Monday, June 19, 2006

THE UNOBVIOUS DIFFERENCE

Are chalk and cheese actually so very different? I mean, where did that phrase originate? They're as different as chalk and cheese.

Chalk is a pasty-looking solid which crumbles under a little pressure. Cheese, similarly, is a pasty-looking solid which crumbles under a little pressure. It's really the writing on blackboards angle that chalk has to differentiate itself from brer cheese. Cheese, by contrast, is nothing without some toast or dry biscuits.

If you put chalk on a pizza instead of mozzarella you'd notice the difference, that I grant you.

If you tried to mark out a hopscotch grid with a piece of edam you'd wonder where you were going wrong until you realised it wasn't a piece of yellow chalk in a handy red plastic wrapper that you were using there.

But, for the most part, they're pretty similar objects. If you get some pale cheese, or some yellow-coloured chalk, you'd have a tough time discerning them from a distance. So, who came up with the chalk and cheese differential? Was that one of those things you say without really thinking?

"So, what do you think of our chances against a Martian invasion, Mr Wells?"

"It's hard to tell. Why, we're as different as... chalk and... cheese."

"As different as...? What was that?"

"Chalk. Cheese. It's a phrase. Everyone uses it. Really, they do."

"Naaaahhh. You just made that up."

"Did not."

"Did, too."


Now, happy as a gypsy. That's a phrase, my friends.

1 Comments:

At 8:57 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Finally! Someone has had the good sense to use the phrase, "Happy as a gypsy". This barely used term is not some anti-Romany racist slur. far from it. It's the type of phrase that brings a smile to the face of the sayer and a look of utter bewilderment to the recipient. Use it in a sentence today.

Yours - giddy as a Japanese schoolgirl,

Klown Mark

 

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