Deal Breaker

I started an article in Psychology Today about research into what makes a deal breaker in relationships. It was a bit technical but still very well written. And then I happened upon a site where people were commentating on what they really didn’t like in potential partners. I was hooked. The first one below is what kicked it off for me:

"Most common dealbreakers include abuse, rude to servers and others, drug use, adultery, etc. Ignoring the obvious dealbreakers, what are some unusual dealbreakers you have? For me, it was a hatred for theme parks. I couldn't have fun with someone like that."

"People who think reading is 'boring'."

"A hatred for fandom/dressing up. I love going all out for Halloween or theme parties etc. I couldn't be with someone who didn't want to go all out too."

"Camping. I hate it, I never want to do it again. Couldn't date someone who was into that sort of thing."

"Can’t cook? If you can’t cook, I can’t be with you. I’m not going to be the only one feeding us. If you can’t cook and expect me to feed you all the time it literally won’t work out."

"Not liking fun facts. I know who I am at this point and if you don't enjoy random tidbits of useless knowledge neither of us are gonna have a good time."

"I would veto someone for not knowing how to use apostrophes correctly."

"Influencers/lifestyle bloggers are a big no for me. Staging everything in life for likes is not how I want to live it."

"Posting pictures of themselves 'meditating' on social media. If you are meditating you wouldn't be trying to convince everyone that you're meditating... it's just weird."

"Don’t like people who chew with their mouth open or talk with a mouthful of food. Gross. I’m out if you do that."

"Those weird folks who take selfies constantly."

"Supporting Spurs - and I’m not joking,"

"I ended it with someone who once turned up in some bloody awful Paddington like checked trousers. I icked right there and then."

"A nail biter makes me cringe."

"Someone who’s too lazy to pronounce the TH sound - I live in Ireland."

"Sport, watching, playing, reading or talking about it. Any of it at anytime. And the gym."

"Astrology; homeopathy; imperfect grammar or syntax in text messages. All instant deal breakers."

"Anyone who wears what I think are horrible shoes - slip ons (double nope if they have tassels) pointy toed shoes, sandals (with or without socks) flip flops, crocs, sliders. Men should wear proper boots or decent trainers."

"I wouldn't date anyone with the same name as my ex. No thank you."

I can’t stand when people put wrappers into cups of tea/coffee that they’ve finished. Total deal breaker."

"Someone who didn’t like my dog sleeping at the end of the bed. He said it was her or him, it was an easy choice, I loved that dog."

As for the poem. I couldn’t resist this:

The author Daniel Defoe controversially wrote of the town mentioned in this poem in his 1704 book 'The Storm '. The town accused him of libel and refuted the allegations he made. Defoe wrote:

If I had any satire left to write,
Could I with suited spleen indite,
My verse should blast that fatal town,
And drown'd sailors' widows pull it down;
No footsteps of it should appear,
And ships no more cast anchor there.
The barbarous hated name of Deal shou'd die,
Or be a term of infamy;
And till that's done, the town will stand
A just reproach to all the land.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Abracadabra

"Abra-abracadabra
I wanna reach out and grab ya"

That damn song by the Steve Miller Band. An earworm that started immediately I saw the word for this week’s blog. In all sorts of ways, how did they get away with lyrics like that? It almost turned into a brainworm, if there is such a word, when I started to look up the origins of the song and how Eminem got involved in 2024.

But I went for a cup of tea and when I got back it was to the second century CE and the first known mention of the word in a book called Liber Medicinalis (sometimes known as De Medicina Praecepta Saluberrima) by Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who in chapter 52 prescribed that malaria sufferers wear an amulet containing Abracadabra written in the form of a triangle that acted like a funnel and drove the sickness out of the body.

It’s considered unlikely that Sammonicus came up with the word himself and it could be from a phrase in Aramaic that means "I create like the word". The historian Don Skemer suggests that it might originate from the Hebrew phrase ha brachah dabarah (name of the blessed), said to be a magical phrase. There are quite a few other theories as to the word’s origin however, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘no documentation has been found to support any of the various conjectures’.

Abracadabra was still used as a cure into the 18th century, for there is a book by Daniel Defoe entitled 'Journal of the Plague Year', which lamented the use of such charms:

People deceiv’d; and this was in wearing Charms, Philters, Exorcisms, Amulets, and I know not what Preparations, to fortify the Body with them against the Plague; as if the Plague was but a kind of a Possession of an evil Spirit; and that it was to be kept off with Crossings, Signs of the Zodiac, Papers tied up with so many Knots; and certain Words, or Figures written on them, as particularly the Word Abracadabra, form’d in Triangle, or Pyramid…

And nowadays, or at least from the early 19th century, the word has been used by magicians of the show business type. The exact origins are unclear, but the use of the word Abracadabra likely started in the early 1800s. Some early references point to the first theatrical usage in a performance in 1812 in Rochester, NY, by dramatist and author William Thomas Moncrieff. This was a stage play written by Moncrieff, where the word was used as an example of a word magicians would utter.

Apparently magicians misdirect audience attention in two basic ways. One leads the audience to look away for a fleeting moment, so that they don't detect some sleight or move.

The other approach re-frames the audience's perception, distracting them into thinking that an extraneous factor has much to do with the accomplishment of the feat when it really has no bearing on the effect at all. Such as shouting Abracadabra at a crucial moment in the trick.

I’ve been to quite a few magic performances over the years and it seems to me that the use of such words as abracadabra have died away. Contemporary professional magicians consider the word too cheesy or clichéd for serious performances. When the word does appear today, it is typically reserved for children's entertainment, self-aware comedy, or pop-culture references rather than serious modern magic acts.

I told my friend
that I was writing a poem
just for her
she asked what it was called
I said

ABRACADABRA

and she disappeared

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Death And Taxes

"Tis impossible to be sure of anything except Death and Taxes". So wrote Christopher Bullock in his play The Cobler of Preston (sic) first published/performed in London in 1716. It's a phrase that Daniel Defoe elaborated on shortly afterwards in his Political History of the Devil and which Benjamin Franklin made famous in 1789 when he wrote in a widely quoted letter that "...in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes."

Death and Taxes became such a resonant phrase that it has been used to name a poetry collection by Dorothy Parker, as the title of several novels (by David Dodge and Thomas Dewey among others) and even a Frank Miller comic.

Of course, in practice the list of things we can be certain and sure of in this world is an extensible one.

To death and taxes I'd straight away add the depressing certainty that there are never enough hours in a day/week/year/lifetime (delete as applicable) to accomplish the things we intend to do. That's true in my case at least and I'm sure it's quite a common frustration. Many years ago a work colleague of mine had a poster above her desk that read: "I have been placed on earth to achieve a number of things. At this rate I'm so far behind that I might never be allowed to die!"

I intended to write about the effects of smoking this week - from the perspective of the habit being a killer - as I've been working on a poem on that theme; but when I began to think beyond the health issues to some of the financial implications that lie behind the continued use of tobacco, it didn't take much analysis or research to see that death and taxes are very much interwoven in the fabric of a global industry that is fabled to owe its existence to Francis Drake's adventures into South America in the late 16th century. Drake it was who introduced Sir Walter Raleigh to the habit and Raleigh in turn persuaded Queen Elizabeth to take up and endorse smoking. There is still a brand of tobacco named after Sir Walter.

"And curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid git" (Lennon/McCartney)

It was claimed in those naïve faraway times that tobacco had valuable medicinal properties and that smoking might be good for you!

Over the next four centuries, the smoking of tobacco in pipes and cigarettes became an almost universal custom regardless of class or gender. More people smoked than did not and there was little understanding of the negative health implications of smoking; hence there was very little concern.

It was only in the 20th century with advances in medical research that some of the health implications of the habit became apparent, starting with the link between smoking and lung disease. The industry took steps to limit the effect of toxins by introducing filter-tipped cigarettes but even then the spin from manufacturers was on improving the pleasure of the experience rather than conceding that smoking was inherently detrimental to health.

As research became more targeted and the medical evidence began to stack up, governments were under pressure from health experts to advise smokers to cut down. They typically chose to address the ethical issue by introducing or increasing the tax on tobacco sales. Shortly after World War II the British government slapped a massive 43% increase in duty on cigarettes and sales fell by 14%. This getting of large revenues from taxing tobacco has always struck me as an ambiguous position at best - and this from someone who smoked for a few years in my early twenties. (I blamed it on the nature of the job - a classroom teacher in a large London comprehensive school. The staffroom was like a fume-cupboard at break and lunch times, swathed in a permanent pall of cigarette smoke.)

As the evidence mounted that smoking increased the risks of pulmonary and vascular disease, that it was a major trigger for the development of cancers, so pressure grew to curb its use and its impact. The TV advertising of tobacco products was banned over 40 years ago as such commercials were thought to make the habit 'sexy' and could influence children and teenagers in particular. In the last 30 years, the impact of 'passive smoking' has been recognised and acted upon. Gradually smoking in the workplace became confined to designated areas, then banned altogether and latterly the same has been true of all public transport systems and enclosed public spaces.

Most recently, legislation has been introduced to force a standardised form of packaging on cigarette manufacturers. Tobacco products are now uniformly branded with the imposition of a series of garish graphic images and messages warning the consumer of the health risks associated with the habit, designed to encourage smokers to quit.

The price of a packet of twenty cigarettes is apparently nearly £10 nowadays. (I can remember when ten Park Drive cost the equivalent of 5p.) So the cost has risen markedly in recent years compared to other consumer items. What has also risen markedly is the cost to the NHS of treating smoking-related illness. One-fifth of all cancers are smoking related and then there are all the other cardio-vascular and respiratory diseases directly attributable to smoking tobacco. The financial impact is thought to run into hundreds of millions of pounds a year, never mind the suffering it causes to individuals and their loved ones. Of that £10 per pack, 70% is tax going into the exchequer; a nice little earner. Death and taxes - I wonder how much of that tobacco revenue finds its way into the health budget.

And so to the poem. I know that many years ago (I guess in the first half of the 20th century) packets of cigarettes used to contain picture cards on a theme - famous sportsmen, vehicles, breeds of dog et cetera as an added inducement for people to stick to a particular brand and try and collect a complete set of footballers, sports cars, hounds or whatever the set comprised. The recent introduction of this generic graphic packaging highlighting the various unpleasant effects of long-term smoking gave me an idea for an ironic twist on the concept. I hope you don't find it facetious or offensive. Of course it is meant to upset, for the intent is a serious one.

The Whole Smoking Set
A different graphic image
adorns every packet.
Ten smoking-related conditions,
ten nails for your coffin,
which one is for you?

Prematurely grey and wrinkled skin?
Gum disease and a toothless grin?
Vascular deterioration, the loss of a limb?
Maybe a premature or malformed baby?
Bronchial disorder is a permanent wheeze
not to mention tumours of the throat and tongue,
lung cancer and cardiac disease.

You may insist it's your right to choose,
that it's all a racket and you accept the risk.

Go on then,
collect the whole smoking set.
Roll up! Strike up!
You might be lighting your way
to a slow and painful death -
but it's one for which we all have to pay!

Thanks for reading. Stay healthy, S;-)

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