When The Oenny Dropped

I had an e-mail this morning from my friend Mike Lucas who handles the booking of the acts for the annual Marsden Jazz Festival. The purpose of the e-mail was to confirm the line-up for the 2007 Festival so that I can now go ahead and finalise the Newsletter for Friends and Sponsors. After listing the headline artists, Mike wrote "A oretty good line-up, I think you'll agree". Now he is a man of letters, Mike is - he's written plays and books and probably (although I've never confirmed this with him) epic poems. Thus when he uses a word I am not familiar with I reach for my dictionaries. Here is a chance to learn. Readers Digest used to have a feature called "It Pays To Increase Your Word Power" (they may still have, I haven't checked for 25 years). In a similar search for wealth-enhancing skills I turned first to the "Pocket Oxford Colour Dictionary", then to my "Compact Oxford English Dictionary", then - on still not finding mention of the word - to my two-volume "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary". I was just reaching for my "Complete Oxford English Dictionary" (a massive two volume affair which came complete with magnifying glass because the text has been reduced to something like 2 point) when the penny dropped. Or rather when the oenny dropped. I double checked with Google just to confirm my suspicions. "Oretty" was well represented in the Google listings. There was an article headed "What Makes Julia Roberts A Oretty Woman?", an article on water heaters which started "If the anode is oretty much gone in say 4 years", and the lyrics of a song (called for reasons I didn't investigate "The Taste of Vinegar") which contains the line "Make me oretty on the outside". According to those nice people (or rather oeoole) from Google there are well over 12,000 references to "oretty" on the web : and so there should be. It's a lovely word. Thank you Mike for introducing me to it. Anyway, one should never miss an opportunity to publicise the wonderful acts we have already booked for the 2007 Festival (12th to 14th of October) and these are : Friday 8pm Chris Barber & his band Sat 2pm The Richard Galliano Quartet Sat 8pm Liane Carroll Sat 12 midnight George Washingmachine Quartet Sun 4pm Dennis Rollins & Badbone An oretty good line-up I think you will agree.