What My Younger Uncle's Been Up To; And How I Know.

Concerning junior avuncular ratiocination; a bullied palaeontologist; a new story - and act of hubris - by me, and a valet's ascent of various ladders.

You have been in Afghanistan, nhi-ka

Wonderfully, the language of the Amazonian Tariana people has different grammatical tenses that indicate where you got the evidence for what you are saying: Whether you saw it, detected it non-visually, were told about it, inferred it... or assumed it.¹

So, according to the fieldwork of the linguist Alexandra Aikhenvald, here are five ways to report on the culinary activities of your father's younger brother:

Nu-nami karaka di-merita-naka
My younger uncle is frying chicken' (I (the speaker) see him)

Nu-nami karaka di-merita-mha
'My younger uncle is frying chicken' (I smell the fried chicken, but cannot see this)

Nu-nami karaka di-merita-pida-ka
'My younger uncle has fried chicken' (I was told recently)

Nu-nami karaka di-merita-nhi-ka
'My younger uncle has fried chicken' (I see bits of grease stuck on his hands and he smells of fried chicken)

And my favourite:

Nu-nami karaka di-merita-si-ka
'My younger uncle has fried chicken' (I assume so: he gets so much money he can afford it, and he looks like he has had a nice meal)

My younger uncle.

Aikhenvald goes on to say that Tariana speakers use the second of these tenses when reporting their dreams, since they did not really 'see' them. Unless... they belong to the highest caste of shaman, who can use the first tense, because their dreams are taken to be true. She also says, in her book I Saw The Dog:

A frequent warning one hears from the Tariana is to beware of those who are vague in their speech. White people – the colonial invaders – are perceived as liars, since they never tell you how they know what they talk about.

I mean… fair enough.

Sketch Book

A new illustration for a sketch from the 2023 edition of Souvenir Programme. I wrote it assuming I would play poor Professor Beaumont, but then at a try-out I got Simon to do it, I think just because there weren’t that many sketches for him that week… and then of course he did it so brilliantly I couldn’t possibly take it back.

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Subscriber Chat

We did it, and it seemed to go well! I enjoyed myself, anyway. There were far more questions than I could answer in an hour, so I’m sorry if I didn’t get to yours. I also didn’t really get to mine - asking my research questions, I mean - so I think next time I’ll put them in the opening announcement. I said I’d do a different day and time for the next one, so let’s say… Sunday 10th, 5pm BST.

Jeeves Again

I’m delighted to say I have written a story for this forth-coming collection by different authors, featuring P.G. Wodehouse’s characters Jeeves and Wooster.

The editors made it very clear to me that I shouldn’t feel any pressure to try to write in Wodehouse’s distinctive style… but then I made it very clear to them that I really wanted to have a bash at it. This is setting myself up for a devastating fall, obviously, but Bertie- and his Aunt Dahlia- are two of my favourite voices in fiction. I couldn’t resist having a go.

Friend of The Airport Caroline Hardman asked me about it during the subscriber chat, and I said this:

To find out which period I mean, you can either read the book when it’s released on the 16th October… or, should you be feeling adventurous / impatient / flush, you can scale the imminent paywall, for a sneak preview of the first few pages.

Otherwise, I leave you, as ever, with

Love,

The Airport.