I confess that I’m not an avid reader of the Court Circular section of the papers, so I’m glad that my attention was drawn to the following. The Prince of Wales attended a “Sustainable Markets Initiative Fashion Taskforce Digital ID Commitment Presentation”. Delving further into this murky event, I discover that “the members of the task force have committed to begin to digitally identify the products within their brands and to adopt a circular data protocol with immediate effect”. Not being at fashion’s cutting edge, this left me further bewildered. I think it means that clobber manufacturers are striving to make their products more environmentally friendly, but I admit that I’m stumped by a circular data protocol.
Altogether more explicable is that “vax” has been enshrined as word of the year by the Oxford English Dictionary. The word was used 72 times more in September than in the previous year. New to me, though, were vaxxie, vax-a-thon and vaxanista, someone, according to the Urban Dictionary, who gets the vaccine and flaunts it with high-end shopping, trips and parties. What we used to call a swank pants in my day. We’ll leave the pressing issue of whether antivaxxers is spelt with one X or two. Too vexatious, or should that be vexxatious?
I was pleased to get a letter from reader Andrew Bunbury, who wrote: “We recently visited the British Museum’s Becket exhibition and found it to be very well presented. However, I was shocked to read one of the historical notes that referred to ‘three decapitated heads’. One would expect the country’s senior museum to demonstrate a sounder use of our national language. The offence is so severe that I feel heads must roll – but please ensure that you sever them this time!” A very good point well made.
• Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
