Hello everyone

I am going to make this the last post about my health for a while – as things are improving and although the myositis is still making my muscles weak, I’m moving in the right direction and working on my strength and fitness with the physios. I’m running up to the first monitoring appointment post-chemo, hoping that things are still good and the dreaded cancer is ‘under control’ as it was two months back.

But the great news is that I’m going to be 70 on 23rd May! This was a milestone I completely took for granted until last June when things started to go pear-shaped (why do we equate pear-shapes with bad news?). I did toy with the idea of a party, but I’m so used to not being stressed these days that the thought of organising one (who else would do it to my specification?!) was enough to put me off.

Instead, I will be celebrating entering my 8th decade over a number of months, seeing friends and family for coffee, dinner, lunch, spa days, conference dinners, gigs – whatever I can arrange. If you want in on something along those lines, get in touch! And for the event itself, I will be with my mum (93 – I can only dream of that age!), my partner, my lovely children and glorious grandchildren, for a BBQ, weather-permitting, followed by a little holiday in Northumbria.

I am really looking forward to the next few months and we have a number of trips following the one to the NE, including our lovely part of Wales, a solar eclipse in the north of Spain and a return to my academic roots in stylistics at the PALA conference in Uppsala. So much to look forward to!

I really don’t want presents – PLEASE – but if you have any inclination to mark this birthday, I have set up a justgiving page for cancer research. Not many years ago, I would definitely not have survived ovarian cancer, but thanks to the work of cancer research uk, the chemotherapy drug that I was able to tolerate was developed. Thank goodness, as the generic chemo drug nearly killed me – twice! No pressure at all – we all have a lot of calls on our money – and no donation is too small if you want to give a little. I haven’t set a target – let’s just see what comes in as every bit will help for those facing cancer in the future. Here’s the link:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/lesley-jeffries-1?utm_source=CL&utm_medium=DT

Here’s to a wonderful future and please look after yourselves – life is beautiful and quite short!

Lesley

P.S. Linguistics will be the topic of the next post – I promise.

Hi everyone

Health update below, but in the meantime, what about that Melania statement re. Epstein?! I was looking for some up-to-date examples of textual phenomena for a chapter I am revising for a second edition (see – I must be better – I’m working!) and I looked at the transcript of the first lady’s statement. Well, it’s got everything – three-part lists; interesting naming habits (the longest noun phrase is 28 words long, in a 30 word sentence!) and at least one example of equivalence (casual correspondence / My polite reply to her email / a trivial note) which seems to be over-cooking her denials.

But what stands out above all is the 24 (at least, depending on how you count them) examples of negating in a 547 word statement. It’s a lot of negation. Beautiful negation – her own negation. Here are a few (out of context):

• I do not object to their ignorance
• I reject their mean-spirited attempts to defame my reputation. 
• I have never been friends with Epstein. 
• I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, Maxwell. 
• I am not Epstein’s victim. 
• Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. 

And there are more, including morphological examples (baseless, unfounded) and semantic ones (stop, end). What Shakespeare understood and linguists have been explaining more recently is that the simple use of a negation brings into play cognitively not just the denial, but also the positive version of that denial. This affects the hearer/reader to the extent that they are grappling with the text (this didn’t happen) at the same time as having to visualise the opposite of that text (imagine it happening). This is not the same for non-negated texts. If you saw a sentence saying ‘Epstein introduced me to Donald Trump’, you would take it at face value and not concurrently imagine Epstein not introducing them. There is, therefore, a higher cognitive load with texts that negate things and when there is a whole slew (that’s a lovely word isn’t it?) of similar negations as there are here, the reader/hearer is more likely to wonder which version (positive or negative) of events actually took place.

I’ll be writing more about this for the chapter I’m revising, but if you want to read Melania’s statement itself, you can find it here:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/04/first-lady-melania-trump-statement/

So – just to update you – I’m feeling pretty good on the whole and am having a lot of fun with grandchildren and seeing lots of friends as well as going to the allotment when the weather is fine. However, the new condition (dermato-myositis) which seems to have been triggered by the cancer or its treatment (no one knows) has left my proximal muscles (those close to the body) very weak, so that although I can more or less function normally, I have trouble with some very basic things (like turning over in bed!). I will be undergoing immunoglobulin infusion treatment soon, which I hope will get things back to normal quicker than the current cocktail of steroids and drugs. It’s more days (9 in total – 3 x 3 over 12 weeks) sitting with a drip in my hand, which is a bit of a pain, but if it works… Then I also have physio appointment to start rebuilding my muscles.

All in all, nearly a year on from the start of all this – I’m optimistic and more than ever grateful for the NHS and all its workers.

Hi everyone

A rather delayed update – I have finally finished chemo and together with surgery it seems to have (mostly) worked, so fingers crossed the cancer won’t return any time soon. Meantime, I’ve picked up a new autoimmune condition (Correlation or causation? No one is saying!) but it has resulted in extreme muscle weakness in my shoulders, neck and arms (and groin), leaving me pretty helpless for a while. Not great, but the doctors from rheumatology have been amazing, travelling from another hospital to see me at the cancer wing of St James’s, and I am now looking at treatment for that condition that should keep it under control and even possibly in remission. All in all I’ve had such incredible service from our wonderful medical teams and I couldn’t be more grateful to them.

So – I’m going to stop blogging about my health for a bit now – and return to other things – mainly linguistics here, though I did want to thank everyone who has supported me, through little messages (how you doing?), cups of coffee (and cake!), flowers, your personal challenges (thanks – it really helped) and other ways in which people have kept the hope alive. You’re all wonderful.

Keep those challenges going (if you want) and I will return to the ones I’ve not managed to do recently (the trumpet has been a particular issue with the new condition!) I am hoping to do lots of physio and fitness training (slowly!) in the next few months and return to running and dancing in due course.

Hi everyone

No, I haven’t had a baby – I had an operation (remember?!) But I do have a new grandson, Aidan, who is bringing joy to the family and is a bonny lad already. This is motivation enough to keep on with the recovery (as are the other three grandchildren) and I am now over 6 weeks post-surgery, with only one more round of chemo to go. All the indicators are looking good and the incredibly dramatic wound on my abdomen is now almost healed into a jaunty scar, though I still have no plans for bikinis this summer (or any summer, come to that!).

I’m on a steroid high today – crash comes tomorrow for a day or two, but I’m riding high right now. Today I have reviewed a journal article, been to the allotment for a bit of light pottering (not allowed heavy exercise for another six weeks) sent some emails and watched TV. My challenges are beginning to change as I get less tired, so I try to pick up the trumpet a few times a week as well as walking more and trying to sort out a dressing up box for the kids which is not two flights up (at Christmas they kept putting on clothes that were too long and nearly breaking their necks coming down to show us their latest outfits!) So, plenty to do – and more writing is going to be on the menu now I have the energy to sit at my desk a bit more. More on that soon. There is linguistics in the offing!

In the last couple of weeks we managed to get down to Essex to meet our grandson and last week spent time with friends in East Yorkshire who let us use their holiday let when it’s free. They look after us so well, it is very moving. I also managed to drop into the regular jazz jam session at our local arts centre, HEART, which I have been running since it opened 15 years ago! I am so grateful to friends who have kept it going in my absence and I can’t wait to get back to being able to play again. I’m persevering with Duolingo for now too (115 days) but I plan to try better ways to actually learn Italian as it’s driving me a bit mad!

I continue to hear from you about your various challenges – often with apologies – no need! This is for you, not me, though I do love it that you’re trying to do things you want to do. This whole experience has both encouraged me to do things I have been putting off and crave going back to the good things I used to like doing anyway. The big change is dropping the things I hate doing (unless they’re vital for me or someone I love). It’s liberating!

Hi and a very belated happy season’s greetings to you all – and a wonderful new year to all of us.

I intended to post before Christmas, but the upshot of the surgery was that it was a much bigger deal than I had realised (though it went fairly well) and I’ve been coping with the effects ever since. Seem to have hit a turning point now, so fingers crossed I’ll be fit for chemo next week and two more lots after that. Then we can get on with other things.

When my lovely grandson (Francesco, 3) was about two years old, and he couldn’t quite do something himself (so needed help from an adult), once that thing was achieved, he’d declare loudly “I did it!” I keep thinking the same thing about the surgery, which of course I didn’t do – but it weirdly feels like something I helped to achieve, if only by wishing it to be over and done with. Those surgeons – they are like gods aren’t they? And in my case they were all Greek, so you can imagine Greek gods… And the support and nursing staff (who without exception in my experience during my hospital stay were immigrants from other lands) are the most amazing human beings for whom nothing is too much trouble. Thank you to all of them from the bottom of my heart.

I continue to be enchanted, entertained and amused by the challenges you set yourselves and it’s not too late if you want to join in. Recently, I have had a friend trying to notch up 50 Munros (look it up – Scottish mountains) in his 50th year and another working hard on her watercolour painting, as well as doing magic painting (water only needed!) with her learning disabled sister. Lovely people, these are the things that matter – do more of them! I’ve also been moved and comforted by all the communication with people I haven’t had time to be in touch with so much in recent years – let’s keep talking.

As for my challenges, they’ve had a bit of a downturn in the last couple of weeks, but I’ll be getting back to them now I’m on the mend. My six (so far) poems by heart have been invaluable during the moments when I was unable to move in bed or read – I can run them fast (like music) or slow (to savour the writing) and it helps me to either drop off to sleep or get off the merry-go-round of negative thoughts. I only missed two days of Duolingo (Italian) during the recent procedures, so that flipping owl can do one – I think that’s pretty good on the whole. My (half-Italian) granddaughter thought it was very funny that I can say ‘My American neighbour is nice and my son is tall’ – classic language learning nonsense, but I guess it’s a start.

Well, that’s enough news for now – I’ll try to post more regularly and get back to some linguistics too before long!

Lesleyx

Hi everyone

In a week I will be going through some surgery, followed by recovery (I hope!) and more chemo. It’s all looking fairly good on the getting rid of cancer front and I’m hoping to hear that most of it has gone after the surgery. I’ll keep you posted on that!

Meantime, I’ve got 6 poems memorised to keep my mind from spiralling while I can’t do much else, and I’ll try to get another one under my belt before then. I’ll also try to keep the old Duolingo (Italian) going for the duration, though I guess there might be at least one day when I’m too out of it on morphine to engage with that annoying little owl! I have also added a new challenge to my list, which is to get back to doing the occasional park run once I am fully recovered from the treatment. I’ve managed to start running again in the last ten days and it feels great! Not very far and certainly not fast, but moving is definitely better than sitting around all the time.

Thanks again to all of you who are letting me know what your challenges are – I really enjoy making you do stuff that you’ve been too busy/lazy to do before;) There’s ever more music, poetry, languages, exercise being done and I feel proud of those achievements by proxy. Keep it up!

I managed to knock up a sheep costume for my granddaughter’s nativity this week and did some work on the allotment as well as playing a bit of trumpet (for this afternoon’s band practice). It’s been great feeling so normal after months of symptoms and limbo. Normal life – it’s such a joy!

More soon

Lesleyx

Hi everyone

More news on treatment and challenges soon, but meantime I wanted to draw your attention to the important date this Wednesday (26th November) when it will be National Linguistics Day. This celebration of everything to do with human communication is the brainchild of Rebecca Mitchell and it is growing every year. If you are a linguist, please get on board and use this day (it’s always the same date) to promote your work to the broader community. Here’s a link to the website:

https://www.linguisticshq.co.uk/national-linguistics-day

This day is getting bigger every year and with luck it might become World Linguistics Day in due course, so watch this space!

More soon – big meeting tomorrow about my treatment, so I’ll know more then. Meantime, I’m halfway through learning poem number 6 and having started running again (slowly but it felt great!)…

Lesleyx

Just as I thought I was bossing the chemo and knew what to expect, two things happened this week! First, it became clear that I am facing surgery, which up to now I’d been imagining might not happen (though it had been mentioned as a possibility). They even have a date pencilled in, so that really brought it home. However, the good news is that surgery is likely to lead to a better outcome, so we’ll hold onto that! Then, yesterday I went for the third round of chemo thinking I’d be half way through by now only to find that the reaction I had to the drugs last time was more severe this time and they had to abandon it! So, I’m anticipating a pain-free weekend after all, but disappointed not to have progressed. I’m in limbo now waiting for news of new treatment plans and appointment schedules and so everything is on hold. On the up side, I do now have a wig that is a pretty good match for my hair. Don’t need it yet, but it’s there if I do.

I think I might start really planning out that cosy crime novel I’ve been thinking about in the meantime. And I’ve made a good start on Christmas shopping (online!) with all the sitting around I’ve had to do.

More soon

Lesleyx

Hi everyone

I’m just gearing up for chemo round three, so I thought I’d update this blog before I go underground for a few days! I’m delighted to say that you continue to impress me with your challenges – including, recently, someone who made it up Helvellyn in the Lake District and someone who is returning to studying Lithuanian after a break (and well might he do so as it’s the language of his wife!). There’s also my lovely friend Kate who is planning to learn to crotchet. My challenges are progressing slowly – I am starting to learn my sixth poem now and the other five sustain me almost every night at some point when I’m wakeful. I’m playing the piano fairly frequently and I’m on a long Duolingo streak as well as reading some short stories in Italian!

But what I wanted to say today was something about linguistics, which is one of the loves of my life. I happened to see a post by Michael Rosen the other day on FB which enraged me, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts about this with you. I know Rosen is beloved by many in the UK and beyond, for good reason – he has written many lovely children’s books (although I knew the bear hunt story about 60 years ago as a girl guide, so it’s never been clear to me why he gets the credit for that!) and I often agree with his social and political observations too, which he shares liberally on social media. However, his stance on learning about language (i.e. linguistics) in primary schools is, in my view, simplistic, mistaken and very damaging to the field that I and many others have dedicated their lives to. Here’s the post that I’m referring to (from November 5th):

Someone (Alison Wrench) asked me on an earlier post about how come primary schools had to do the grammar test and the grammar curriculum in England. This is my answer: ‘It came from a report (Bew Report 2011) on account of interference and diktat from Michael Gove. Tame linguists were hired, including Richard Hudson and Bas Aarts. An exam was devised which then forced on Year 6 pupils a ‘grammar’ curriculum, a lot of which is out of date and irrelevant. This is then used to define ‘good writing’ in terms of ‘expected levels’ and so you got a situation in which a false tail was wagging a huge dog: children’s writing, distorting it as it wagged it!’

This post was commented on by many followers of Rosen, most of whom were horrified that young children should have to learn about something called a ‘fronted adverbial’. No one seems to have any other targets in mind (e.g. learning what a noun or a verb might be), just the fronted adverbial. Here are the reasons I think Rosen is making a point in a, frankly, populist manner, about something that should be much more nuanced and considered:

1. We teach – and expect primary age pupils to understand – many complex concepts in maths, science and other subjects. They are at an age to cope with learning new ideas, so this is a perfect time to teach them some ideas about how humans communicate too, including some grammar (why not?), if not the fronted adverbial. There is no reason to link this to the question of writing, good or otherwise, or reading. Whilst knowledge about language might feed into pupils’ writing or reading in different ways, it is worth teaching for its own sake. To that extent, I agree that some of the way it has been employed in schools is harmful, but…
2. …the political/ideological impetus for the aspects of this curriculum that Rosen dislikes came from a government wedded to old-fashioned ideas of education, often drawn from their own Eton-type experience, or aspirations to such. It doesn’t come from linguists. Of that I am absolutely sure. It is particularly invidious to pick out and name two highly respected linguists whose work was used in ways that they may not have anticipated when asked to provide some help to a government apparently valuing the work they do and the field they work in. To call them ‘tame’ is unworthy of sensible calm debate about what is best for pupils to study.
3. There is, of course, a question to be asked about whether grammar is the only – or most important – aspect of language knowledge to teach at this age, or whether, perhaps, some other aspects of language knowledge (phonetics – how we speak; sociolinguistics – how we judge people by their accents; pragmatics – how we mean things without exactly saying them; discourse – how we put together our arguments into coherent or persuasive texts) might be introduced early in their education. A case in point – I have just edited this list into three parts as that is an ideal way to list things when you want to appear to have covered every aspect of the subject under consideration!

So, I understand that the curriculum as set was probably not aimed at the right target. In other words, it was used rather mechanically to ‘improve’ reading and writing instead of being used to discuss human communication more generally. There are three (yes, another three-part list, indicating completeness) points to make about what should/could happen instead of a divisive attack on linguistics as though it, rather than narrowly ideological government policy, were the problem:

1. Teachers need a much better understanding of/background in linguistics in order to teach knowledge about language effectively. There is a large cohort of linguistics/languages academics waiting to be asked to help and they are not ‘tame’ but truly engaged.
2. The national curriculum should include content about human communication as a vital part of children’s learning in its own right. Whilst new developments in citizenship, financial understanding etc. are maybe fine as additions to the curriculum, if we want pupils to really understand the modern world we live in, then communication through language is a massive part of what is going on (see Artificial Intelligence, internet content and influence – it’s mostly language-based, even where it’s also visual). Its importance is such that I’d argue that knowledge about communication should be on a par with core subjects like maths and science and should not just be a sub-part of something called ‘English’. Indeed, it would also be better to learn about language not just through English, but through all the languages pupils speak at home or might learn in due course to make them citizens of the world. I’d not be afraid to call it what it is – Linguistics. This won’t frighten the kids even if it frightens you!
3. Finally, I would ask that we consider the importance of linguistics in learning to read, in learning to write and most importantly for learning to appreciate literary and other verbal arts. I am not alone in thinking that despite the failures of the curriculum that Rosen so despises, this is not a reason to ignore the fact that, like learning to play an instrument, real appreciation of literature can be enhanced not just by the experience of reading it, important though that is, but also by learning to understand how it works in a more conscious way. This doesn’t have to be boring and it can start gently at the younger ages, but it would involve (yes!) a bit of basic grammar and I can’t see a problem with that.

That’s it – I just needed to get that off my chest! We who care about – and understand – how language works need to work together to keep this vital area of study alive at all levels, from primary to university. I was once on Michael Rosen’s radio programme with my co-editor, Dan McIntyre, to talk about our magazine, Babel (https://babelzine.co.uk/) and we’re passionate to spread the word about how important linguistics is in all areas of life. We’re also both researchers who work on literary language as well as other types of text. Our field is called ‘Stylistics’ and we see it as central to linguistics and very helpful in literary studies too. I don’t really think Rosen is as down on linguists as he comes over in the FB post I quoted above – I know he often talks to them on his show. I await my next invitation with great pleasure!

What’s really interesting (strange choice of word?) about the experiences I’m going through is what it does to your perceptions of the world. As my hair thins (not losing it completely so far), I feel a strong connection with the trees as their leaves turn gold and fall to the ground in what has so far been a really lovely autumn in the UK. In the spring I will welcome back my thick hair, and it will probably differ a little from before, just like the trees’ leaves (though I’m not expecting it to grow back green!).

I’m currently in the good phase of round two – ten more days of feeling relatively well and enjoying our granddaughter’s 6th birthday and relishing ordinary things like gardening and baking. I’ve completed a 25 day streak on Duolingo Italian now, but it really is slow going, so I’m also starting to read some short stories that I was given by my son’s lovely partner, Cristiana, a while ago. Turns out my passive knowledge is pretty good – it’s just actually speaking that’s hard! My grandson doesn’t like me trying out my few words so I get shut down pretty sharpish if I try.

People are still contacting me about challenges – including the ones that are not going so well. That’s great – at least you tried so no need to think about those ones any more;) I’m about to start learning poem number six. This has been the most helpful of the challenges so far as I use the poems every night at some point to make my brain go into calm mode and often back to sleep. I was talking to a friend about meditation the other day – I guess this is my form of that mechanism for stopping thought processes that are unhelpful.

So – I’ll be busy and happy for a week or so and then start gearing up for round three. It’ll be great to get to the halfway mark in mid-November and we have a little trip to East Yorkshire planned just after that. More news soon – keep up the good work on the challenges – or give them up and find other ones, I don’t mind!

Lesleyx