May I have a word about… bidding farewell to the furlough

There can be no doubt about the word of the coronavirus pandemic, one that has been embraced with indecent enthusiasm by all and sundry in the media. And that word is furlough. You simply can’t move for it: “Roaming free, the horses on unexpected furlough”; “Monzo boss waives salary for a year and offers to furlough up to 295 employees”; “Sunderland have placed non-playing staff on furlough leave”. (I do feel that the author of the latter was playing it safe with that tautology.)

Even on Radio 4’s Money Box, a somewhat dusty programme designed to make you feel guilty about your profligate personal financial ways, it was being bandied about with gay abandon, on one occasion even being used as a verb. Quite why it has been dredged up from the back of the lexical wardrobe is beyond me, but I’ve heard and seen it quite enough now for it to be returned whence it came, if it’s all the same to you.

And the same goes for the following horror, courtesy of a presenter on Channel 4 News: “The epicentre of the epicentre.” How vile is that?

I’m sure that Julian Fellowes is a master of the televisual arts, what with Downton Abbey and now Belgravia under his belt. But last week’s episode of the latter left with me doubts when one character said to another: “Where are you headed?” Hardly the language one would expect from a well brought up Victorian girl, I would suggest.

I was recently informed that I have a touch of anaemia, information I duly passed on to my wife. Ten minutes later, I asked her what I had been told I had. “Anaemia. It’s a near rhyme with amnesia.” If she had muttered “stupid old fool” under her breath, I really wouldn’t have blamed her.

•Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist