It’s time all you people knew this.
The English language has been lying to us for centuries.
Little white lies sit quietly in dictionaries until somebody stands on a soapbox and exposes them for what they really are…
BIG WHITE LIES.
Take white chocolate.
It’s called chocolate, but it doesn’t even contain cocoa solids. It’s really just cocoa butter, sugar and wishful thinking.
Strike one.
Then there’s white coffee.
I’ve ordered plenty over the years. Never once has a waiter placed a white drink in front of me. It’s always been brown. Sometimes light brown. Sometimes dark brown. Occasionally a shade best described as, “I think they forgot the milk.”
Strike two.
White wine?
It’s yellow.
Strike three.
The problem isn’t confined to food and drink either.
The whole world has been at it.
White bread?
Cream coloured.
White pepper?
Grey.
White goods?
Walk into Harvey Norman and half of them are black stainless steel.
White elephants?
Not only are they usually grey, but the only one I’ve ever owned was a green Torana that sat in my driveway because I couldn’t afford to get it fixed, and the second-hand car yard wouldn’t give me my money back.
Then there’s the biggest Australian whopper of them all.
A white Christmas.
Every December we’re bombarded with images of snowflakes, sleigh bells, woolly scarves and people cheerfully roasting chestnuts over an open fire.
Meanwhile, we’re standing in the backyard wearing shorts, trying to keep the flies out of the potato salad while Uncle Kev falls asleep in a deck chair after his third helping of pavlova.
The closest most Australians get to a white Christmas is the zinc cream on a kid’s nose at the beach.
OK, that’s not strictly accurate. It has been known to snow in Canberra on Christmas Day.
But the white lies keep coming.
Forgive me for being suspicious of anything with the word “white” in it.
White weddings aren’t always white.
White knights are actually inside silver armour.
White beer?
Surely this would be the exception.
Surely somebody, somewhere, has brewed a beer that looks like milk.
Nope.
The famous Belgian witbier literally translates as “white beer”. It’s a lovely style of beer made with wheat, coriander and orange peel.
And it’s… cloudy straw coloured.
Not white.
Cloudy beige, if we’re being generous.
Now, before anyone accuses me of exaggerating, I’ve conducted what can only be described as extensive scientific research.
I opened the fridge.
I compared a bottle of milk, a sheet of photocopy paper and a Belgian witbier.
Only two of them were white.
The beer failed.
I repeated the experiment.
Several times.
In the interests of accuracy, of course.
The results remained remarkably consistent, although my handwriting deteriorated towards the end of the study.
Which probably explains why proper scientists insist on peer review.
By this stage I was beginning to wonder whether there were any genuinely white things left.
Clouds?
Only some of the time.
Polar bears?
Their fur is actually transparent.
Santa’s beard?
Questionable.
My legs after a Canberra winter?
Now we’re getting somewhere.
We can only hope.
Hope that one day other Australians will experience a white Christmas.
Hope that somebody invents a genuinely white beer.
Or hope that, after a few beers, nobody notices the difference anyway.
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