I need to clear something up here.
I didn’t call this blog Fig Jam and Lime Cordial because I’m an arrogant git who has dibs on herself. I didn’t even know what the (Australian?) colloquialism “fig jam” meant until a couple of weeks after I’d started the blog. We really were making fig jam and lime cordial the weekend the blog was born, hence the name.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had a lot of explaining to do. The first phone call was from Kevin.
“Hey, did you call your blog Fig Jam and Lime Cordial
because of what ‘fig jam’ means?”
“Kev, I have no idea what you’re talking about..”
(panic was starting to set in at that point)
“You know, F*** I’m Good, Just Ask Me!”
(sotto voce, since he works in an open plan office)
My immediate thought was that it could have been so much worse. Especially since I’d paid for the domain name a few hours before he rang.
I cornered Big Boy and accused him of letting me make a goose of myself.
“Hey, why didn’t you tell me what ‘fig jam’ was slang for?”
“Mum, I have no idea what you’re talking about..”
When I explained, his response was accompanied by a condescending eye roll…
“Ok, who told you that? Uncle Kevin. Right. And how old is he?
Don’t worry about it, nobody uses that expression any more.”
Oh, if only he’d been right. Unfortunately it seems pretty current with anyone of my generation, and they’ve been ribbing me about it ever since. But I promise, hand on heart, that I honestly had no idea what it meant (I can be remarkably naïve at times….)
There. I feel much better now. Thank you for letting me get that off my chest. And here is a photo of the figs, just to prove I’m telling the truth.
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
aaah Celia!! You don’t have to apologise – the other meaning gives you street cred with us oldies!
Thanks for the chuckle on a Monday morning!
Yep, street cred, that’s just what I need, thanks Kev. :)
that is really funny. I had no idea about the double meaning either…clearly just as uncool! :)
Wow I’d never even noticed that until now!
Every time I walk into well-stocked cellar door and see all these jars of Figjam on the shelves I think … gosh Australian condiment makers have tickets on themselves.
:-)
CM
Sorry – I had assumed that’s what you meant.
I was just puzzling over the lime cordial part of the acronym.
Pete V
Great. So now all my mates who haven’t already done so can have a crack at me… :)
I was joking with Big Boy about it today, and stuck my left thumb and index finger against my forehead to make the “L for loser” sign. He said, “Wrong hand, mum…”
Sigh. :)
Celia
All depends on your perspective really.
Anyway, I usually use my arms for the Loser sign – it gives a better sense of the magnitude of one’s stuff-up
Pete V
LOL…thanks for that, love.
Hey, I’m out of practice. I haven’t used the Loser sign much since Carol and I used to whip Kevin and Pete at 500…
:-)
Celia
there are a hundred fruit you could’ve been making jam out of that day. But it happened to be figs. right.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
you’re very naughty muriel.
I’m just trying to think of the lewd intentions of “lime cordial”, one day you’ll come clean on the true definition.
PC
Why oh why are you even awake, Patrick? :)
That’s really funny, I just thought it was a jam you made, bless you! I am old though, I was just taught what wilfing was, I do a lot of that as you might guess. :)
It WAS just a jam I made!! That’s what I keep trying to tell people.. :)
You can’t be old, Jo, you have very young hands! And I didn’t know what wilfing was either – thank goodness for Google.. (I do a lot of it too!) :)
Celia
Ha ha that is funny. I never even guessed the slang … how foodie of me! When you are famous on the telly I wonder if Letterman will ask you about the name of your blog??
Oh, now there’s a happy pipe dream! Hahaha…
I want to know by what leap of logic you believe an undated, out of context picture of a tray of figs that could easily have been taken in a fruit store in any way ‘proves’ your bona fides.
Also, classic media management techniques would dictate that a problem that’s gone unnoticed should not be mentioned. It is best to have a truthful statement ready for when you’re asked about it.
By going public with an unmentioned issue, I think you’ve created your own media storm. Can you prove to me that the media storm wasn’t your actual original intention? Can you prove that the media storm wasn’t part of your Grand Plan to create publicity: “I’ll name the blog something controversial, wait a while till I get a critical mass of readers THEN go public”. I seems very plausible to me…..
Discuss:
Nah. :)
It was just bugging me, and I wanted to get it off my chest.
Now stop being deliberately provocative, you naughty man. :)
Celia xx
Purely because mum isn’t up for a debate…
The connotations of figjam are unlikely to create positive publicity. This post has done one of two things to the image of this blog. It has transformed it to that of an arrogant middle-aged woman trying to maintain an air of respectability and win favour by playing naive and coy, or, and more probable, that of a middle-age woman who has become aware of her problematic naming and sought to correct any misconceptions via admission of lack of understanding of some colloquial nuances, one of which has led to an interesting error. The first is, of course, a possibility and is arguably able to be mistaken for the second as the second may be mistaken for the first.
Consider the consequences of the first. Any media storm created would have to be worked with some degree of skill to avoid complete disaster. At best, publicity would inevitably take a negative slant as readers realise that they’ve been following the blog of an ‘arrogant git who has dibs on herself’ and any bouncing back would be hard to achieve as every new post, innocent or not, would be perceived by a now cynical audience. The blog has worked on ‘living well in the urban village’ and has moulded its entire structure around concepts of food and a happy life. Observe the newest post ‘whimsy’ and the musings. Controversy would not be a desirable direction for the blog to move in. To change the aspirations and atmosphere of the blog now seems illogical. Why not set up another blog? The likelihood of an intentional media storm of this manner would produce greater consequences than rewards. The target audience would disapprove of a change of this nature, ergo the target audience must be altered to comply with a change such as this, ergo this change could not be in an attempt to gain a greater following of the same audience but rather a new one, which would mean the blog would need to undergo massive content changes to fit in with this, which is, for the most part, illogical.
However, the second option takes on a far more reasonable tenor. An increase in the incidences of people raising the point concerning the name of the blog would of course provoke a defensive reaction. The question has already been asked – “Hey, did you call your blog Fig Jam and Lime Cordial
because of what ‘fig jam’ means?” – and this was the response before it became a debilitating question that went unanswered. By approaching an issue before it has arisen it is possible to logically assume that it was an attempt to avoid this issue altogether as a publicity stunt of this nature would be neither in the blog’s best interests nor in the realm of sensible thought.
Discuss
Oh for goodness sake..
And can you please stop referring to me as a “middle aged woman”? :-)