Love and hate, what a beautiful combination

[venta]

[Poll #1598358]

Please vote before reading on!

According to me, such shivers are caused by a goose walking over your grave. ChrisC insists that this is nonsense, and that the mother exspelunca probably made it up (this is his reaction to approximately 85% of the things I say).

The other day Claudia - who is distressingly Continental, speaking around ten languages competently, and conversing fluently in English, her third language - shivered and blamed it on a goose walking over her grave. See! Colloquial English, as taught in the best Continental schools, was there to back me up! I began planning my victory dance. Depressingly, under questioning, Claudia cracked and admitted she'd got the phrase from me and was thus inadmissible as evidence.

At dance practice last night, I posed the question in the above poll. The crossing of graves was generally mentioned, but with the exception of one other person there was a lot of "A goose? A goose? Don't you mean ghost?"

Except for our youngest new recruit, who looked puzzled and said she wasn't dead yet, thus didn't have a grave. I've always presumed it actually refers to a goose crossing the future site of my burial (as yet unknown to me - or indeed to anyone except, apparently, goosekind).

Incidentally, if anyone has any non-grave-related explanations or, even better, any explanations from non-English-speaking countries I'd love to hear them. Despite her extensive education, Claudia was unable to produce any other countries' explanations. "I don't know. I guess you'd just say you shivered."

I ask you. Don't these Continentals have any imagination?

Comments

[lnr]

Neatly kept graveyards are often grassy, and you do often see ducks at least on random bits of grass far from water, so perhaps a goose might do similar?