Love, lies, bleeding (with apologies to Lynne Truss)

Abstract

I like gardens, although I am not a gardener. In fact, I am the antithesis of a gardener. I put a young, eager green shoot in the ground, it lifts its leaves heavenward and turns brown, and its bare stalk remains as a reproach until the merciful winter snows come to claim it. So, these days, I content myself by trying to learn the names of some of the flowers. It was in this mood that I came across Amaranthus caudatus. If you are a gardener, you may know it and its flowers by the curious name of love-lies-bleeding. It's enough to redden a Freudian cheek. The marvellous thing about it is that, by substituting a comma for the hyphens, it encapsulates my views on writing. I love words and language. I love the complexity, the shades of meaning that different words for the same object display. I love the fact that when you wind a sentence round on itself, it changes its impact. I love that I can turn to any page of the Oxford English Dictionary , and there are a dozen words that are unfamiliar. I love even more that there are a few with which I am conversant. I love the fact that I know several words whose meaning I have always intended to discover and never had time …