Words: lava, n.

Christopher Hawtree
Thursday 11 February 1999 00:02 GMT
Comments

HAGGERTY ENTERPRISES Inc's complaint about my innocent quoting of Lorrie Moore's brilliant reference to somebody's blood moving "around his face and neck like a lava lamp" brings to mind Peter Cook and Virginia Woolf - an odd couple, who would be sure-fire clients for Relate.

The word lava prompted Woolf to write in The Waves of "the speed, the hot molten effect, the laval flow of sentence into sentence that I need."

And lava-lava is a Samoan skirt, first noticed by Robert Louis Stevenson: with it, nothing is worn above the waist. Peter Cook, affecting the voice of a stripper's manager, once rang the BBC to ask why it would not book his artistes but had in fact just broadcast the Ipi Tombi dancers in front of the Queen Mother.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in