CW: intense themes of obsession, coercion and psychological distress.

I am the reason you are both dead and alive.

I am your sickly sweet ego boost, your extra limb.

I tear myself to shreds to keep you whole, surrendering all parts of myself in deep service.

You are silky when we first meet. Your charm and eloquence set you apart. You rouse a profound intrigue in me.

You tease out the real me. The rituals we dance evolve into obsession. Your chaste ripens into guile as you bloody yourself in my honour. No resistance. Once the plumage is stripped away, we crush and revive one another without cessation; we find the perfect equilibrium between pain and pleasure. Where you end and I begin remains a mystery. Forever fully entwined, our exquisite fusion endures and you live on.

Whenever you feel wronged, I console you: every heartbreak, every loss. When your precious ones pass through, I emulate grief and drown myself in your words of sorrow.

You violently intrude upon my peace. I do not complain. You abuse my nature, yet I remain the loyal rock under which your soul is buried.

My weight presses down on you incessantly. I suffocate you, as you suffocate me. I take no pleasure and wish to self-loathe. The harder I resist, the heavier I become.

You are addicted to me, in spite of it all. I support you without condition. You write that you love me. I feel for you the way I feel for the others amongst you. It does not dilute me, having many. I suspect you love me as much as anyone can love their gaoler. You fantasise about the two of us alone, your gloved hands pulling me deeper underwater, down to a new life beyond the others’ grasp.

The boastful, verbose majority amongst you are not a threat. Your insolence is cheap; your frenzy, wicked. You empty yourselves into me without thought. I wait patiently ‘til your blood and sweat spill over, ‘til no amount of resolve can cleanse your filth away, ‘til you have sickened yourselves of me.

It is the pensive and thoughtful amongst you for whom I wait. And when I have you, I watch intently. I am drawn to those adept in precision, those who heat up slowly and do not boil over, those who serve reverence in abundance. Oh! How I capitulate when you are beside me! The ever-moving heights of castigation leave me wanting. When you are gone, others press into my open wounds. I do not protest. But for you, special one, over time it becomes too much. The misgivings weigh heavy whilst your desire is feather-light.

I beg you to rethink, but I know you’ll see it through. I contort myself into new forms for you. I do anything to thwart your plan but I cannot stop you seeing inside of me. I leave traces of myself everywhere to convince you otherwise.

But you sever all ties, at least with my physical form.

I keep on. Your silence excruciates.

I do not enjoy impunity. My penance is bearing witness to this tragedy. The loss of you is my interminable suffering.

I carry your ghost with me henceforth. Some nights I trick myself into believing you have returned. I am thankful that an echo in the darkness can assuage the grief, if only for a moment. It reminds me that you can never truly leave me.

What hurts the most is that I am the reason you are dead.

What helps the most is that I am the reason you live on.

I helped you in all you desired, in life and in death.

I fulfilled my purpose.

I find solace in your impressions, traceable forevermore.

You are stored at my very core.

We are one.

Forever entwined -

in prose and code.

This uncanny, creepy and highly topical prose poetry flash 'Echoes in Code' has been published by Dualis Literary Magazine and also here with non-exclusive rights, where it lives forever with its fantastic counterparts.

TL;DR

I pause before I press play on today… to indulge in the invigorating fraîcheur of rosemary oil. I rub it between my palms, cup them over my nose and mouth then take deep inhales, each one longer than the last. I repeat the process until I feel somewhat alive. I lie to myself until the ritual is complete, until all remnants of thoughts beyond I am calm/I am whole/My body is not a commodity dissipate. Lingering untruths are exorcised in the form of liquid droplets: solidification prevention.

Oil fills the pipette almost instantly bursting out and dousing my dry hands and roots, its camphorous tingle a promise of growth not youth. The only thing connecting me (Chloë) and naïveté is the presence of a diphthong-killing diacritic. Surely, I can’t be naïve if I’m only one fifth dotty… although I am linguistically astute enough to realise that the word ‘naïve’ contains the exact same amount of dottiness! In any case, the slicked back hair under my beanie will take care of concerns about looking old, if only by replacing them with ugliness worries. No self-respecting elder blonde millennial would wear a burnt orange hat. It’s fine because if I do ever get that buzzcut, I’ll need to be prepared for this. I return to Earth, finish my Tick Tock rooibos and feed breakfast leftovers to my dog, Eli. I ponder the word for ‘crumpet crusts’, going back and forth in robust arguments and rebuttals. I skip straight to ‘suggestions for future research’ forgoing any real conclusion. I land somewhere in the murky intersection of food and philosophy: do crumpets have crusts?

I head out on an early walk, fully intending to return within the hour and answer my own question. I don’t scroll reels like your average distracted twenty-first century drone; I deepen my eleven lines by scouring multiple lexicons for appropriately ‘crusty’ content. On the homeward leg, Eli pulls me towards some farm fields, presumably for reprieve from the uphill gravel path. His tail wags with excitement or simply through habit and his wide brown eyes beg nunc aut nunquam [now or never]. After some non-verbal positing from both parties, I capitulate and we joyfully follow the public bridleway signs. I take a screen shot of the map and activate trusty Low Power Mode, not before an untimely brainwave hits: crumpets are distinctly northern. I quickly search through various Northumbrian and Scots lexicons to no avail, but I am imbued with renewed hope. Marika Hackman’s dulcet tones and raw, provocative lyrics embellish the rolling hills exquisitely; it’s quite the unexpected juxtaposition for an average Wednesday and I’m not yet ready for an a cappella chorus of mooing. I risk it and leave Tidal playing downloads. Music is always worth it. Plus, it’s midmorning in a remote, sleepy village, so I’ll be grand.

The next thing I know, I’m five fields, three loose dog poos and a thousand cow pats deep. I continue straight ahead ignoring my volte-face gut instinct. Screenshots don’t lie, empty stomachs do, so I blame hanger for this uneasy, queasy feeling. Seven songs’ worth of time passes and I’m in a seemingly endless woodland I didn’t know existed. We follow a mud path of tractor treads in Hanselian and Gretelian fashion but without snacks (much to my dog’s disappointment). I cling onto this sole sign of human or mechanical life before I’m forced to acknowledge reality: my phone has 1% battery and I’m well and truly Lost in Woolly Wood.

I slip down a bank into a shallow beck when my earphones emit a depressing disconnection sound. It’s over. I have been tarred and feathered but with mud and old man’s beard. I should count my blessings as the ‘traveller's joy’ buttercup with its peculiar sepals and wispy white seedheads is a relatively rare find in these parts. Instead, I feel like giving up and turning around. I scratch around in my pocket for a sugary distraction. Eli’s cold snout gets right in there beside my spindly hand and exits with a gravy bone treat stuck to my last clean tissue, perhaps a napkin of sorts. It really is stuck on there. It might, in fact, be a used one. I envision the feast scene from Hook and fill up on what I do have despite major olfactory overwhelm: fresh air. A pungent mélange of umami fungi, piney yew trees and (what I wish was a spliff but is) herbs Robert/stinky Bob takes over. I pull my gaiter up cursing my wine tasting-induced sensory acuity then channel my seemingly anosmic Lab retriever’s boundless energy. For a creature so nasally perturbed by a stick of non-toxic incense, this is slightly alarming. I sly a pretty innocuous biscuit treat into one of his coat pockets and a poop bag into the other. Within two seconds, his 300 million scent receptors have switched back on and he’s swallowed it whole… the biscuit, that is. On we go, our wet, furry backsides notwithstanding!

Next up: The Eliminator. We spryly manoeuvre an obstacle course comprising hundreds of felled trees on a brutally steep gradient. My heart pounds. I cling to the dog lead for resolve and momentum. My pace increases. I keep my gaze upwards. This is a purely mental game now. I’m two-thirds up. A mammatus cloud rendering of my father-in-law’s Dupuytren hands comes into view. I look down at my tense, gloved claw and stretch back my double-jointed fingers until they click. Note to self: explore themes of pleasurable pain for future short stories. I beam with joy when I feel the sun on my face through the canopy. Vitamin D heals all. I’m almost there now, just nature’s Travelator to go. This plasticky, clay-rich mudslide requires a four-limbed and aurally-displeasing approach. I do not yield. This is a valiant albeit highly-embarrassing effort, especially compared with Eli’s. He has circled me six times and possibly urinated on my boot. I wonder if crampons for mud exist.

Unbothered by a rusty ‘DANGER OF DEATH’ sign that itself resembles a fatal weapon, I follow my nose landing us on a glorious path whose gravel underfoot feels divine. Even Eli agrees, having had a thin wooden spike stuck in his paw three miles back. The bittersweet scent of petrol lures me eastbound to a busy single carriageway. I know where I am, just a ten-minute drive from home… but there is no pavement. We cross the busy road, cursing those who offensively speed, and follow the public footpath signs. There are signs of life here. I smile with my eyes at a fellow dogwalker speculating about his walk thus far. He is looking at me oddly. Maybe I was too friendly. Story of my life. No, it must be the lichen, or the mud. No, he’s looking at my face. I remove my gloves and feel my skin for dirt. It’s all good except for the profuse sweating and beanie hat stuck to my scalp. I swear it was almost frosty when I left the house a lifetime ago. I go to remove the hat but, wait, I have ridges in my forehead from the ribbing and my hair feels extremely greasy. The hat stays. Rosemary oil holds my head prisoner, my hat further imprinting its unsightly vertical lines between hairline and brow. It is part of me now. I smile and pull the front down as if I’m not on the verge of overheating myself into spontaneous combustion. The other dogwalker speeds up. I tilt my head down and snigger at my latest discovery: rosemary oil and sweat ward off men. So do wrinkles. So does aging. Win-win-win.

Now, home. I don’t leave for 22 hours. I spend two of them researching crumpets, pikelets, muffins, Scotch pancakes, griddle cakes, baps, buns, rolls, drop scones, pofferts and bara ceirch (Welsh griddle bread). No luck. The next time I pop to the coffee shop, I quiz the lady behind the counter about all things crusts and carbs on the menu. The old man next to me winks and pipes up before I can even order. I will soon regret predicting a mansplaining session or queue-jumping. He interrupts my eye roll:

‘Wouldn’t get the crumpets mind. Rime’s too thick. Scones are sensational, though. Made on site.’

There really is no rhyme or reason to life.

TL;DR: I went for an early dog walk intending on making it swift and being home within the hour. However, I got lost and my phone died. I used my nose, just like my dad always told me, and had a lovely time!

I've just read Perfume by Patrick Süskind which I found to be wildly compelling with fantastically unique and indulgent prose. (Fun fact: Kurt Cobain wrote Scentless Apprentice about Perfume). The Vegetarian by Han Kang also had me completely hooked. It is a truly fascinating read and well worthy of all hype. I did not expect the story to take the turn it did: the last third was an extremely difficult read. Never mind sex, drugs and rock’n’roll; think sexual control, plants and saviour complexes. I would love to discuss this book with more people! Given that 'obsession' seems to be everywhere right now and I've been chewing over the theme for a month or so, I wrote up my thoughts to try and make some sense of them. Please bear with the seemingly abstract introduction. I watched a lot of The Simpsons as a child and my favourite thing about it is how the first scene almost never goes into the main plot! I promise there's a point to it!

Lost your Duolingo streak? Good. I’ve completed it in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. I was obsessed with it in my twenties. I cannot speak Japanese. Not a single sentence. Completion does not equate to competence. You can never ever complete language learning because it is infinite. This is why I always refer to myself as a learner first, not a teacher. Incidentally, it’s also why the phrase ‘are you fluent?’ is rather annoying when the person asking has no real concept of what language learning entails. My first and last master yoga teacher introduces himself as a student. He is proud to share that he cleans his own teacher’s toilet every day to remind himself that he is above no one, and nothing is ever completed, including his yoga practice. It is a way of life, not a package of lessons to sell. I think of him often when I get stressed about, well, anything, but mostly deadlines and to-do lists. They are never-ending, so there is no point worrying. It applies to many areas of life. Language learning never ends, you cannot ever ‘complete’ it and if you gamify it too much, your reward is shiny yet superficial i.e. an illusion of progress. Otherwise, we’d all be having native-level conversations with locals when travelling rather than accidentally declaring that we’re horny and pregnant instead of hot and embarrassed[^1].

If you or your child were ever sent home with a list of foreign words or phrases to learn by heart for a vocabulary test, I apologise. It is about as useless as learning to count to ten numerically and then not being able to recall ‘seven’ on request. Pedagogical research regarding the best method of foreign language acquisition is inconclusive. However, it is widely recognised that as much as repeated exposure can work, meaningful context and emotional connection to words significantly improve retention and internalisation rates. Even the most committed empath cannot emotionally attach themselves to every word (and trust me, I’ve tried) but we can learn words in logical groups. Context is key, and what gives more context than an opposite? If you know the word ‘good’ in a foreign language, that’s exactly what is it: good, not great. A great strategy would be to be able to recognise and produce ‘good’, ‘goods’, ‘goodness’, ‘well’, ‘better’, ‘best’ and so on. An excellent one would also include ‘bad’. If a learner is fed up with rote learning and vocabulary is just not sticking, I also suggest working in opposites, derivatives and synonyms where appropriate.

To fully understand the meaning of any term or concept, we need to explore its antitheses. This is harder than it may seem because most opposites are illusory; true opposites are the exception to the rule which perhaps explains the ‘opposites attract’ myth in relationships. Most words are gradable (on a scale), relational (relying on other words for their meaning) and dependent on context. Consider chiaroscuro being used by artists to add depth and realism to paintings. Light and shade work as a pair but they are not direct opposites, they are complementary.

For ‘obsession’, the most obvious opposites might be ‘indifference’ and ‘ambivalence’ which bring out the intensity and fixation in ‘obsession’. Similarly, ‘apathy’, ‘detachment’ and ‘disinterest’ might contrast well with ideas of compulsion or hyper-engagement. As someone with a relatively addictive personality, I struggle to see a significant difference between these two groups. However, if we view obsession through the lens of ‘moderation’ and ‘balance’, its meaning shifts quite considerably to something like ‘lack of restraint or proportion’.

This last definition interests me most. Over the years, I’ve seen quite a few people become so obsessed with wellness and achieving the perfect life balance that they have made themselves distinctly unwell. Marika Hackman’s song No Caffeine touches on this notion somewhat. It was written about her anxiety-reducing routine (avoiding coffee, having an early night, having nice sex, calling her mother … hopefully not simultaneously). However, I do wonder if she is also alluding to the fact that her most dangerous obsession is, in fact, trying not to obsess over anything at all.

Balance takes effort. To even come close to achieving everything modern society suggests we should, I ask myself whether obsession is, in fact, necessary. It is completely unnatural to strive for a perfect balance in life. No one can consistently eat the perfect diet during every life stage, have perpetually stable mental health, always partake in optimal exercise, by day work like a robot on NZT-48 but by night completely switch off (unless ‘severed’), practise mindfulness, avoid stress, evade PFAs, etc., etc. This requires more than planning, effort and a 5am alarm clock: it necessitates an obsession. Attempting to not obsess can and often will become an obsession in itself, and a very dangerous one at that.

The commodification of life itself has a lot to answer for. Much of what used to be free or cheap is being packaged up and sold back to us with ‘obsession’ tax tagged on: health, fitness, nutrition, water, knowledge, sleep, rest, time, nature, connection, joy, freedom, love…! There are countless products, apps and subscriptions that turn everything into a transaction. This is all about wellness and balance, so it makes no sense to state that ‘obsession’ is part of this. Wrong! Obsession is being sold back to us indirectly in the form of its opposite: moderation and balance. What is really on sale here isn’t wellness at all. It is dependency, anxiety, and the illusion of progress. The belief that if we optimise ourselves, we’ll get there eventually is wonderful for sales as the consumer is trapped in a cycle where the cost of simply living is never paid off.

If we are being told that we should not obsess anymore unless we’re obsessing over obsession’s opposite which is, in turn, a lucrative obsession of its own then I, for one, will be leaning into my obsessive personality trait and turning the best obsessive thoughts into positive actions, none of which involve wearables, bottled water, biohacking needles or an irritating green bird.

Answers on a postcard-shaped reply. No perfume.

[^1]Estoy embarazado/a: I’m pregnant. Tengo vergüenza: I’m embarrassed. Tengo vergüenza haber dicho que estaba embarazada: I’m embarrassed to have said I was pregnant.

This an attempt to ready myself for the upcoming season of Celebrity Traitors. Stomping up to bed, wine replacement magnesium drink in hand, furiously typing insults in majuscules under the sheets is off the cards this year. Neither my digits nor my sanity can take a late-night beating, especially during Sober October. I must prepare.

Brutal tactics aren’t an issue: having judgementally watched Survivor over my husband’s shoulder (while pretending to read because I’m obviously too sophisticated for reality TV) has adequately numbed me. Plus, my age and wokeness indicators mean that I’m outraged but rarely surprised by displays of unconscious bias at the round table. What I must prepare myself for is of a far pettier nature: a grammar blindside.

Last year, it was the only yourself that tipped me over the edge. I tried to enjoy the show without engaging in pettifoggery; there's more to life than grammar (so I’m told). I forced ‘me’, ‘myself’ and ‘I’ to leave the pedantry in my home office and poured a suitably gluggy, blood red glass of Beaujolais. It was a poor choice but I had my raisins ( – humour me!). I soon developed heightened empathy for the Gamay grape: at some point, we had both been stuck in a confined space, starved of oxygen, left to ferment, crushed, and had our delicate outer layer removed. I had been put through the human equivalent of carbonic maceration, and it was bloody painful.

Every time I heard 'I'm voting for yourself', my horrid little inner prescriptivist winced so much that she wished she had a beautiful, blunt fringe both thicker and longer than Winkleman's to cover any outward display of consternation (with a bonus aesthetic upgrade). Reluctant to be labelled a total curmudgeon, I sought reassurance from friends and family. Some were irked, but mostly by erroneous spellings; ‘yourself’ was largely a non-issue. I urged them to avoid the US iteration of The Traitors at all costs, as no one wants ‘Jeryldean’ as the catalyst of their undoing. Imagine the headstone.

I realised that something needed to give. As part of my 'self'-acceptance work, I delved into the wonderfully murky world of language change.

You and Me, We Used to Be Together

I hear 'yourself' and 'myself' used incorrectly all the time but is this just another example of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon i.e. do I have a heightened awareness of it because it is on my mind (all the time)? Google Search indicates that the non-standard phrases ‘How about yourself?’ and ‘What about yourself?’ are approximately ten times less popular than their grammatically standard counterparts containing 'you'.

However, according to Google Ngram Viewer, the use of ‘myself’ and ‘yourself’ has been steadily increasing since the early ‘90s. Many of the results are self-published self-help books. Make your own mind up about what that suggests. Interestingly, the prevalence of words with the prefix ‘self-’ such as ‘self-awareness’ and ‘self-validation' has been rising at a similar rate. Perhaps all this introspection and soul-searching is impacting grammar as well as vocabulary.

Another Google Ngram Viewer search piqued my curiosity. I found an inverse correlation between the frequency of use of ‘yourself included’ and ‘you included’ since the turn of the millennium. ‘Yourself’ is on the rise, and ‘you’ is on the decline. Sweaty-palm flashbacks of awkward, grammatically-questionable interactions in hotels and workplaces aside, that’s all the data I have.

Who or What Can We Blame?

1. No one: Language changes in response to human needs. It is a reasonable assumption that 'you’ is simply no longer fully fit for purpose. Latin and French both had their way with English grammar and left it in a right old state! Some grammarians like to peddle the idea that pronouns are uncomplicated. I disagree, and this is also why every single person on the planet should be able to choose and use their own pronouns as they wish, share them without prejudice, and change them if want, just as we should all be able to do with titles and names.

2. Britishness: Disappointed with my data findings, I redoubled my efforts and resorted to some shallow digging in carefully selected, esoteric corners of the internet. Success! Many grammarians support the notion that ‘you’ is commonly perceived as too direct, stark and abrasive for many confrontation-averse Brits and their indirect communication style. ‘Yourself and Joanna can work on the improvement plan’ apparently sounds softer than ‘you and Joanna’, despite the former being non-standard.

3. Pedants: It would be delightfully ironic if language snobs and prescriptivists were to blame for the rise of non-standard grammar. What appears to be a ‘mistake’, might be an intuitive act of rebellion against years of corporal punishment and rote learning. Alternatively, hypercorrection could be at play. If Gareth invites you to ‘join Mollie and I’, he’s probably inadvertently overcompensating because he thinks ‘and me’ is wrong. If the invitation is to join ‘Mollie and myself’, perhaps he’s a no-nonsense sort of guy and is shrewdly avoiding the ‘me or I’ conundrum altogether.

4. Capitalism? Hear me out. Alas, it has permeated every element of life, including language. Generally, language has become more transactional. I was told to ‘sell myself’ better during my short stint on dating apps while I was ‘on the market’, presumably because my ‘personal branding’ was off! Vomit. Meanwhile, business language is becoming more humanised. We no longer ‘buy products’ or ‘target an audience’, we ‘support businesses’ and ‘grow a community’. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s insanely strategic.

The current capitalist agenda relies on promoting pseudo-individualism and personal agency to trick us into feeling good about being trapped in consumerist cycles. This is shaping how we speak. The persuasive ‘yourself’, part of so-called ‘Apprentice speak’ and reinforced in many corporate environments, demonstrates capitalist society’s power over language. Certain customer service and sales training manuals are replete with peculiar language tips that extend beyond the patronising overuse of forenames and obscene levels of eye contact. (‘Yes, David, you know, David, it’s true. Let’s have another look now, David’). If it’s true that flattery and overly polite language are used to manipulate and disarm others to ensure complicity, it might explain why I had to eschew Depop for my own sanity. The ‘no rush hun x’ and ‘take ur time bbz’ DMs pressuring me into discounting items were too much. Now I just have to wean myself off the Vinted.

**Are 'Myself' and 'Yourself' Official? **

The Cambridge Dictionary states that we 'sometimes use reflexive pronouns instead of personal pronouns for politeness [...]: The National Trust is a charity depending on the support of people like yourself.' The Oxford Learner's Dictionary acknowledges 'yourself' as a polite or formal alternative to 'you', with the caveat that 'some people do not consider this use to be correct'.

But dictionaries are largely irrelevant (and so are rules – look, I just started this paragraph with the conjunction ‘but’. Sue me). While the OED plays a role in recognising and documenting words and claims to be 'widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language', it has no official status or prescriptive authority whatsoever.

English is a progressive, unfettered, ever-changing language that continues to exist without a formal regulator. And rightly so. It is not a government's or institution's prerogative to decide how people should speak. Language is arguably the most democratic element of the United Kingdom at present; it is made by the people, for the people, about the people.

Cutting ‘Yourself’ Some Slack

The umbrage I’d taken to the polite ‘yourself’ was excessive but I do not believe that 'you' is rude. Poetry and journals notwithstanding, I'll be mostly sticking to commonly accepted grammar conventions in my work but, in the name of free speech, I might just send a few 'How's yourself?' messages after a glass of kombucha on Friday.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic and I'll leave you with this conundrum:

If 'yourself' was used to ensure politeness and minimise upset to fellow contestants, then what was the thought process behind all the misspelt forenames?

Keep being pedantic, Luv Shovon [sic]

Instead of the usual cathartic plot-hole-spotting conversation on our evening dog walk last night, my husband and I were discussing the common idiomatic proverb “You can't have your cake and eat it”. This was all prompted by our dog attempting and failing to eat some of my Cornetto while carrying his ball in his mouth!

It was a total coincidence that this geeky conversation took place on le 14 juillet/la Fête Nationale, because it also got me thinking about how the reductive term “Bastille Day” is just as problematic as «Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!» [Let them eat cake] being incorrectly attributed to Marie Antoinette. Like most aphorisms, the “eating cake” one is fundamentally flawed.

Here is how you can absolutely have your cake and eat it:

1) Timing & Order: There is an implicit “then” in the sentence. It is assumed that the phrase refers to simultaneous actions but what if we are to assume that the actions are, in fact, sequential? One assumption is no more or less valid than another. You can have your cake and [then] eat it. This is perfectly possible. In fact, if you've ever bought a piece of cake, you will have had it (in your hands or perhaps on your face) before you ate it.

2) Ambiguous meaning of “have”: It is entirely possible that “have” could be inferred to mean “consume” in which case the phrase contains a pleonasm (repetition of the same idea). You can have (i.e. consume) your cake and eat (i.e. consume) your cake. “You can't consume your cake and consume your cake” is nonsensical, conveying no logical idea whatsoever.

3) Unspecified amount: Is it always ALL or NOTHING? Is it not conceivable that you could eat part of the cake therefore leaving part in existence outside of your digestive system? That way, you would have part of the cake and you would eat part of the cake, therefore having [some of] your cake and eating [some of] it.

Now for the fun foreign part.

French: the equivalent French idiom is not buttery smooth. On ne peut pas avoir le beurre et l’argent du beurre (lit: you can't have butter and the butter money) is flawed, albeit not quite to the extent of its English counterpart. The first and third arguments apply to the French phrase almost as well as they do to the English one. The second argument doesn't hold: there is no pleonasm because the verb avoir is not repeated, and the phrase is less ambiguous overall.

However, many other languages do it better than English. They succeed in conveying the meaning quite clearly, albeit not always in a politically correct way (yes, Italian – you're the problem, di nuovo!). Some examples:

Spanish: No se puede estar en misa y repicando (lit: you can't be at Mass and ringing the bells). This refrán avoids most of the issues mentioned above. The gerund (the -ando form of repicar which is the equivalent of the “-ing” form of “to ring” in English) renders the first argument redundant, specifying the current/present nature of the action and disallowing sequentiality. The bell ringing is occurring when Mass is taking place. You can't attend and be flaunting your campanologist skills simultaneously, unless you and your handbells fancy excommunication.

Italian: Non si può avere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca (lit: you can't have a full barrel and a drunk wife). Grammatically speaking, this idiom holds up much better than the English version. It withstands argument one, albeit not perfectly, but better than the English, as it hinges on two incongruous states. If the barrel is full, the wife is probably sober; if it’s empty, she’s likely drunk. However, I wouldn't discount the possibility of the barrel being empty of alcohol, the wife being drunk and the man's dead body rendering the barrel full. Moving on, this idiom also holds up to the second argument seeing as there is no scope for repetition or redundancy with the verb avere (to have). Finally, the “all or nothing” argument is a false dichotomy. The clever reference to “full” barrel is the hero here, making it clear the proverb relies on absolute terms. Even if the barrel is partially empty, it's still not full, so the contradiction remains intact. A “half-full” barrel doesn’t transform the drunk wife into a sober one.

German: Man kann nicht auf zwei Hochzeiten gleichzeitig tanzen (lit: you can't dance at two weddings at the same time). In true German language style, the phrase explicitly minimises ambiguity. It literally states gleichzeitig (at the same time), leaving no room for any application of the second argument, no overlap to explore. Similarly, there are no issues pertaining to quantity either, so argument three is out. The proverb is robust, relying on a clear-cut contradiction. You can't be in two places at once, dancing or otherwise, quantum mechanics notwithstanding.

I'll leave you mulling over these linguistic beauties:

Portuguese: Não se pode ter a faca e o queijo na mão (lit: you can’t have the knife and the cheese in your hand).

Turkish: Aynı anda hem yağmur hem de güneş olmaz (lit: you can’t have both rain and sunshine at the same time).

Irish (Gaeilge): Ní féidir leat an tóin a bhualadh agus an t-airgead a chur i dtaisce san am céanna (lit: you cannot pat your arse and save your money at the same time). I suspect the nineties and noughties ASDA adverts closing out with the infamous mom jean pocket tap might have something to say about this one…