Thing Not To Do Today: be stony.

Are you stony?

Does this:


Photo by Nicolas Suzor.

cause your heart to remain unmelted?

Really? Good grief. Then how about this?



All right, then this:



will surely get you.

Yep. I thought so.

In any case, speaking as someone who can't help but feel sorry even for the tenth person in the day who phones me to suggest I might benefit from doing a short survey and could I go and find my gas bills, I find nearly all my attempts at being stony-hearted end up as utter failures.

Ah well.

Being the other sort of stony, as in stony-broke (in America it's generally stone-broke) is more endearing, but no more fun. I've just about managed to avoid this lately, but I do remember collecting  lemonade bottles from the hedgerows on occasion, and taking them back to the shop for the 2d refund.

Ah, those were the days...

...and jolly glad to be shot of them I am, I can tell you.

Thing Not To Do Today: be stony. The word stone comes to us very little changed from the Greek stion, which means pebble.

No one seems sure of the origin of the expression for having no money, but I suppose it's very like being hard-up.

NB A Stoney, with an e, may be both kind and rich: he or she is one of the Native Canadian people of Alberta.