Category: Books

The Joy of Moist

Apparently, some people don’t like the word moist. I think damp is a worse word with more negative connotations, conjuring images of ruined blackened walls, fungus, mould and spores that lead to ill health, suffering and eventual death.

I don’t know why some people don’t like the word moist. Maybe they connect it to the word sweaty, or areas of the body that may be overheated, but even in that case, moist is better than drenched or wet or sweaty, smelly, sticky or stinky. I don’t particularly like the word sweaty but I think all words are good. They all describe. Sweaty is descriptive, it’s powerful, it’s evocative but why would it be preferable to moist? Sweaty cake or moist cake? Sweaty soil or moist soil? There’s no competition. Moist is not too wet, it’s not too dry, it’s the goldilocks of H20.

I’m at a loss to understand what is so bad about the word moist. It even sounds good phonetically. A soft velvety sound, relativelty easy to spell, looks good, sounds good.

In the seventies and eighties, when I was growing up, the word moist didn’t seem to be a problem. I discovered that a lot of women shudder at the word moist. I don’t understand why that is. There are many other words that would make you shudder. What I learned lately is the amount of men who don’t like it either. If people can’t bring themselves to like the word, perhaps they could appreciate the positive connotations of it in some circumstances. Moistness can be a help and not a hindrance and in this world where things are either too wet or too dry, it can be a boon to life.

When I think of moist, I think of moist soil. A plant with moist soil is a plant that has watered soil which will make a very happy plant that will thrive and grow. Also, when I think of the word moist, I think of moist cake. There’s nothing more delicious than a moist cake. There’s nothing worse than a dry cake that should be moist, yet no-one falls over into a dead faint at the word dry. Dry cake, skin, or soil, does not have so much of a future as moist cake, skin or soil. So as far as I’m concerned, moist is a great word.

Quote of the Week

‘Change by itself is of no consequence – everything changes. The consciousness emerging from it is, I feel, of greater importance.’

– Savitri – P.S Rege

– The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories – Edited by Stephen Alter and Wimal Dissanayake

The Golden Scales



When I was twenty, many, many years ago, I waited for a while at the bus stop to get the bus to take me to my theatre training course (the buses were every hour and I never could quite time it right)
The bus stop was by a factory which was surrounded by deep and wild undergrowth, trees and bushes. While I stood there, I spotted some tiny golden scales in between the netted wire and the undergrowth. That evening when I got home, I casually mentioned the scales to my
dad. I’d captured his imagination and
before I knew it, under cover of darkness, (6p.m) me and he were at that
bus stop in question and busy fishing out these cute little
golden scales from underneath the netting/wire. I can’t remember
how exactly we got them out from the entanglement of all the weeds and thorns and wire but we did.
Jubilant, we took them home. My dad secreted the
special golden trinket into his wardrobe and that is where they
stayed, for a time. I thought maybe we
should at least have joint custody. Although, to be honest, he was
the one who took the time, effort and trouble to get them out from
behind that netting and by the time he got them home I think I’d
lost interest, or decided I should just let my dad keep his latest
favourite thing. He was more obsessed with them than I was.
I happened to mention the delightful scales to a colleague at the theatre training course and he told me that scales of that description were used by
drug dealers to measure out drugs. He had in his youth dabbled in drugs, so he knew about these things.
I casually mentioned this to my dad that evening.
The next day, when I passed by the kitchen, I saw him sitting on the linoleum
floor, newspaper spread underneath him. He was hacking away furiously at the Golden Scales with a manual saw.
Later on in the week, he casually told me that he’d managed to
break up the beautiful Golden Scales into tiny pieces and had put
each piece into a separate bin bag. He said this with the air of a
Drugs Baron who had got away with the execution of a major
international drugs haul, and that as long as he lay low for a
while, he might be okay.
I wished at that point that I’d kept the discovery of The
Golden Scales to myself. After all, they were probably just brass.