There are drawbacks to being taught at home rather than going to school like everyone else. Still being a virgin at 17 is one of them. Having to admit your 12-year-old brother is, to all intents and purposes, your best friend is another.
Others, however, have taken time to reveal themselves. These I call the Paradigm Paradigms, in honour of not learning how to pronounce “paradigm” until I was 21. There were a great many words I didn’t learn how to pronounce until I was 21. Most women, on their wedding night, get inducted into the ways of fleshly pleasure. My husband popped a bottle of Champagne and opened a notebook.
“Now you know absolutely that I love you, there’s a couple of things I feel I can bring up without you feeling rejected or criticised,” he began.
“Go on,” I said, eating more pizza.
“Pertenickety. Mosstache. Paradijum. None of these words exists.” I drew myself up to my full height while still lying down. “Excuse me,” I said sternly. “I can assure you that everyone from Jane Austen to Norman Mailer agrees that they do exist.”
“Yes. But you’re pronouncing them incorrectly.” Oh, the argument lasted all night. I rang the news desk at The Times in the end and they confirmed that yes, it may look like eppitome, but that’s not how you pronounce it.
My parents didn’t believe in television, you see, and so everything I knew came from 19th-century literature. My parents and siblings were similarly taught, so we could not correct each other’s pronunciation.
So when I finally started going out and socialising with the world, it was a nightmare. My only template for meeting new people was either a) throwing a snowball to catch their attention, like Jo in Little Women, b) waiting for a second cousin to come back from the war and propose. Faced with a blaring party full of people talking about Take That and sparkly tops, I was left with no option but to get completely blotto. Or innanibriated.
