You’ll have to excuse this scribbler his fascination with words. I just can’t help it when one comes along and gets used every minute of every day, regardless of whether its usage is correct or apt.
The official word of the present cold spell afflicting Ireland and the U.K. is ‘treacherous’. The roads are treacherous. The pavements are treacherous. The black ice is treacherous. News readers and nanny’s alike use the word at every and any given opportunity, but each time the sad pedant that I am hears it, I want to wander off with that person into a gentle line of whimsical enquiry.
Do they really feel that the roads are treacherous? Do they believe the little lumps of tarmac are conspiring to trick them? Will the pavements chuckle with evil mirth as the old fella slips on the ice?
At a push, I can accept that we rely on the safety of surfaces upon which we walk and drive, so that if they should suddenly become dangerous they are in no small way letting us down. Even though I see ‘treachery’ as something rather grander, involving a castle, a king, a dagger and a close confidante sneaking into a royal bedchamber in the cold dark night, I can see how a pavement or a road might be construed as treacherous, if rather than supporting you safely it suddenly threatens your life.
But give a break to the black ice, eh? Black ice is designed to be dangerous and invisible. As it causes your car to skid it is simply fulfilling its own destiny. If black ice were to be truly treacherous it would probably have to melt upon impact with rubber, thus letting the black ice side down altogether.
If it’s treacherous you want, take a look at the way Nick Clegg and his Lib Dems have sold out their voters in England,.or the way the Irish people have been financially murderated to save the euro.
The black ice is innocent. It may be lethal , but it’s meant to be.
