More on the Way we Speak Now

Overheard in a pub toilet:

“Daddy, what does that word say?”
“It says ‘Lavatories’”
“Why does it say ‘Lavatories’?”
“Its another word fro ‘toilets’”

(Middle-english middle-class RP accents all round)

Heard at a talk about Welshness at Greenbelt:

“[such-and-such a federation of united chapels] have recently employed a youth officer, and that would be me”

[No idea if it is a very Welsh way of saying "I am the youth officer" but it struck me as a very odd way of saying it]

Got the Lambeth?

Overheard in a pub:

“Got any Lambeth?”

No, nothign to do with bishops. Members of the pool team seeking chalk for queues. Lambeth Walk Chalk.

I think they make it up as they go along. Actually I think they really do sometimes. “Cockney rhyming slang” actually does exist but its not so much a local language as a kind of word game.

Culturally its perhaps the London equivalent of Glasgow’s deep-fried Mars bars. Yes they exist, yes people do eat them occasionally, but its not exactly traditional folk culture, more a sort of long-running joke.

Kids on a train:

Overheard on a train passing Southwark Cathedral:

Girl: “Look at that church!”
Boy: “That ain’t a church, its got a flag on it.”

Bother and sister aged about seven or eight being taken on day trip to London.

Two slightly older children previously overheard on the same train line at about the same place going the other way. They had seen the film of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. The boy had a theory that a “faun” was called that because like a rose with thorns they were beautiful above but ugly below. For him the words “faun” and “thorn” were homophones, exactly alike, identical sounds. From their parents conversation they seem to be from well-educated prosperous middle-class Jewish families.

Non-rhoticism really has arrived. For us south-eastern English, “R” is a vowel

I already lost my Greenbelt wristband :-(

On my way to work this morning I picked up an envelope from the doorstep. I opened it on the bus. It contained the wristband and some leaflets. I put it in my bag,

When I got on the train I opened my bag and looked at the envelope and the wristband wasn’t there.

I wish I could claim that they never sent it but I can’t. I saw it. It was silvery and said “Rising Sun” on it which struck me as odd because the bus was passing the Rising Sun pub at the time.

Its probably on the floor of a 321 bus approaching Sidcup right now. Its not the sort of thing that gets handed in as lost property – it just looks like rubbish. Its astonishingly unlikely that anyone would pick it up or realise that it was unused and if someone did I imagine they would use it or give it to a friend – after all there are no identifying marks on it. I suppose I’ll have a poke around to see if its in the gutter outside Lewisham station when I get back this evening but I’d be very surprised if it was, because I had zipped up my bag before I got off the bus so its probably in the bus. And even if I did drop it in the street the chances are it would be washed down the drain by the rain.

Not sure what to do now.

Bugger.