Enough of your blarney!

When I think back and picture myself in my early teens I hardly recognise the boy I see: shy, retiring, timid even.  Certainly not a young man full of easy confidence in himself.  Not that I'm claiming to be full of confidence even now, but I am certainly not afraid to stand up in front of a crowd of strangers and say my piece.  I hope I'm not considered verbose even though I am often the first to speak on a matter raised at a Lions meeting.  I do try to let others start the discussion but very often everybody else seems reluctant to do so.  If I don't say something, nobody else will either!  (I nearly used the word loquacious instead of verbose but decided it's just that little bit less derogatory.)

If I am not verbose, then neither do I consider that I have the gift of the gab.  Verbosity and the gift of the gab are often seen as synonyms although to my mind they are not quite that.  Verbosity, to me, is when somebody just can't stop themselves talking even though what they are saying is not entirely relevant or to the point.  The gift of the gab, on the other hand, indicates to me a useful propensity for saying the right thing at the right time - and not necessarily using hundreds of words to do that.  Eloquence would be another word to describe almost exactly what I mean.

Another near synonym would be blarney, but that is reserved almost exclusively for the Irish and implies, to my mind, a generous helping of over-the-top flattery.  Just why every Irishman is considered to have kissed the Blarney Stone is something I have never discovered.  Oh, did you not know that?  The Blarney Stone really does exist.  Blarney is a small town in southern Ireland not far from Cork.  Blarney Castle dates from medieval times and is now little more than a ruin.  It is there, high in the walls, that you will find the world-famous Blarney Stone.  To kiss it, one needs to lie on one's back with one's head sticking out over a gap (with a considerable drop), lean down and back to kiss a stone in the opposite wall.  And not just any stone; only the Blarney Stone counts.

The Old Bat and I took a holiday in Ireland back in about 1967 or 8 and it was then that I kissed the Blarney Stone - and here is the photographic proof!

And while we're on old pictures, here's another of the Old Bat.  She must have been about three - and no, that's not me holding her hand!