Category: Eccentric

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The Joy of Eccentric Nightwear

It is a fact fairly widely acknowledged, that those who wear quite sober clothes (whether for professional reasons or otherwise) often make an exception for novelty socks. Others, even more covertly, wear brightly patterned underwear (generally a secret unless you get hit by a bus). I myself go in for lively nightwear.

“What could be more fun than a prim floor-length nightie covered in rocket-ships, say, or jelly-beans?” So I wrote back in 2018, and I have not had cause to revise my opinion, barring a minor alteration to ankle-length. It did, however, take some time for my psyche to recover from the epic battle which was the Stripy Nightie of 2018, but time is a great healer (and Covid a great eraser of memory) and here we are.

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Name the Mystery Beastie!

Behold, the Mystery Beastie!

A strange looking animal with its mouth open toward the viewer. Above its mouth is a short trunk ending in a piglike nose. One raggedy ear is visible on its black somewhat horselike head. The front half of the animal seems black and its back half white.

This particular species of Mystery Beastie already has at least nine names (seven English, two Latin, not counting subspecies names, or its many names in other languages), but frankly, none of them do the poor endangered freaky creature justice, in my opinion.

In order to give you a good all-round view of the subject to guide your naming efforts, I have gathered an assortment of images of the Mystery Beastie. (Note: clicking on an image will take you to the Wikimedia Commons page for that image, which may bestow upon you spoilers as to one or more existing names for the Mystery Beastie.)

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The Patron Saints of Modern Life

There’s a saint for everyone and everything, it seems. A saint of professional pasty crimpers, for example. He was Cornish, as one might have guessed, and is also the patron saint of tin miners and cream clotters. (Might this imply an ecclesiastical position on the cream first vs jam first debate?) A saint for farriers – basically horse podiatrists/manicurists. A saint to be invoked against wolves. Yet none of these spiritual “use cases” are particularly widespread in this day and age, one would think.

Woodcut style illustration of a monk with a halo, kneeling to shake hands with a wolf.
Believe it or not, this isn’t even the guy to invoke against wolves.

However, there are also saints for more modern things. St Clare of Assisi is the patron saint of television – dubious honour – because she saw a church service (which she was too sick to attend) projected on the wall of her cell. St Joseph of Cupertino is the patron saint of air travellers, since he was known to levitate. Also the patron saint of students facing exams, since he was also known to be “remarkably unclever” but miraculously passed his exams anyway. St Carlo Acutis is the patron saint of gamers, because he was one – born in 1991, he’s one of the most recent of the Catholic saints.

Yet with all these modern patronages from saints old and new, I feel there are still some gaps which could do with filling in today’s world, and I have here a few suggestions.

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