See You Later.....Or Perhaps Never

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

As I'm approaching the fifty sixth year of my existence my status as grumpy old man has never been stronger. Though if truth be told I've hovered between that and wild optimism ll my life. However one thing I have noticed is that as I've become older supposedly little@ things start to have a demonic status all their own.

One of my pet peeves of recent years has been the phrase "See You Later". When I was young it was perfectly simple. It meant that you were going to see the recipient of that conversation that very day. What could be easier?

However a few years ago that started to change. I was at work and a woman was about to leave. "See you later" she said walking out of the door .

I didn't understand. I wasn't going to be seeing her for the rest of the week let alone that day. What was she on about?

Other people then started to say the same thing to me and I realised that it was a phrase that had taken a life of it's own which went literally went beyond the original meaning of the word....joining such descriptive transformations as literally itself or when the youth of today describe something as being "bad" when it was in fact good.

So I let it fester in my old man heart. That is until Saturday also at work when a guy said @See you later@ as he was also leaving. Now what made it different was that we were in Bridgend to the west of Britain and he was taking a four hour (and probably then some) to Norwich to the East.

It meant that not only was I not going to see this man for the rest of the day. I was unlikely ever to see him again. I knew from our conversation that he was not returning to South Wales and whilst I have no particular dislike for Norwich I've no wish to visit there either. And yet his last words to me suggested we were going to the pub that evening (of course not being a drinker he'd be disappointed when I become that boring guy)

Language evolves. But it also should make a degree of sense. Or else what happens is that it becomes worthless.

Until the next time.