Where’s George Carlin when you need him? I thought about George recently. This controversial irreverent stand-up comedian, who died over a decade ago, would have been 83 this not-so-merry month of May. I’m not in the habit of dwelling on the birthdays of famous people — dead or alive — but George popped into my consciousness, triggered by COVID-19 phrases. George might have referred to these new phrases as “soft language.” If you watch his “language” performance on YouTube, you’ll know what I mean. George, you’ll learn, hated euphemisms. He claims they’ve become more prevalent with each generation, designed to shield Americans from facing reality. Prowling across the stage, his words punctuated with forceful gestures, his eyes wide, he gives examples: After World War I, the excruciating trauma suffered by many returning soldiers was called “Shell Shock” — “simple, honest, direct language,” says George. Hearing those words we can picture an artillery shell and the shock to the nervous system this exploding bombardment would have on soldiers. Fast forward to World War II, and George reminds us that this same trauma was now called “Battle Fatigue” — a softer explanation — “fatigue is a nicer word than shock.” Moving on to Korea we have “Operational Exhaustion.” “The humanity has been completely squeezed out of the phrase, it’s totally sterile now,” he laments. And then there was Vietnam — “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” — “and the pain is completely buried under jargon” — reduced to four initials, PTSD. George has lighter moments. The weather forecasts, he asserts, have morphed — “partly cloudy became partly sunny … the dump became the landfill.” And because of Americans’ fear of death, he says reaching skyward, “I won’t have to die — I’ll pass away — or I’ll expire like a magazine subscription.” So what would George have said about the coronavirus phrase, “shelter in place?” I have no doubt he would have called this another case of “soft language” — designed to take the edge of reality. “Shelter,” George might say, sounds comforting and voluntary — instead of a mandatory government order (albeit one I appreciate). The comic might prefer something more direct such as the headline that blasted — “Stay home.” And then there’s another oft-used coronavirusism — “Social distancing.” I can hear George deriding the term. Sounds like something a class-conscious society might practice. How about “Back off.” Not polite, but to the point. There are two phrases I’ve been introduced to recently that are not linked to the coronavirus, but clearly fit George’s assertion that “soft language takes the life out of life.” One is “food insecurity.” I winced when I first saw those words in print. Food insecurity? It sounded like a personal problem. A condition that could be cured by the right counselor. The article was about hunger. A word you can feel. May even have felt. You can empathize. You might be compelled to do something about it. The other phrase is “white privilege” — two simple words describing an invisible package of unearned assets based on race that society affords white people over non-white people. I don’t argue with the assertion. It’s the word “privilege.” During this “stay home” period, I’ve been stuffing my face with re-runs of Downton Abbey, the wonderful British television series that dramatizes the differences in early 1900s England between the lives of the privileged upper classes and those of the lower classes. I can tell you that when it comes to upstairs-downstairs, I’d rather be upstairs having a lady’s maid lace my corset than be downstairs sweating in the kitchen helping Downton cook, Mrs. Patmore, plop sausages in the toad-in-the-hole mix. So, rather than being a disparaging term, “privilege”’ is something I might aspire to — but “white privilege” would be a challenge since I’m mixed race. So please, let’s drop “food insecurity” and bring back hunger. It sounds desperate. It is desperate. Let’s drop “white privilege” and bring back racism. It sounds evil. It is evil. The real words, the hard words, might move us to change things. To those cooking up the next clever word or phrase, how about asking, “What would George say?”

Lady Muck. That was the name given to me by my late sister whenever she thought I was acting above my working-class station. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, then you haven’t watched enough episodes of Downton Abbey, the award-winning British TV series. Speaking of which, I was delighted to hear the voice of actor Jim Carter, who played Carson the Butler on Downton Abbey, narrating the fascinating documentary “Inside the Ritz.” Who better to describe the history and inner workings of the famous London Ritz Hotel than the famous Mr. Carson, butler to the family of Lord and Lady Grantham. I actually felt like Lady Muck two years ago when I sat with a straight back sipping tea in the Palm Court at The Ritz. This was September, and my daughter had fulfilled her promise of a belated Mother’s Day gift of high tea at The Ritz during our European vacation. Before tea, we toured Buckingham Palace and The Royal Mews, where the Queen’s horse-drawn carriages are stored, including the dazzling Golden State Coach that has carried every monarch to their coronation since George IV in 1821. Ten years ago, I’d seen the world’s only replica of the coach parked in the lobby of the London Bridge Resort Hotel in Lake Havasu, Arizona, of all places. Located near the exit from Buckingham Palace is the 40-acre Green Park. Winding through the park is a footpath that leads to a street by The Ritz. With ample time before high tea, my husband and I embarked on what we thought would be a pleasant stroll. We were thankful we could collapse periodically on a park bench and plop down on the green-striped deck chairs available to rent for the equivalent of $2 an hour. The Ritz documentary included a word or two from Lord Julian Fellowes, the writer and creator of Downton Abbey. “Special events are happening all over the hotel at every table in every chair,” he said in his posh voice. Our visit was certainly special. High tea is served in the Palm Court described on the hotel’s website as “flanked by high walls of gleaming mirrors, romantic birdcage chandeliers and a soaring, vibrant floral display at the centre of the room.” I know I didn’t take in all of this fabulous opulence since I was partially blinded by the light ricocheting from the chandeliers to the multi-tiered crystal cake stand centered on our tea table. Crust-free miniature sandwiches, teacakes and pastries were continually replenished. I was disappointed by how few I could delicately gobble. All this while being entertained by the famous resident pianist, Ian Gomes, on a grand piano. My husband’s memory of our Ritz visit includes a mild faux pas. As we polished off pastries, a waiter approached with a bottle of champagne. He looked first at our daughter, who shook her head. This surprised me since she spent some time living in France and returned with a penchant for champagne and French perfume. Fortunately for those with fragrance sensitivities, she outgrew the perfume. Happily, she retained her taste for champagne, which was why I was surprised at her head shake to the waiter but quickly caught on. My husband, assuming the champagne was included in the expensive high-tea treat, raised his glass and unwittingly added $40 to her bill. High tea wouldn’t be so named without the beverage, and there were 18 types of loose-leaf tea from which to choose. I doubt the selection included the variety from my childhood. For years, my mother stuck to using loose tea, purchased in the green Brooke Bond tea packet. “Polly, put the kettle on,” she would call out to me whenever we tramped through our tiny kitchen out of the English damp. Water on a rolling boil was essential to a good cup of tea, we were all taught. The teapot was rinsed with the hot water before the leaves were dropped in – a teaspoon for each cup and one for the pot. Mother eventually transitioned to teabags but may have lamented the passing of tasseomancy – the ancient art of reading tea leaves – one of her few harmless diversions. Sequestered at home, I’ve found pleasure in revisiting memories of past travels and the visit to The Ritz is one I hold very dear. Synonymous with grandeur, the word “Ritz” made its way into the dictionary and is defined as “ostentatious luxury and glamour.” I’d say that’s right up Lady Muck’s alley. The Ritz was opened in London’s Mayfair by Swiss hotelier César Ritz on the 25th of May 1906. Sadly, the coronavirus has accomplished what neither World War I nor World War II could. The pandemic closed the doors of the grand Ritz Hotel … for now.

“We’re having a run on loo rolls over here,” my brother Kevan informed me during his call from England. “Loo rolls?” I said, initially confused. The call came just before lunch and my thoughts went to food – sausage rolls in particular. “You’ve been in America too long,” Kevan said, laughing. Then the penny dropped. He was, of course, referring to the unfathomable hoarding of toilet paper in the U.K., as it is in the U.S. Kevan and I went on to reminisce about our childhood in Britain, when the toilet paper nailed to the inside door of the outside lavatory were pages of The News of The World – nicknamed “The news of the Screws” because of its salacious content – a fitting final resting place, some said. I stayed long enough at my mother’s house to experience the graduation from newspaper to toilet paper, albeit the waxy kind that did more harm than good. This subject was the topic of a conversation I’d had earlier in the U.S. with a friend. “I have shelves of toilet paper and paper towels in my garage,” she confessed. “When I was a starving student I felt comforted when I had a supply of these products, even if I was short on food. I continued this habit even as I got older and better off.” I didn’t pretend to understand. Our conversation switched to families. Several months before “sheltering in place” became the norm, her 5-year-old grandson visited. My friend told me that one morning her grandson, who called her ‘Nene,’ asked to use the toilet. “Our guest bathroom was occupied,” she said, “so I led him to the toilet in my bedroom. I busied myself in the kitchen. Realizing he’d been gone a long time, I started to check on him when he reappeared.” She asked her grandson if he was OK. She said he hesitated and then said, “Nene, why do you have a bafftub for your kitty cats?” My friend, thinking her grandson was referring to her claw-foot, cast-iron tub, told him the bathtub was not for the cats, that it was Nene’s tub. She said her grandson responded with an emphatic, “NO, not THAT bafftub. The widdle one.” “The little one?” my friend said, as confused as I was with Kevan’s loo rolls. “Yes, the widdle one wiff the water that does this ...” She said her grandson flipped his fingers up and down vertically in the pantomime of a jet stream shooting up. It was then that my friend realized why her grandson had taken so long in the bathroom, and why he thought she had a bathtub for her two cats. He’d discovered the bidet! “You have a toilet paper stash and a bidet?” I practically screamed in the phone. “I know,” she said, sounding smug, “both pre-coronavirus. The downside is I’m afraid to open my garage door for fear of either being robbed or arrested.” Kevan enjoyed my friend’s story and went on to ask if I remembered what the word Corona meant to us as kids, growing up in England. I did. These were the days when everything from kippers to coal was delivered to the door in our neighborhood. The Corona Man delivered bottles of delicious fizzy pop. He was second only in popularity to the ice-cream man. He’d drive up in an electric vehicle, wearing a non-descript smock over his regular clothes. He’d jump out of his vehicle, grab a metal basket containing half a dozen tall wire-topped bottles, and be greeted by a smiling mum at the front door. There was a “money-back guarantee” on the empty glass bottles, which resulted in more than a few tussles in our house as we wrestled each other for our only source of pocket money. Writer Phil Carridice has posted the history of the Corona pop company on his BBC Wales History blog. The pop, writes Carridice, was produced during the 19th-century Temperance Movement. Apparently, the Rhondda Valleys in Wales were flush with coal mines and pubs. The miners, after hours spent inhaling coal dust, developed powerful thirsts. Drunkenness was rampant. Two Welsh grocers – William Evans and William Thomas – hit on the idea of producing the Corona pop as an alternative to alcohol. The pop became very popular … as a beer chaser.

At 5 each morning, my brother, Kevan, runs his two border collies across the meadows near his village, come rain or shine. Mostly rain. It’s England. I have a soft spot for border collies. Oreo, our pet for the years our children were young, was one. My husband, Jim, selected him from the litter birthed by his mother’s dog. Oreo was the only black-and-white pup. The rest were brown and white. If you’ve met me, you’d know my husband likes the unusual. During the phone conversation, my brother and I commiserated about our shared experience with border collies. We agreed they were a gentle breed but one that needed exercising, hence Kevan’s morning hikes. Where did the breed border collie originate, I wondered. I knew they were herding dogs long before I had the pleasure of watching a sheepdog demonstration a couple of years ago at Kells Sheep Centre while on a tour of Ireland’s Ring of Kerry. I learned the breed was so named because they were bred on the border between England and Scotland. That made sense. As Kevan and I chit-chatted about various dog breeds, I told him pit bulls scared me. I’d read about their gruesome attacks. “Can’t own one in the U.K.,” he said in his usual brusque manner. I learned Parliament passed the Dangerous Dogs Act in 1991, banning pit bulls and several other breeds. Exemptions are possible, but the dog has to be muzzled in public and you can’t breed or sell them. Apparently, not everyone was thrilled with this ruling. Blame is placed on the owners who train the dogs to be aggressive. During our phone chat, I told Kev about the stout little pit bull that roamed our property not too long ago. My husband would shoo it away. It never growled or turned toward him — just kept on chugging down the trail. Pretty soon, we stopped seeing it. That summer, we were invited to a neighborhood barbecue. As I sat on the patio munching away I turned when I heard a screen door bang. Strolling out of the house was none other than the chunky pit bull. I froze. The dog lumbered by me and lay down a few feet away. I kept a suspicious eye on it for the rest of the afternoon. Before I left the barbecue, I asked our host about the dog. He said it had wandered onto their property and stayed. Efforts to find the owner were unsuccessful. They were delighted with its calm temperament. I also related this story to a friend who said she knew someone with a similar experience with pit bulls. I called him. He was the proud owner of a pit bull for 19 years, he told me, and it was the gentlest dog he’d ever had. When walking his pet, it would lurch toward people, tail wagging, ready to lick them to death. I imagined what my reaction would have been had his pit bull lurched toward me. Until recently, I’d never been within six feet of a pit bull nor heard them described as gentle. My fear of them was developed from reading and hearing about their grisly attacks. I wondered if that’s how human prejudices are developed, and stereotypes perpetuated when one is exposed only to the negative, and never the positive? The pit bull owner went on to tell me about the day he took his dog with him to the dump. “As I pulled up to the gate, my dog threw himself at the truck window barking furiously at a young man at the entrance. This totally perplexed me. I’d never seen him act like this. Several days later, when my dog was outside in our fenced yard, he began barking incessantly. I looked out and saw a young guy. He’d propped his bike up against the outside of the fence. He bent down, picked up a handful of rocks, pelted my dog, jumped on his bike and rode off. It was the kid from the dump.” I’d now heard two stories about mild-mannered pit bulls. I’m not about to run out and get one, but it did give me food for thought. Kevan and I ended our conversation laughing about our mother’s devotion to her little dog. After her eight kids left home, she purchased a toy poodle. Mother lavished more love on “Pepe Duke” than any one of us kids had ever received. When teased about this, our Irish mother had no qualms about defending her actions. “The dog doesn’t give me any lip,” she’d say. Ironically, an acquaintance recently told me the only dog that had ever bitten him was a poodle.

In the past, when faced with competition, there have been times when I’ve smugly declared myself a winner, often prematurely. Like the time I was learning how to swim. Those who have read my memoir know my childhood swimming lessons in the frigid outdoor pool in the merry village of Wilby were not successful, although I did learn how to hold my breath underwater. Decades later, I felt foolish living in sunny California not knowing how to swim. I signed up for lessons at the YMCA. Several women were milling around the pool when I arrived for my first lesson. All wore one-piece suits and swim caps tight enough to cut off circulation. Most were at least 20 years older than I was. Excellent. I worried I would be the oldest student and the slowest learner. Each outweighed me. Excellent again. Unfortunately, the concept of “fat floats” was unknown to me. While these pleasantly plump ladies floated effortlessly on their backs, moving nary a muscle, I had to kick like mad to stop from drowning. I would eventually learn to swim the sidestroke. Another time I misjudged my competition, I was on firmer ground. Back in the day, before I moved to the Auburn area, I belonged to the Southgate Tennis Club in Sacramento. Sounds grand. And it was in the way that playing outside in the sun is with people you like. But we were a recreation and park district club and had no amenities other than four courts and a public toilet. When we hosted teams from local clubs, I was a little embarrassed. Most of the other clubs had fancy facilities like a roof and toilets with tiled floors. Some club competitors skipped around the court wearing tennis dresses or skirts. Our club wore shorts. My dear daughter had given me a tennis skirt as a gift one Christmas. I’d look at those cute little pleats and the frilly underpants and knew in my heart I couldn’t live up to the uniform. It’s still hanging in my closet. Periodically, our members would compete against each other. These were great fun and a lot less pressure. If I lost a match, I only let myself down, not the club. One Saturday, I was matched against a member who was then an advice columnist – Helen Bottel. Helen wrote the syndicated column “Helen Help Us” in the Sacramento Union, a newspaper that could boast it published stories by Mark Twain when he was a young journalist. Sadly, the Union ceased publication in 1994 after 143 years. The final headline blared: “We’re History.” My husband, Jim, has never recovered. Back to Helen. She was a fascinating person – articulate, humorous, well-traveled. I’d enjoy our conversations during tennis breaks and was impressed that in her 70s she began writing in the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper in Japan. She would receive letters from Japanese readers translated by the newspaper into English. She told me her Japanese readers were hungry for Western advice. They called her Kimottama Obachan (Daring Old Aunt). She was the only advice columnist in the country and enjoyed being number one. For years, Helen was number three, trailing in popularity to Esther Pauline and Pauline Esther (their real names), the feuding twin sisters who penned the advice columns: “Ask Ann Landers” and “Dear Abby.” Helen missed a couple of tennis meetings, and I learned she had a hip replacement. In no time, she was back on the court. I was matched against her. No competition. It sounds harsh, but I needed a win. I was never a heavy hitter. My serves couldn’t blow a leaf off the court, so I wasn’t worried about causing Helen any harm, but I was competitive. The minute I faced her across the net I had second thoughts. I became emotionally hamstrung. I was intimidated. Here she was, a woman in her early 70s, a good 30 years my senior at the time, and recovering from hip surgery. What, if in her effort to reach one of my returns she was injured. I decided to hit soft balls directly to her so she didn’t have to move. An observer thought we were warming up. Helen, however, had other ideas. I didn’t know beforehand that her motto, confessed to a journalist, was, “Leap before you look.” She whacked balls back with a vengeance. Okay, lady, this is how you want to play, I thought, and returned a ball outside her reach. Helen lunged to the side for the first time. She stumbled. Now you’ve done it, I thought, you’ve hurt sweet, famous, Helen. Wrong. Helen recovered her footing and belted the ball back. Game, set, match to Helen. No competition.