What we old duffers say

Family Stories, Food, Names, naming and words by Lois

The topic of conversation – and news has been how hot it is today, and maybe it’s the heat but on social media people do seem to have been quite snappy with each other – not just about the political situation, but whether it’s as hot as it was when they were young. Remember the summer of ’76! people write, while others say it’s hotter in other countries and then others reply that other countries know how to deal with the heat. Other people from those foreign countries will ask why we don’t all have air-con, or a siesta, or wear hats, and others will say it’s global warming which brings out the climate change deniers big time!

My friend Andrew, historian, writer and I have been “conversing” about different slang used to describe this torrid weather, and comparing what we old duffers say and what our young people say.

13:26

Andrew: Are you now in the Red Zone? … sack the ironing.

Lois: I think we must be! Typical Brit, I’ve just made us a cup of tea.

Andrew: LOL

Lois: Against advice I have opened the windows slightly, it was so stuffy.

Andrew: Yep, I know what you mean… I’m cooking in the kitchen so opened the window and just opened the curtains in the front room.

(Brief diversion to discuss what he was cooking – dhal with added mushroom and cream sauce)

it’s now 21:23

Lois: I wonder what has happened to “the cool, cool, cool of the evening?” It’s absolutely boiling here.

Andrew: It’s cooling a tad in the house, 27°. I wonder if ours is the last generation to use the expression “boiling” for very hot weather?

Lois: That’s an interesting thought! I will ask what’s current.

Andrew: I used it recently and it struck me as quaint!

Lois: Well, we are quaint!! (I always wonder if perfectly ordinary words like quaint have a current young person’s meaning which I don’t know)

Andrew: Yes and the degree to which those expressions are frozen in our youth and the period.

Lois: Yes! Something to write about maybe?

Andrew:

https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/06/piffy-on-rock-bun-and-other-travels.html

Do have a read of Andrew’ blog, if only so you know what “piffy on a rock bun” means!

My reference to the cool, cool, cool of the evening, was about the song written by Hoagy Carmichael, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. It was written some time in the 1940’s but became popular after being used in a 1951 film’Here comes the groom’ starring Bing Crosby.

6 Comments

  1. Andrew Simpson
    Reply

    Excellent Lo, so I offer, More word Lo … More words “

    ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’”*

    And that pretty much is what I think when I use the word wireless which has always meant the radio.

    My Wikipedia tells me that “wireless is the transfer of information (telecommunication) between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most common wireless technologies use radio waves”.**

    But me, I will always associate it with the box in the corner which offered up a window on the world, via the news, music and talking programmes.

    In the first house I can remember in Peckham in the 1950s dad, or someone had installed a system where each of the radios across the place were tuned into the three channels from the Home Service, The Light Programme and the Third Programme.

    It’s an old memory which has resurfaced with the discovery that you can now recharge your mobile phone using “wireless”, the very same “wireless” that allows us to pick up the internet from any where in the house and send messages, and receive pictures, TV and YouTube from a heap of different devices.

    At which point I am beginning to sound like one of those aged relatives from my youth who marvelled at the automatic washing machine, and the presence of a television in the front room.

    And I fully accept that my wireless in the corner and the router in the kitchen are essentially just the same thing … things designed to receive “the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer”.

    If I stop to think about it, it still strikes me as a bit like magic, but a sort of magic I take for granted along with the telly and the phone.

    *“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’ 

    The question is,” said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’  

    ‘The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master—that’s all’”.

    Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass

    **Wireless, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless

    Liked by 2 people

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