A misspeak of the tongue.

I was half-listening to the news on the television last night but not really paying attention because I was reading a book recommended to me by a friend who had been given it for Christmas by her stalker.

My ears pricked - well, not up but perhaps sideways, they twitched a little - when I heard the newsreader talking about the Tarly Barn in Afghanistan. At first, dear reader, I thought she might have been talking about some chic-but-rustic new eaterie in the green (for excellent salads) zone of central Kabul, but tearing my eyes away from the compelling text I soon realised that the duncette was referring to the extremist former rulers of the beleaguered land.

Seriously now. It wasn't the BBC, so the poor love had no chance of ringing up the pronunciation department to get a judge's ruling, but even Sky News has an advisor on hand to help the presenters out with any word in the script longer than two syllables. For goodness' sake, we've been blowing seven shades of shit out of the Tallyban for almost ten years now. You'd think she would have cottoned on, it's really a matter of professionalism. Admittedly she was probably in primary school when the planes hit.

I returned to my book. A number of hours later I sat down and started composing a blog post on the issue, and at that point I realised that not only was I tiptoeing stealthily towards an ominous middle age, but also that the blog post is the new stiffly worded letter. This was one of those evenings where nobody won.