21 August 2012: Bonification

Despite the flurry of Tour De France blogs and the continuing interest in the donkeys (never had so many hits on the blog in its eight years), time to move them from the top in favour of a couple of new photos. First one was discovered while reviewing Amelia's hospital photos from when she was first born, which just seems to invite a funny caption:

Initial thought something like "Now, are you Hannah or Amelia?"

Second, Hannah jumping in the muddy puddles (or the puddy muddles, whichever you prefer):

 - reminded me of a similar picture from the original Winnie The Pooh books as drawn by Mr Shepherd:

Finally, an explanation of the title of this blog entry: while following a little of the Vuelta (and wasn't it interesting how Contador was able to streak away up that mountain yesterday... six attacks before finally settling down) I've frequently heard Sean "It Certainly Is" Kelly talk about "bonifications". Given Kelly's normal approach of using standard cycling language even if it's not English ("classement" being the exemplar) I thought he was just making it up.

But no - bonification is a real word, meaning either betterment or the paying of a bonus. Kelly uses it in the context of time bonuses awarded to riders who finish first in a stage or in a sprint ("Valverde would be keen get the bonification for finishing first") which appears to be roughly correct.

So there it is, word of the day. Bonification. Use it as much as possible in any context available.

Postscript: Naturally, Blogger's spell checker doesn't recognize "bonification" and suggests "bifurcation" as an alternative. Which to my mind is every bit as obscure.