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Suddenly Very Alarmed: Cockles

03/03/09

Cockles.

Molly Malone sang about them. They’re endemic. I’m pretty sure that I used to harvest them, back when I was a wee bairn, off the rocks at Sennen Cove. Although those may have been limpets or winkles. These days, of course – and probably also back then – you can’t eat them because they’re filled with heavy metals and poisons and nuclear armageddon. (Actually, they’re not.)

However, that’s by the by. The point is that there’s an English expression I’m suddenly very alarmed by – to whit:

it warms the cockles of my heart.

This came up recently when the Wales-dwelling philanthropist, educator, trend-spotter, babe-magnet and significant literary critic Ashley Tucker and I were in a deep discussion about how we were going to solve this financial crisis and bring about peace in the Middle East, and he said in passing of The Gone-Away World “I’m recommending it to every friend I have”.

Now, look’ee. This is like crack cocaine to an author. It’s like plugging us in to a Direct Current Hell-Yeah! socket and turning on the juice. I shot myself a couple of times with the tranq gun I keep by the computer for occasions like this and said:

“I am recommending it to every friend I have” is like airdropping beer and pizza into the cockles of my heart.

Do I detect a mix of metaphors there? (Also, I find myself wondering whether cockles eat pizza. It is unclear. Experiments will be necessary… the mind boggles…) But considering the issue more deeply: I’m not sure I want cockles in my heart. Cockles are shellfish. The notion of shellfish clustered around my aorta does not please me. It seems both disgusting and injurious. It also implies that my heart may be made of stone, and awash in salty and polluted brine. It appears to me that the whole issue bears investigation. We need Alex Horne…

I am about to take myself upstairs to locate my Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, but in the mean time, I leave you to ponder the issue of pericardial shellfish and their implications. 

[Cockle image by Féron Benjamin under Share Alike 2.0]

2 Comments to “Suddenly Very Alarmed: Cockles”

  • Irene said on March 3rd, 2009:

    Apparently, cockles grow on the floors of shallow waters. This leads me to believe if one does have cockles, one’s heart is most likely shallow. Hence the warming and all that. However, it would be a pure heart (not the salty and polluted one you described) since cockles, like scallops, are filter feeders and act as little Brita filters for the the environment.

    I thought this would help,, but I think I further mixed said metaphor.

  • SJ said on March 3rd, 2009:

    I am also recommending like crazy. I hope the little molluscs aren’t prone to overheating.

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