It’s a rare event for a dictionary to fail me but that’s exactly what happened a minute ago: my usually trustworthy Oxford Australian Dictionary (1992) couldn’t come up with the goods, and what a sinking feeling that was. Then the unspeakable happened: my Roget’s Thesaurus (1976) failed as well. I reached for the Pears’ Cyclopaedia (1932) but it too fell short. I pulled my copy of Soule’s Synonyms (1904) off the shelf – at last there was hope.
What have I been looking for? A definition of lane.
Where I live, a town dating from the 1820s, we have many lanes; in fact, we’re cross-hatched with them. I adore them. Consisting of two roughly parallel lines of compacted gravel or dirt bordered by knee-high grass, those narrow throughways between old houses. I walk the dog down them. I take them when going to the mainstreet.
I remember being a little boy and visiting cousins out at Young and they had a rear lane; how lucky I thought they were. For two years in the 1990s I lived at Cottesloe Beach, Perth, and there was a lane behind my flat; how lucky I thought I was. I’ve named the on-line literary journal I co-edit Verity La after a lane in the Sydney Building, Canberra, and in Hong Kong recently my camera regularly found itself pointed towards backstreets and laneways.
These days, I might walk the lanes of my home-town because they offer protection from the winds, but mostly I take them because you can peer into backyards – wild veggie patches, saggy chookyards, an outdoor dunny turned into a wood-store, a rusted metal seat in the sun, a broken cricket bat…
When walking a lane there’s a sense that words like private and public don’t matter, that life can’t be categorised by what is yours and what is mine. Lanes are semi-places, they’re reserved, they’re reticent. That’s why dictionaries struggle with them.
The best the Oxford could do was “a narrow road or street”, which is downright wrong. The Roget’s was able to suggest words like “short-cut”, but in the end this is clutching at straws. Perhaps in 1902 there was a better understanding of these things, because the Soule’s got as far as “alley, narrow passage or way”; as definitions go it’s prosaic but at least there’s accuracy.
How would I define lane?
I wouldn’t, I can’t; I too would fail miserably. I’ll just keep walking them, being with them, because their elusiveness makes me feel whole.
(First published in Panorama, The Canberra Times, 24 March 2012. This is my fiftieth piece for the First Word column; many thanks to Gillian Lord)
Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecote 
17 comments
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March 24, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
broadsideblog
You’ve done it again, Mr. F…I LOVE lanes and spend a lot of my time exploring them. I love poking around the backs of things, as you say, peering into gardens and windows and seeing what people have in their garages or storage sheds. Congrats on No. 50!
March 24, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks, as always, for your thoughtful comments, and also the congrats. (As you’re a professional journalist, that means something!)
I think laneways are so enticing because they take us behind the front. That sounds banal. But in a day and age where the surface is paramount, what laneways offer us is a glimpse of what we’re not meant to see, but what often is really very interesting.
Perhaps, in a way, it’s similar to the wonderful post you have on your Broadside about a newspaper devoting so much space not to the death of someone very famous but the death of someone that 99.9% of us didn’t know.
March 24, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Mark William Jackson
I love lanes and you’re right, they can’t be defined, it’s too easy to use adjectives such as ‘narrow passageway’, but it might be time for poets to write a dictionary to capture the feel… maybe “lanes are veins reaching from the past, from a time before efficient use of space and capacities of carriageways were the only consideration.”
March 24, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks Mark. I like your poetic definition!
Can I sense a laneway poem of yours coming on?
March 25, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Mark William Jackson
Laneway poem should be hitting the Verity La submission mail box before you can say “this is bordering on harassment”.
Not really, I got nothing.
March 25, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Mark, I’ll be looking out for your laneway poem regardless…
March 25, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Gabrielle Bryden
Lovely post Nigel. I too love laneways as well as rough paths and winding corridors of pebbles or down trodden grasses and leaves. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time looking at the ground because I rarely wore shoes and you must look out for sharp things when you don’t wear shoes – so I loved the texture and unpredictable nature of the laneway or narrow path and even rough footpaths took my fancy. We lived in a dead end (some call them cul-de-sacs 😉 ) and there was a lane at the end of the dead end. I loved that lane so much (and have gone back to revisit it a few times – but it has since been paved and has lost some of its magic). Peering into peoples backyards is also a must do activity – haha.
March 26, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, what a wonderful woosh of a response! And laneways when they’re paved: it’s just not right, is it.
March 25, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Gabrielle Bryden
ps. Nigel you are not odd – you are oddorably curious 🙂
March 26, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, two things:
1. I’m going to call it – ‘oddorably’ is my favourite word of the year.
2. I’m going to call this, too – ‘oddorably curious’ is my favourite phrase of the year.
March 27, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Gabrielle Bryden
haha – thanks Nigel (I was just going to say you were oddorable but glad I changed it to a phrase 😉 ) since I got word and phrase of the year.
March 27, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Gabe, you got the quinella! (Is that the right term? I’m not the full-bottle on horse-racing jargon.)
March 28, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Gabrielle Bryden
Quinella – that’s it! So if I paid $20 on the nose of the winning word (paying $7.50) and $10 for a place on the phrase that came second (paying $3.00) I’d be paid $180 – hahaha (I don’t bet on the horses anymore, but those were the days) 🙂 I’ll be quiet now!
March 28, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Gabe, I love how with blogging the post is really only the start; the actual comments can end up in really very exciting places. For instance, the post was about loving lanes, but now we’re talking about putting bets on to see which word and phrase might win a race. This is complete gold!
I might even write another post this Sunday…
March 30, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Tristan
On one hand it’s surprising to see dictionaries grappling with what, on the surface, are simple words – but on the other hand, it makes perfect sense. I like Mark’s idea – I’d buy a dictionary written by poets. Sometimes all I want is precision of feeling rather than meaning.
Congratulations on fifty first words, Nigel – bring on the hundred.
March 30, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Tristan, a dictionary written by poets? What a wonderful idea. Someone should get onto that…
(And thanks for the congrats – I hope I have another 50 First Words in me, and that the Canberra Times want me to keep writing them.)
May 15, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
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