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Tuesday 13 February 2018

Thing To Do Today: transmogrify.

'Oh, to be a cat!' my daughter exclaimed, struggling to recover fully from 'flu and regarding with envy her own splendid feline. Jasper has temporarily given up his habit of stalking small furry things in the fields to lie on top of the wood burner, deigning to descend more or less only for meals.

It occurs to me that if my daughter were really to become a cat she'd have to transmogrify (not that I'd dare term her magnificent midnight-black Jasper a moggy:

File:Black cat on Fluffy.jpg
photo by Scott (this isn't really Jasper)

...but the thought amused me).

To transmogrify means to change shape, particularly into a grotesque or bizarre one. So now I'm wondering what I'd like to be myself.

Grotesque or bizarre...

...perhaps a rather small golden dragon, exquisitely enchanting hatchling, in a country entirely bereft of murderous saints.

File:Gent Belfort.JPG
Ghent belfy. Photo by Wernervc

Well, at least I'd be warm!

Thing To Do Today: transmogrify. This word first appeared in the 1600s, but from where it came is a mysterious as the process itself. It might be a mixture of transmigrate and modify; but I suspect magicians, myself.


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