Memory of a mistake
That awful dawning when you emerge from innocent sleep and remember something you didn’t do right, and dismay fills the...
Reed-fringed banks
An image of lazy summer afternoons messing about on rivers.
Source: Arthur Ransome, Coot Club (London: Jonathan Cape, 2009 (1934)),...
Foreign-going steamship
All the romance and none of the hardship in these three words.
Source: Arthur Ransome, Coot Club
...A waste of an island
Wonderful notion this, from one of the best of Ransome's enchanting children's books. Of course if you land on an...
Light-hearted crew
May your crew be ever light-hearted.
Source: Arthur Ransome, Coot Club (London: Jonathan Cape, 2009 (1934)), p. 290
...Lummocks / lummox
Again, this was in a 1930s English classic, though the dictionary says it's American, so perhaps it's still in use. “He’ll...
Long-memoried trees
We know that trees record time and climate in their year-rings – wide rings in good growing years, skinny...
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