Letters from London #5

More laziness from me, so more Letters from London for you.  But the real question is: will I post #6 (about London "sports") tomorrow?  It's a particularly good one (if I do say so myself)...hmmm...we'll see...

February 2001:

1.        Penis Education: In regard to my little grammatical challenge from last month about why the plural of penis is not peni, here’s the all-time award-winning answer from my friend The Banker:  "Nope, they're definitely not peni. Merriam Webster says that the plural is pe·nes or pe·nis·es.  Personally I'd look at it another way:  We know that the plural of is happens to be are.  Therefore, it should be pen·are.  So, of course, there should be a certain pirate voice that you put on when you said it, so it's actually more like pen·AAARRRRGGGHHH!"  Hee! [Miss K from 2012: I am still laughing about that one, so thank you, Banker!]

2.        My Apartment – It belongs to an architectural style I believe is called English Eccentric – the  ceilings are about 12 feet high, there's one very long hall with right angles and steps scattered along it for no particularly good reason, walls bulge outward in a rather alarming fashion and all the rooms have windows facing both outside and inside (to the hallway).  Why?  I don’t know.  There are three quite large bedrooms, one very large kitchen/dining room, one large living room and one medium-sized bathroom with electric-green ivy on the tiles.  My room is purple, and is furnished with a mixture of old stuff that came with it, and new stuff I had to buy at Ikea.  It's an odd mixture of stuffy antiques and Swedish modern, so if you picture Mary Poppins and the mayor of Stockholm living in the same room, you'll be getting a good idea of the decor.