Sir, - What on earth do people have against the word "now"?
A solidly serviceable word, "now" also has a special beauty all its own. Just say it carefully aloud a few times: Lips slightly apart, tongue forming a gentle seal behind the upper gums, start with a subtle resonance in your nasal cavity, quickly transfer the swelling sound to the gaping mouth which you immediately draw round into a voluptuously pouting embouchure. Say it over and over again, standing in front of a mirror, or, better still, a very good friend. NOW. Can't you see that at the end of Ulysses Joyce would have been better served by this expressive word than by that horribly hissing "yes"?
Yet the population generally is forsaking this wonderful word. Some cast it aside in favour of "presently", which, as I use it, my wife clearly understands as not "now" but "not now", typically in regard to the scheduling of some chore that I'll have to face up to eventually. Others discard "now" for the ridiculous "at this point in time" - this, for some forgotten reason, I regard as yet another legacy of the Northern troubles. Even more ridiculously, we increasingly hear "from here on in". Now really!
Now look! At this point in time can we not all join in a solemn covenant for the new millennium, resolving, not presently, but from here on in, to restore to "now" its rightful position as the start of the future and end of the past? - Yours, etc.,
Frank Farrell, Lakelands Close, Stillorgan, Co Dublin.