This subject line is left blank for a reason

So I was lying awake thinking about pedantry, as one does. My starting point, as often, was that whole less/fewer artefact; I am unashamedly unreconstructed, and will never understand why anybody would want to say "less books" when they would never ever think of saying "fewer salt". However, I am trying to restrain my kneejerk flinch, except where I think it might be shared or at least appreciated by my company.

Which I have been mostly managing to do for a number of years now with another classic, the split infinitive, so I have my own fine example to turn to; and I was considering that in the darkness, wondering again and as ever why anyone would choose the limping break of "to boldly go" against the limpid liquid beauty of... of...

Oh brain, I whimpered in the darkness, why do you do this to me? Why?

I knew the example I wanted so well, the rhythm and structure of it was engraved in me, bone-deep: it went,

Blankly to blank, blankly to blank blank blank.

No, wait, I could do better: it went,

[adverb] to [verb], [adverb] to [verb] [pronoun] [noun].

...And that was it. I could not for the life of me remember a single actual word to fit into that pattern. Nor the author, nor the source. It might have been anything, from Shakespeare to a First World War poet; it was just a classic line that came at the end of something and was inherent to my internal upholstery, so deeply sunk that I seemed to have lost everything but the shape of it.

So I was going to come to you, O internets, with a confession and a plea - "What goes tumty-to-tum, tumty-to-tum-tum-tum?" - only then I got out of bed and had a shower, and then I knew.

Of course it's Shakespeare, what else? It's the last line of the prologue to Henry V:

Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play.

...And that is why I won't split an infinitive. Imagine it as "To gently hear, to kindly judge" - then sponge down your brain with vinegar and creep away, ashamed. It's not about Latin or logic or history or disputatious pedants; it's about art and metre and treading lightly, knowing where to put your feet.

A lame excuse

If I had remembered that there are reasons why we love our mailman - if I had thought to check outside the back door and under the umbrella for parcels delivered while I was out, because of course he would think both of security and of protection from the rain - then this might not be the last loaf I may ever slash with a serrated blade. It might have been the first loaf I would ever slash with a baker's lame. Hey-ho.

(This is my lame: black walnut with brass knobs on knurled brass thumbnuts. I don't know why they don't picture it with a razor blade in situ, as they do supply the blades withal, but there you go. Real razor blades, too, like what my dad used to use to shave his face withal. I haven't seen the like for lo this many a year. And I have fitted one without catastrophe, so I'm happy. If only I had something to slash...)