Now I knew from my studies that this was an ancient word meaning a welcoming present but I

Now, I knew from my studies that this was an ancient word meaning a welcoming present, but I thought it had died out years ago.”I remember clasping her warmly and saying, ‘Good God, woman, do you realise you’re uttering words which better men than me thought were extinct!’ She thought me odd.”There’s something rather touching in that tale, and, I suppose, something equally touching in the fact that I can still remember it all these years later.Another thing I remember from Mr Sylvester’s lessons is that when Shakespeare used the word “kibe” he was referring to chilblains. I think that I keenly remember this word because as a child I used to suffer a lot from chilblains.In cold weather the ends of my toes would sometimes swell and go bright red, and become intensely sensitive and itchy. The instinct was to scratch them, but this was quite the wrong thing to do, because if you broke the skin they got much worse. If you touched them even delicately the pain/pleasure was intense, and although I haven’t had chilblains for many years I can still remember the feelings involved.

(My mother once encountered a Scottish doctor who told her firmly that the best cure for chilblains was to apply the vinegar from a jar of pickled onions to the toes, as hot as I could bear. I can’t remember if it worked, but I can vouch for the fact that it makes your socks smell like a fish and chip shop.)Perhaps people don’t get chilblains any more I certainly haven’t heard them mentioned for years. Mark you, people don’t talk about their feet much, so it may be that I am friendly with chilblain sufferers, who just don’t want to talk about it, but I have a feeling that chilblains have gone out of fashion as much as the word “kibe” has, and that if Mr Sylvester were teaching today, he would not only have to tell the class what “kibes” were but also explain what chilblains were.Another illness that Shakespeare was very fond of was the “ague”, which I assumed for years and years was some sort of fever that no longer existed, as modern doctors never mention it. Mr Bush scotched that during Mr Blair’s Washington trip last month. Mr Sharon regards such a conference as premature, but says that Israel will look benevolently upon a meeting to discuss international assistance to Palestinian rule in Gaza.This would not be the big prize Mr Blair appears to have sought in return for backing the US in Iraq, but it may be what he has to settle for.

I was duly amazed to find out the other day that it was another word for “malaria”, which was quite common in the swampier parts of Britain in his day, as indeed it was in Rome and St Petersburg and other places which have been sited by wise city fathers on mosquito-ridden marshes. Suppose some aliens had been watching our planet for its entire history, what would they have seen? Over nearly 4.5 billion years, Earth’s appearance would have altered very gradually. For about 40 years, we’ve been familiar with the view of Earth from Space. Not for the first time, Mr Blair risks giving the impression that he prefers the grand appearance to the more modest reality.

He needs to remember that the most successful Middle East mediation was conducted in utter secrecy by Norway. The flame of hope may burn more brightly in the Middle East than for several years, but it is still delicate. It must not be smothered by an excess of self-aggrandising enthusiasm.. The now vexed question of a Middle East conference, to be held in London in February, is a case in point.