Quodliwhat?

Once upon a time, a potential blogger set out to find a Name that She Could Use, and drew a blank. All her favourite words had been gobbled up by the same unscrupulous merchant who had tricked her brother out of their cow in exchange for for a handful of beans.

Just as our heroine was about to give up the quest for a Name She Could Use, there was a loud rap on the door. 

"I wonder who that could be? " she mused.

Astonishingly, there was no-one there when she opened the smart green door to her tiny cottage on the edge of Fairyland. ( There's nearly ALWAYS someone there, you see, in Tales of The Supernatural, usually a Magicperson in a pointy hat wearing a black cloak.) 

"Goodness!" Exclaimed the chief protagonist. And, "What's this?" As she bent down to pick up a shiny red apple that had been placed (enticingly) on the coconut mat with, "Welcome" imprinted in the weave. (Of the mat, not the apple. Keep up.) 

Briefly, she considered, coconutmat@blogspot.com, and you know, it might have worked, but somehow... No. Redrosyapple? No. The quest resumes with our Seeker unscathed by the poisoned fruit, which went straight into the compost bin.

(Aside: The garden produced a rather unappetising crop of mushrooms the following autumn, which, because they were small and brown, went unnoticed, and uneaten, except by one unemployed carriage rat who took a nibble and turned into a footman. He now has a job as a town crier in the City of Gloucester.)

Time for tea. Polly, (not her real name. She knows to be careful of revealing her true ID on the WWW) put the kettle on, her feet up, and, placing the Namequest aside for a moment, she took a sharp knife to a Tesco's Finest Battenburg cake, with 'eat me' carved into it's handsome marzipan overcoat, and prepared to cut herself a large slice. 

Too large, as it happens, for the chemical constituents, not usually impregnated into a Tesco's Finest Battenburg, were supposed to be ingested in the minutest quantities. Too little, and you maybe grow just the tiniest bit more credulous, too much, and WOW! You are ready to swallow any old load of cobblers.

"Golly!" Thought Polly. "I am feeling a little strange... . I think I'll go and open the dictionary at a random page and see what turns up." 

And we all lived happily ever after.

The end. 

[Middle English, from Medieval Latin quodlibetum, from Latin quod libet, anything at all : quod, what; see k^wo- in Indo-European roots + libet, it pleases, third person sing. present tense of libere to be pleasing; see leubh- in Indo-European roots.]

NOT theological debate, though sometimes it might look like it. NOT a light-hearted medley of popular tunes, because I can't hold a tune, but 'Anything at all that pleases me.' It works, doesn't it? And thank you all, for reading it! 

And Finally:

Cobblers: 

1. rubbish; nonsense a load of old cobblers

2. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Anatomy) another word for testicles

interj

an exclamation of strong disagreement

[from rhyming slang cobblers' awls balls]

Usage: The use of cobblers meaning ``nonsense'' is so mild that hardly anyone these days is likely to be offended by it. Most people are probably unaware of its rhyming-slang association with ``balls'', and therefore take it at its face value as a more colourful synonym for ``nonsense''. The classic formulation ``a load of (old) cobblers'' seems to be particularly popular in the tabloid press