What Did You Do With That Banana?

You carve the calf, but can you fold the foal?

That's my new substitute phrase for "you can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?", which is ableist and anti-mute.

No-one can be offended by the calf/foal one. Nothing wrong with a bit of cattle-whittlin'/equine origami, no sir.

And, while we're on the subject, why isn't the past tense of peel pelt?

What did you do with that banana?
I pelt it.

Felt, not feeled. Knelt, not kneeled. Belt, not beeled.

Why's there no pelt?

But it only works with a double-e.

E-a? That dog won't hunt.

No-one has ever used the word "congealt". Have they?

I've just googled it, and essentially the answer is no.

So if it's e-a, you can't abbreviate it with l-t. That's just the hand we've been dealt.

***

I feel like I've aged a thousand years since I began writing the word "thousand" just then. But isn't exponential aging a symptom of the degeneration of the human spirit, rather than the body? The body declines at a steady rate - only the spirit can kick it down that slippery hill towards a big wet mushy pile of leaves.

Ageing is simply travelling. We can choose to travel in a dignified manner (horse-drawn horse), or in an undignified manner (crammed in a Deliveroo hotbox, smothered in ramen). When we feel ourselves moving at uncomfortable speed, we realise that we've lost control of our spirit, and our bodies will pay the price, by using its hand to fork over banknotes.

And by "spirit", I don't mean a soul or any of that mumbo-jumbo. I just mean consciousness or a ghost or something.

No, I'm not losing track of my argument.

I think I'm really onto something.

Here's an artist's rendition of a mosquito wearing a novelty foam hand: