Pedantry revisited

There was I thinking I'd caught Sandy McCall Smith out using the doubtful expression aides-memoires.  But surely, I thought, the plural of aide-mémoire is aide-mémoire.  Well it is, but only in French.  In its migration to English, the expression has not only lost its accent aigu, but also its potency as a verbal phrase.  The Oxford dictionary offers alternative plurals of aides-memoires and aides-memoire.  But the real news is that the book I have been reading, The Charming Quirks of Others is a delight, and I think there's a more recent one in the Isabel Dalhousie series, which I shall pull down to the kindle once I've dun rantin'.  And by the way, I think the pronunciation 'Dalhoozie' that I've heard from radio pundits is wrong.  Dalhousie was one of our school houses, and it's pronounced 'Dalhowzie'.  Thought your minds should be put to rest about that.

We're back to a full complement of heaters in the sitootery.  Gary was here yesterday to fit the new one.  the remaining task is to fill and repaint the wall where the old, larger bracket used to be.  For the time being, the scars are hidden by the Christmas tree.  Which, a poor, mishapen thing though it is, is now in its third year.  It was the last live tree available when we bought it.  I suppose we warmed to its plight because, back in the days of the institutional torture known as 'games', we were always the last ones standing on our respective touch lines when the teams were picked!