Tenterhooks

Yes, these really are actual tenterhooks. Those innocent-looking Ls are to blame for much of the world’s misery, or at least the tiny amount of it that occurs inside my head.

Apparently tenterhooks were used to dry wool after all the grit, grease and general sheepishness had been rinsed out of it. As any washerwoman kno, wool has a tendency to shrink as it dries, hence the need to hang it up stretched like a prisoner on the rack so that it keeps its shape meanwhile. It’s a wonderful image that brings the modern usage of the phrase ‘on tenterhooks’ vividly to life. When you are on tenterhooks, you are not only in suspense, immobile, tense, taut (and probably being a bit of a drip about it)… you are also in a state of unreadiness, of waiting to be finished, and of being currently no use to anybody.

From the above whinge, you can probably deduce that I am still waiting for my publisher to come back with a verdict on my new book, the sequel to The Cat Kin. There have been encouraging murmurs, but since I’m not on commission anything is possible. This time next week I could have a book with no home, and not even the first-time author’s consolation of being able to try somewhere else. For an unwanted sequel there is nowhere else.

So it’s back on the tenterhooks. Eh-up. Moaning aside, it’s fascinating to research the origins of popular phrases. You appreciate how perfect some of them are, and how smug must have been the author who originally described a feeling as being ‘on tenterhooks’. I do hope that particular writer’s wait ended happily.