paperclips, an eraser that I’m sure must be older than me, and how many pencil-sharpeners does one need, I seem to have six, a piece of string, there’s always a piece of string, so yes, I was going to write about this but thought, why on earth would you be in the least bit interested as to what’s unbeknownst surprises and horrors might be nestling in my knick-knack drawer?... amongst which I’ve continued to fail to discover a knick nor knack… ‘knick’, with a ‘k’, isn’t a proper word, I know, shocking isn’t it, it’s a doubling of the word knack, as a kind poetic device if you will, after all, to say you have a draw full of knacks might sound quite worrying, or even questionable, but saying knick-knacks seems much more acceptable and above board… well, that’s my theory anyway and as no one’s here to contradict me I’m sticking with it… ‘knack’ goes way back, back in time to the days of yore, or around the 14 century, if you’d prefer meaning a trick or a deception, further extended to a device, as in something with a special skill, something ingenious, as in, if you have a knack for something it invariably refers to such a skill, thus, all the gubbins in my drawer… it may well come from the Low German word for a sharp-sounding blow, in imitative fashion…… but to further complicate things we have the word, ‘knackered’, as in to be worn out, exhausted, which just goes to show, what passes as the so-called English language, it utterly bonkers……

beside

an ice cream van drove past today singing its jingling tune, most bizarre, here in the middle of countryside, needless to say I was so taken aback and failed to rush out in time to buy a '99' as into the distance he tinkled away...... poor, poor, pitiful me......

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