During this time of emergency, there doesn’t appear to be much curtain-twitching going on here in St. Mary on the Wold. Everyone it seems is a bit nervous about catching the lurgy, when the world and his or her partner was about to pop their clogs with it or because of it.
But then after leaving the gaff the other morning on the way to the shops to get the old lady some bread from the ATM I met a fellow dog walker, out as it happened with his two grand ankle-biters, whom he told to budge up a bit as they came to close my dog and me.
‘Haven’t seen you for a bit,’ I said.
‘Bit of what?’ he said.
‘Chin-wag,‘ I replied.
‘Oh yes I get it, well, I’ve been a bit Christmas crackered, actually looking after these two kids now the schools are closed and all that, it’s a bit of a drag really as I was looking forward to a bit of a skive, trouble is they are always full of beans if you know what I mean.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘depressing innit. What do you make of the lockdown?’
‘Well, I was gutted at first and the missus was gobsmacked, what with the kids being at home and all that, then that geezer came on the telly and said the government were all behind us and that we were in it all together and I thought well this is going to be a bit of skive really, laid off on full pay I thought, this is going to be the dogs’ dangly bits. Then that other smarmy bloke came on and said that we could all pop our clogs if we didn’t do as he said and that the Fuzz would be a bit miffed if we didn’t so I thought discretion more than valour mate, no burning some rubber down to the local then, have you seen my new wheels by the way?’
‘No — go on, what you got?’
‘Well, I played a blinder with the transport manager and got him to splash out on the latest BM, fully loaded and funded for three years mate, 300 brake on tap, looks really cool on the firm’s carpark and goes like, well, you know. Got pulled by the Fuzz the other night, well actually on the night before the lockdown. Sod’s law really, I saw him advertising with the blue lights on and then he put the sirens on, I thought that put a spanner in the works, mind you, if I get another ticket for speeding the insurance will go up and the gaffer will be really miffed. Anyway, plod gets out and walks up to the car, older plod he was. ‘Who do you think you are?’ he says, ‘Stirling Moss?’, then gave me a right rollicking coz I had nearly the ton on the clock.
‘Wow, I bet you were chuffed then sounds like you played a blinder.’
‘Yeah, man, it was cool, but he said he’d got an emergency call and for me to cool it in the future and then blew.
‘Look grandad’ interjected Noah, ‘like we are totally into that old people speak but can we go now like it’s getting really boring.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Wicked to touch base with you again.’
Signalling low fives we went our separate ways.
This all got me mulling the conversation over. There must be thousands of us who are out of date with the language we thought we knew, maybe that’s why social media does little for us and newsprint articles seem full of errors and mistakes, while TV advertising and much more seems to be at odds with what we thought was reality – it’s not our reality anymore.
Take the 1980s for example, when the Boomer generation were still in their prime. ‘I kid you not babe’, could you as a hip forty-year-old still get down with kids and hold your own? Odd term that, ‘hold your own’, but let that pass. Were we aware that some people were ‘space cadets’ or that others ‘slam dunked’ their way into things, or that a TV personality who today would be shut down would have been ‘burned big time’?
I kid you not, though, if they didn’t like it you may have thought, ‘what an awesome airhead who deserved that mega putdown’. Did you ever reply to a question ‘No can do’? Not that I can actually remember but many did. Remember this was the decade of OK Yah yuppies and Sloan Rangers at one end of the social scale and ‘loads a money, couch potatoes and bimbettes’ at the other.
By the nineties – or back in the day – as we said then, people were using ‘cheddar’ to pay for something that was purchased and if expensive it was described as ‘Kerching’. All this hype was stressful for many and to cope with the buzz they may well have gone to a ‘chick flick’ to calm down. If something was unpleasant or not to our taste we would have been told in no uncertain terms ‘to get over it’, ‘ know what I mean’.
We shot off from somewhere that was not awesome, and something that was awesome was often wicked, but if you were in your forties or early fifties at the time. ‘Oh My God, yeh snap’ you were so totally ‘old school’. To which you may have added ‘thank god’.
By the 2000s, you’re having ‘a larf right’. I’d wager that not many of the more staid residents of the Wold would if offered a bun (ciggy to you), or that white Kreps (trainers) were in fashion for men.
Some words never change though or just come back into fashion: fag, blag, gutted quid or statements like ‘on the pull.’
To be continued here tomorrow in Part 2.
Wot
Down yer we use, “cream crackered” rather than Christmas.
Recently BBC Radio 4 ran a serial dramatisation of the voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers and their early experiences – mostly unpleasant – once they’d landed. During an exchange, one Pilgrim bemoaned his personal situation, to which the other replied, “Tell me about it”. Authentic?
The only ones I didn’t know were cheddar, bun or Kreps (I don’t do trainers.). More correctly it is “old skool”. I think just watching the cinema and TV du jour and reading contemporary literature is enough to keep up with a lot of the latest slang/argot/jargon/buzzwords. Understanding ever word a tweeny or teen says may not be possible mind! They deserve some secrecy mind to make up for the appalling manufactured musak they have to listen to these days 😉
Definately worth a comment, but I can think of nothing appropriate. Just how much internet research did you need ? To me :– Awesome.
I think you meant ”business”
“Woke?”