The bedding-in process: a rant.

 My husband and I been married for forty-two years. It's been amusing enough. In fact, I'd recommend it.

The trials of marriage have been often rehearsed, but in TheTelegraph Online on the 9th July there was presented a whole new way of looking at the institution.

The first year of a marriage 

it said

is famously hard

(is it? I'll tell you something, the last year is jolly dodgy, as well)

 and, on top of the already complicated bedding-in process the universe has served you up...a panoply of hurdles.

My immediate reaction was to snort tea down my nose at the phrase bedding-in process.

And then I began trying to imagine being served up a panoply of hurdles, and my ears started to smoke.

Word To Use Today: panoply. A panoply is a complete or magnificent arrangement of something, or it can be the full armour of a warrior. The word comes from the Greek panoplia, full armour, from pan- all, and hopla, armour. Hopla is the plural of hoplon, which means tool.

This means, yes, that a Greek warrior in full armour was all tooled up.