CupTeaLuv?

sometimes I really struggle with how British people are portrayed in American culture.
For example, I am reading a book by Dee Henderson called The Negotiator and in it, one of the main characters (the male “lead” if you will) is meant to be English.
But apart from the fact that she mentions his accent when the character is introduced, (and he is also introduced as being a member of the F.B.I. — which I found a stretch to believe as the FBI doesn’t really encourage international staff?) anyhow, it is mentioned another time not many pages after the initial mention, and then the remainder of his dialogue is basically American english. There aren’t any of the typical phrasings or even vocab words that an englishman would use compared to an american.
I know I’m probably nit-picking, because most americans who read this book wouldn’t have a clue that she hasn’t really written a British character — because in their heads they’re thinking “whoohoo! we love the british accent!!” and they’re reading his dialogue in their heads in one of two ‘voices’ — either the Rex Harrison posh english accent from My Fair Lady — or the Audrey Hepburn’s cockney accent — because for most americans, those are the two english accents they know. Which for someone who has been exposed to more than just the two, it’s very frustrating!
I miss the wonderful different accents that I was exposed to in Crewe Library — the broad scottish brogue, the soft scots, the wonderful newcastle accent of good ol’ Mr. Ford, and the cheerful lilt of the welsh accent.

well I was wondering that after Pastor Danny used it in his sermon on Sunday — just checking up on him to make sure he’s not used any phrases with dodgy background!!
Anyhow I was greatly relieved to find out the history is perfectly innocent! You can find it here on Dictionary.com (whohoo Dictionary.com!!) — look at the third part of the definition which begins with “Will I Nill I” … very interesting!!

I love my friend Anna.
I call her Crazy Lady 2. (apparently I’m crazy lady 1)
Last night we had a brilliant evening round her & her hubby’s home — they were married last August and we’ve not been round to their place since they’ve decorated and got all their new furniture!
They were talking about their honeymoon and we were saying how lucky they were to avoid the food poisoning from their wedding reception (21 people were ill with it) and they were saying that most people presented with symptoms in the morning they were scheduled to fly out… so they would have ended up being “bog-bound”…. (for my lovely american friends, bog is another word for the toilet, so bog-bound would mean not being able to get off the toilet for being so ill)…
After a while we finally decided what to order for dinner — Domino’s Pizza!
Yummmmmmmy.
Anna was reading off the menu asking if we wanted starters — wanting to know our opinions on potato wedges, chicken strips, and chicken wings…. we picked the strips and wedges…. then she wanted to know if we wanted chocolate mousse for dessert… we did… so the order went something like this….
“Hiya — we’d like to place an order for delivery please… yes, we’d like Strippers, Dippers, 2 large Texas BBQs and 4 Hanky Pankies”…
at which point I collapsed in laughter. Strippers were the name for the chicken strips, and Dippers for the potato wedges…. hilarious!
The other great quote of the evening… she was talking about the problems they’ve been having trying to put up some curtain rods in the bedroom… they’d originally put up some curtain material with some masking tape as a temporary measure…. and she said… “the scariest sound we’ve ever heard in the bedroom….” and I died laughing because she was pulling some major cheeky monkey faces at the time.
The other funny things about the evening was going through their honeymoon photos — they’d been to Madeira and went to “Nun’s Valley” and had their photos taken as nuns (standing behind a lifesize nun body cutout with their heads through the holes)… Paul made a scary-good looking nun!!!!!

from an american blog about the Sundance Film Festival (now taking place) in Utah…
tchotchke — which thanks to www.dictionary.com, I now know means “a cheap showy trinket” [Yiddish tshatshke, from Polish dialectal czaczka.]

what “suffering succotash!” meant? Made famous by good ol’ Sylvester the lisping cat on Looney Tunes… Andy and the gang at his work were wondering what it meant (the conversation started off with asking about what grits were made of, then went through various types of infamously-named foods with mysterious contents)…
so I found out!
It’s actually a “minced oath” — and according to Brainy Encyclopedia — “Minced oaths are corrupted forms of (usually religion-related) swear words that arose in English culture sometime before the Victorian Age, as part of the cultural impact of Puritanism after the Protestant Reformation. The censorship caused people to develop a wide variety of minced oaths to avoid swearing on holy names. They were used for swearing and other types of interjections. With time they came to have a mildly comedic effect. Since they avoid using profanities or holy words, the minced oaths are not equivalent in strength (likelihood to cause offence) as their derivitions listed below. However, some of these minced oaths should be avoided in polite speech (e.g. mofo).” (direct quote from Brainy Encyclopedia.com.
so the answer is that “Suffering Succotash!” is a minced oath of “Suffering Saviour!”
scary thing is that going down through that list of minced oaths (click on the link at the end of the quoted part) I was really convicted as a Christian about how many of those minced oaths actually come out of my mouth on occasion!
Makes you think twice…

I learned a new word today, but I’m not sure if I like it or not… it sounds a bit painful!
the word is excoriating and it means to tear or wear the skin off, or to censure strongly… denounce.
I learned it by reading that the new musical about Oscar Wilde has been pulled after just one performance. Apparently the reviews were excoriating and it only sold 5 seats for the next day’s performance! More info can be found from the Yahoo news article here.
You have to wonder now… just how bad does a musical have to be to be called excoriating….?

Wordorigins.org has loads of meanings and histories of phrases and slang words…
go have a browse!
you might accidentally learn something!

Have you ever used the phrase “red herring” and known what it meant but never knew where the phrase came from?
me too!
So I looked into it.
Apparently it goes back to the old hunting traditions (here in England) and poachers would drag a ripe red herring (smelly!) across the fox’s trail to throw the dogs’ noses off the scent. According to Wordorigins.org “A red herring was chosen because dog trainers often used the pungent fish to create a trail when training their hounds. The dogs, upon encountering the herring scent, would follow that trail as it was the one they had been trained with.”
so there you have it.

Having been here for more than 5 years now, I thought I had heard most all of the slang terms for household things…. well I was wrong!
The other day Andy used the phrase “bog roll” in a sentence to me and I was in fits of giggles… he was talking about toilet paper, toilet roll, loo roll. I just had images of bogs in my head and laughed and laughed. He couldn’t explain to me why it was called bog roll though.
(((I’ve since looked it up and apparently “bog” is one of the words for the toilet from the 1800s…)))
Another funny englishism that came out yesterday in our staff meeting at work– several of my colleagues had been to a couple of seminars on how to get more people in the doors of libraries and how to make libraries more effective etc. and one of the main topics was the whole marketing issue– especially with book displays. They were talking about selling an image… because it’s all about making a library’s displays like a bookshop’s displays– to sell the books to the borrower to take them out and up our issues statistics.
So they were talking about how one of the seminar speakers had used the phrase “Sell the Sizzle” (not the sausage)… to mean selling the whole image of a lifestyle that you’re meant to have if you read this book etc.
load of rubbish really, but hilarious imagery… and great phrase.

One of the highlights of having been up Newcastle way is having talked to good old Mr. Ford at Crewe Library– he is the local expert on all things Newcastle. He was in on friday and I got to tell him that we would be up there on Saturday for the wedding, and asked his advice on what to see/where to go etc, where to eat etc. He asked where we were staying, so of course I had to ring Andy to find out! Morpeth– that was the name of the area. Turns out it isn’t even in Newcastle!! I was gutted.
It’s about 16 miles north of the city. So we drove up there– took us about 3.5 hours to get to the Angel of the North and about another 45 minutes to get up to Morpeth (because we had to go through all of Newcastle).
The B&B was brilliant– Newminster Cottage. Just across a bridge from the town centre (it’s a cute market town). The river was beautiful– clean and well kept, with lots of ducks (with babies!!!) and seagulls.
Back to Mr. Ford– at one point some months ago, we got into a conversation about Newcastle and what he missed about living up there (he’s lived in Crewe about 20/30 years now). One of the things he missed dearly is Stottie Cakes. Now because I’m a learned girl, I knew what he meant– a large bap (for any Americans, a dinner-plate-sized hamburger bun– fluffy and soft). I asked him what they eat on Stotties and he told me a number of things, and one of them was Pease Pudding!!! So of course I had to ask what it was made of and how they make it. If you want to know the history of it and how to make it– just go to this website– very interesting!!
So when we were walking round Morpeth this morning with Andy’s folks, we went into the Market Hall where they had a Farmer’s market going on. We bought some Pease Pudding (so did Andy’s folks– they used to eat it when they lived up in Durham– which is just south of Newcastle city). I kept my eyes open for anywhere selling Stotties, but didn’t see anywhere– being a Sunday, no bakeries or anything were open.
So after we dropped Andy’s parents off at the train station, we drove out to the seaside so I could dip my toes in the North Sea!! We had a really nice time– the weather was beautiful on the coast at that moment, sunshine and clear blue skies. It was warm but not too hot. I probably would have gone swimming if I had a suit on, the water felt really nice. Andy pointed out that by the time I’d gotten out where the water would have been deep enough to actually swim, it would have been loads colder– the shallow water being warmed quicker by the sunshine. Clever lad.
The sand was very different than any other I’d been on. Most beaches I’ve been to in the UK have been rocky– apart from Portmaddog and Oxwich Bay. The sand on this beach was soft and fine, but it had black bits in as well. Like coal or slate or something. I don’t know how to explain it. But it was easy to walk on, didn’t make the sand any rougher or anything.
After we got back into the car, we headed back to the motorway and I asked Andy to keep an eye out for any main grocery stores which would probably sell Stotties.
He said he knew of a Safeways from when he did some work for K3 a few months ago. So we went there and I bought some medium Stotties (only a lunch-sized plate!) and some “mini-Stotties” which were bap-sized. We had the pease pudding (tried it both hot and cold!) on the mini-Stotties for our tea tonight.
The consistency of the pease pudding reminded me of hummous– kind of a grainy texture to it. The flavour was basically a very very mild pea taste (mind you it’s made with yellow peas not green) and a buttery ham. Pretty nice– not what I expected at all. I didn’t expect to like it. I wouldn’t have it often, but it was nice for a one-off light tea. We both definitely liked the Stotties though– they are much softer and fluffier than regular baps or bread.