Lewis Carroll invented the word ‘mimsy’, probably soldering it from ‘miserable’ and ‘flimsy’.
Lewis Carroll invented the word ‘mimsy’, probably soldering it from ‘miserable’ and ‘flimsy’. Since then mimsy has taken on a separate life. Chambers defines it as ‘prim, demure, prudish’ and Oxford as ‘feeble and prim’, though I think modern usage would imply a certain self-conscious prettiness, like sprigged pillowcases, tiny pens with floral designs and anything by Cath Kidston.
Anyhow, The Delicious Miss Dahl (BBC2, Tuesday) was mimsy from the opening credits — all spindly drawings in pastel colours. It was nominally a cookery show, and a lot of cookery went on, but it was principally meant to show off Sophie Dahl’s apparently all-mimsy lifestyle. When not cooking, she sat in the garden reading poetry from a mimsy book, or trotting off to an antiques shop to look for mimsy artefacts, such as Art Deco cocktail shakers.
The whole programme was billed a day of shameless self-indulgence and, between moments of mimsiness, she tucked away enough food to stop an elephant’s arteries. Miss Dahl has, she told us, been ‘round as a Rubens, and a little slip shadow of a creature’, but I suspect Rubens himself would have been startled to see anybody wolf quite so much in a day.
Breakfast was an omelette Arnold Bennett (‘You have to be a diva to have a dish named after you. I have a bra named after me…’ she said, from the bumper book of mimsical facts). It — the dish, not the bra — consisted of three eggs, lots of crème fraiche, cheese and a large quantity of haddock. That would keep most of us going all day, but she was back at lunch with a massive hunk of bread, enough buffalo mozzarella to play volleyball with, set off by a mimsy salad made of courgettes, fennel, mint and ‘fronds’.
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