‘I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.’
Michelangelo
Word of the day: Dealate – insect divested of its wings
One mystery is solved! The encyclopedia of all important knowledge, Calmgrove, knew why buildings in the UK have so many stone babies and small children scattered around them. Here is his brilliant explanation.
‘Fat winged babies: these are called putti, Italian for ‘male children’. They were originally a pagan figure, a representation of Aphrodite’s child Eros, better known to us as Cupid, but substituted for cherubs in Christian iconography. Cherubs themselves derive from Hebrew cherubim, fearsome angelic beings but over time tamed down to podgy infants with ridiculously inadequate wings.As to the St Paul’s putti, I suspect some of them are a reflection of London’s poor — the orphans, beggars, climbing boys, young pedlars — a reproach to passers-by and an encouragement to engage in some charitable work.’
I love the idea of pudgy infants with only vestigial wings so that they can no longer fly, dodo angels.
The alien space tank on the roof of a building has not been so clearly explained. An air conditioning unit (thank you Boo) and overhead Gantry Crane (thank you Darnell) are two excellent suggestions. I’m not going to spin this into a drama, but all I’m saying is, keep an eye out for inexplicable alien space tanks appearing on top of buildings in your town.
inkbiotic 
I love the description of Putti as pudgy infants with vestigial wings – brilliant.
I badly want to live in a building with an alien space tank on top.
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Your wish will probably come true once the invasion gets fully underway, soon we will all live in such a building!
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Not me. I am digging a secure vault under the garden shed lined with egg boxes and stocked with whisky and chocolate. Planning my future employment as clearer of red weed when it’s all over
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Always good to have a back up plan, especially if it involves whisky and chocolate. I’ve been eyeing up the basement downstairs. We don’t have access from our flat, but I reckon I could break in. That, or when the invasion finally happens I piggy back on the queen and don’t let go. I figure she’ll have a plush underground bunker somewhere and if I’m clinging to her she’ll have to take me too.
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If it’s not aliens, it’s the Illuminati.
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yes, or some sort of coalition or hybrid between the two.
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Alienati? (Possibly Alienatum singular – God! I knew that Latin would come in one day!)
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Alienati! 😀
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lol
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Not certain I could call whisky and chocolate a back-up plan – more of a lifestyle choice. Good plan to piggy-back the Queen, although I’m not certain exactly how stable she might be. Not to worry, I’m sure she’ll have a piggy-back flunky.
(PS if you receive about twenty similar replies, I apologise. No-body seems to be able to find out what is going on with them. They are falling into some kind of black hole [where they probably belong] often resurfacing anonymously some time later. Each time I comment, I get logged out and subsequent comments seldom post. Just as well, I suppose – most of them are tripe – but I would like to know who’s eating them. Is it the Alienati?)
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That sounds incredibly annoying! I knew you’d had some trouble, but didn’t realise it was ongoing. If extra replies come through I can delete them, although I’m usually reticent to do that because they tend to have new nuggets of ideas and I don’t want to lose them!
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You are too kind- and very patient. One dose of claptrap from me is normally enough for anyone. It worries me, because I often forget to check, that I appear ignorant in not replying sometimes. Remember, it isn’t me, it’s this bleedin’ website…
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I have enough WordPress disasters to not judge others for the same. My favourite trick seems to be trying to reply but instead of pressing shift and t, I press control and t and trash the comment! :O Gives me the horrors every time,
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I shall have to go back through all your Words of the Day, I’ve forgotten the meanings of pretty much all of them. This one makes little etymological sense to me — I’ve come to the conclusion you make most of them up… Go on, I dare you to include all in a post to prove they mean what you say they mean! And ‘putti’, who can up with such a ridiculous word … oh, it was me.
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Hmmm, you mean write a story with them? That’s quite a challenge… 😀 I’m flattered you think I could make them all up. Innocent-old-me *never* invents things 😉
The nomophobia took me a while to work out because it’s not Latin or Greek, but I assume it’s just no-mobile-phobia shortened,
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