This post is not about one of the crucial issues of the day, so if you’re hungry for controversy, please move on. This is a trivial personal thing and I wondered if you might help.
A couple of months ago I started to read a new novel by one of our esteemed highbrow-ish writers. I cannot remember the name of the writer or the novel, and I don’t wish to be reminded either. The story was written in the first person and the thing was I got half way down the first page and flung the book away from me in intense irritation, an irritation which stayed with me for the rest of the week. The cause of this distemper was the following sentence, somewhere on page one: “I breakfasted on coffee and apples.” Now, this is the point; when I read this sentence I immediately wanted to punch the novelist very hard indeed – and I am not sure why. But later I repeated the line to several friends of mine and they found it irritating too and started grinding their teeth and looking upset. Even now, my best mate Tim will often say it to me, apropos nothing, with a mimsy expression on his face, followed by a growl. I can’t work out what it is that is so irritating about it. It’s maybe partly that verb “breakfasted”, but that by itself couldn’t get me so worked up.
Even now, writing this blog at midnight, I am beginning to feel unaccountably violent. And I’m not pissed, and wasn’t pissed first time around. When I read it – “I breakfasted on coffee and apples” – I seethe and think right, well lunch on this then, you twat, BOP. Anyway, an explanation as to why it is so annoying, or examples of similarly annoying sentences would be pleasantly diversionary…………….
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