WAGS 2024 10 23: That Damned Lake or What´s In A Word?

 Opening photo has nothing to do with the walk but Hazel is very proud of it, and why not?

This walk was a very short one and the Leader´s report is appropriately short too. Here it is.

The Report

John & Hazel, Antje, Myriam & Paul and Rod gathered on a cool autumn morning at Silves'  Cafe Plazza.  Before anyone gets too impressed it must be emphasised that Paul appeared only to enjoy the cultural pleasures of Silves and to explore the numerous occulists of the city in order to expand his collection of dark glasses.

That clarified, the other 5 squeezed into Rod's car to disappear into the Silves backwoods. Upon being asked why he was driving so far up a track we had previously walked, he explained that he daren't run the risk of being obliged to turn back as happened last week and that the proposed route would end up being approximately the same distance. In the event we followed a circular route taking in the small damned (sic) lake we once used to pass by on longer walks. There was very little else to report but bearing in mind how close this area is to Silves it is really very pleasant unspoiled countryside.  The absence of any slopes of significance ensured that complaints were minimal and the parking location ensured we were once again actually somewhat early for lunch so Paul was only beginning to show  early signs of impatience. Chris joined us a few minutes later. And so now over to the statistics, the photo gallery and the gourmet element of the day.

The Statistics

The Photo Gallery 1 - The Walk

A conveniently placed mattress

A country cottage...

... and its scarecrow

Anti-mosquito veil

The blushing bride, unveiled

The Photo Gallery 2 - The Lunch

The couvert

Mixed omelette

Chicken ?

Fish?

Bifana

Chocolate mousse

Baked apple

Post-script

"That Damned Lake or What´s In A Word?"

The reader may be wondering about the title to this week´s blog.

Well, I don´t know what grudge Rod has got against the modest little lake we stopped beside and looked at. Why is he damning it? Here, by the way, is a picture of it, taken in March 2016 in the days when we were still able to climb up to high ridges and look down on it.

As for What´s in A Word, you may recall being puzzled by a WAGSAL WhatsApp exchange the day before the walk which went something like this. 

Yves Ferrer: Sorry Rod: un empêchement....

JohnH: empêchement? Going fishing?

Christopher Davis: emojis falling about laughing.

Yves Ferrer: Short of a Rod...

JohnH: or maybe you are looking for a partridge in a pear tree.

Rod Frew: Pole or Perch or +/- 5.029 m. or shortly, maybe, to be the length of a WAGS walk!

Yves Ferrer: A tad early old chap: ….beginning to find it all a bit too much for him..there many celabrations yet before sheeingh parttrddgese in a pair of threes.. shoorreee... he collapses in a heap.

But if you found this a bit mystifying, there is a logical explanation, all to do with words.

When I saw Yves´ use of the word “empêchement” I immediately but mistakenly thought he was planning to go on a fishing expedition instead of walking and eating with us because, in French, “pêche” means “fishing.” (“Pêche” may be related to the Portuguese word for fish “peixe.”)

Then, when Yves then said that he didn´t have a fishing rod, Rod very cleverly chipped in with a reference to an old English measure of distance called a rod but which is also called a pole or a perch. Doubly clever on Rod´s part because perch is also the name of a spiny-finned fresh-water fish. A perch can also be that thing the pet parrot in your parlour is sitting on.

In etymology, when two or more words have the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings -e.g. perch (5.029m), perch (fish) and perch (a bird´s resting rod), that is called homonymy  - not to be confused of course with polysemy which describes a word which has the same one basic meaning but is used in different ways, e.g. mouth of a dog – mouth of a river.

And so back to the French word pêche. If it was not fishing, what was it? I grabbed my Harraps Shorter Dictionnaire, a modest volume of a mere 995 pages weighing half a tonne or so and found that pêche is also “a peach” and a pêcher is “a peach tree”, from which it was but a short jump to The Twelve Days of Christmas and its “partridge in a pear tree” with which illogical leap Yves managed to keep up (better than "a pet parrot in a parlour") before running out of puff..

Pécher also means “to sin” but it seemed unlikely that Yves would do anything like that that on  a Wednesday morning, and it´s an entirely different word anyway.

But all that still didn´t explain empêchement, so finally I had to look up the word directly and found that it means “an impediment or obstruction.” Let´s hope that it is not painful. In France, if you get a peach or a fishbone stuck in your throat, is that also un empêchement?

The strange thing about all this is that Paul, himself a renowned word enthusiast, did not take part in the conversation at all. 

Obvious what the closing music should be. Armstrong and Crosby.