I can’t help but feel that the world would be a much simpler place if everybody actually meant what they said (or, indeed, said what they meant).  People speak in code: sometimes we are meant to understand it, sometimes we are not.  Sometimes words are intended to lead and sometimes they are intended to mislead.  Take, for instance, the code of the Estate Agent where ‘bijou apartment’ means understairs cupboard and ‘mature garden’ means six feet deep in Japanese Knotweed with the distinct possibility of a completely new life-form evolving behind the shed.  Where ‘modern’ means so outdated it’s bound to come back into fashion sometime soon and ‘close to all amenities’ means above a shopping centre with the Railway Booking Office on the back porch.  Where ‘ready to move into’ means we know you are desperate.

Consider too the code of the dating agency.  Who doesn’t understand that GSOH means more boring than a woodworm?  Some things are known by all: ‘single’ means married, ‘NSA’ means married, ‘unattached’ means married and slightly deranged, and ‘adventurous’ means can’t be bothered to pair up his socks.  ‘MSW’ means man seeking woman… any woman.  I will beg if necessary.  Dating acronyms were very different in my day.  The nearest we got was to scrawl ‘SWALK’ on the back of an envelope, but today – oh today – it is all so complicated.  I am relieved to say that I am not, in anyway, in the game.  Slip an ill-considered Nota Bene (NB) into your profile and you will be unable to turn on your phone without being offered non-binary companionship.  Worse, if non-binary companionship is what you require, you will almost certainly find yourself with some nutter banging on about dropping meaningless asides into your profile.

Family members, lovers, work colleagues, we all have little codes that somehow bond us together whilst ever-so-slightly alienating those not in the loop: in the home the simple TV Remote Control might be known as the remote, but it might also be the clicker (our house), flicker, watchamacallit, doubrie or doofer: you could just as well call it Nigel, it doesn’t matter, as long as you understand and others don’t, then it works – and as long as you are not one of the excluded.  Work places are notorious for the use of jargon.  It is Batman’s mask.  Even the Police do it: “We are keeping an open mind” simply means we haven’t got a clue.  Anything will do, just as long as it separates those in the know from those in the don’t know.  Everyone wants to be part of the in crowd.  Nobody wants dragging off by the Boy Wonder…

And finally we come to the Lords and Ladies of all liars… I’m sorry, I mean word mis-users: politicians.  Politicians seldom say what they mean and they never mean what they say.  They say what they think we want them to say, without the slightest intention of ever really meaning it.  Obfuscation is their way, aided and abetted by ambiguous statements.  (As a little aside here, I have just watched a TV interview with a politician and it put me in mind of the chicken/egg situation: which came first, the obfuscating politician or the unimaginably aggressive interviewer?  Answers on a postcard please – but not to me.)  Language is a fluid beast for politicians: words can mean whatever they want them to mean and the meaning can never be held against them.  Beware of the politician who says “We must root out the liars and the wrongdoers,” because they are one of them…

Slight of hand
Jump off the end
Into a clear lake
No one around
Just dragonflies
Fantasize
No one gets hurt… Codex – Radiohead

N.B. I have not included a glossary of dating-site acronyms here, you will have to do what I did and look them up – although I have to warn you, I barely dare to turn my phone on right now…