BBC Breakfast news anchor man said:
“Like Americans, they carry their business cards with them everywhere“
Is ‘carrying business cards’ a euphemism for something like
In 2004, when I first started blogging, the people I followed (Jenn, Lacroix, Raymond, Jen) posted* between 1 and 3 times a day. Over the years, I’ve seen novice bloggers start with the enthusiasm of daily posting then watched that proliferation fade with one or more of these symptoms:
Raymond is the only blogger that I followed in 2004 who persistently, reliably, posts once a day. Most bloggers seemed to stop posting within 3 or 4 years of starting. Sunday afternoon posting won’t be a reality for me while I keep recieving encouraging personal emails
BBC Radio 2 described the shooting of two British students in Sarasota Florida as happening Several miles from a recognised tourist area in a Downmaket residential area where it is very unusual to find tourists
Apart from an exta 8 syllables what are the main differences between Downmarket residential area and Ghetto? Why do you think the BBC chose the longer phrase?
In these cloak rooms
My secondary school used to have a cloak room, rows of hooks for coats, jackets and gym bags. No cloaks. But if we wore cloaks we would have been able to hang them there. Unlike the cloak room signed here. In these cloakrooms there is a sink, toilet, towell and one of those plastic-bag lined bins.
A TOILET! I’m gradualy getting acclimated to the UK where toilet is not a naughty word. Love it!
roll your right sleeve up!
I was slightly shocked by the services provided by a local General Practice (GP) in Reading town. It reminded me of 1975 when I won a copy of ‘ It shouldn’t happen to a vet’ in a school competition. I was also a bit shocked to realise that a vet would have to stick thier arm up the backside of a bovine. Vets roll up their sleeves before doing this
happy frog: how are you feeling?
chess master: pretty stiff, actually
happy frog and wendy: [silence with growing smiles]
chess master: its not that I don’t find you two ladies attractive
happy frog and wendy: [laugh out loud}
chess master: it’s just that I’ve been playing badminton…
double-negatives can be hard to understand and fun to play with
Wendy: what do you do?
Professional: I work in the manufacturing business sector for a food production company
Wendy: what do you manufacture?
Professional: Bread
Wendy: a bakery?
Professional: yes
…interrupting you, BUT….
the interrupter took the conversation winding off into outer space until a silence when my the interesting, passionate monologue came to its a gentle landing, end.
Beyond the words ‘I’m sorry’ my interrupter demonstrated no ‘sorriness’. Quite the contrary. Perhaps ‘sorry’ in this context actually means:
’please don’t get angry with me for taking conversation to a monologue, to another topic, but I have a really interesting thought that I’m bursting to share and I’m sure everyonelse will find it as interesting as I do’
After the silence my interrupter turned to me acknowledging the end of the interruption and encouraging me to finish my original question.
After a few minutes silence a new conversation starts
male: I’ve got a new horn
female: Oh?
male: Yes, it’s no longer ‘MOOOOOOO’ now it’s ’MOOOOOOEEEEW
female: that’s nice
male: do you want to see my horn?
Wendy: Teeeeheeeehheeeeheeee he wants to show you his horn
Returning to the UK has reinforced my ability to regress the age of 12 without the aid of a parachute or hypnotist.
How cheap is that? Bargain basement cheap!
inadvertant administrative error
in MP Speak appears to mean
I can convince people it was an accident rather than deliberate fraud
Irrespective of whether they have demonstrated a practical understanding of the concept of ‘honorable’, members of the cabinet should be addressed as ‘The Right Honourable Member of Parliament for….‘
I want some of dickies red hawk action trousers, don’t you?
They’ve got zipped hand thigh and back pockets.
YES!
They are only £12.95.
BARGAIN!
They are sold by Screwfix. Whereas Diamond Back USA sell toolbelts. One day I’ll treat myself to my very own toolbelt, and hang around my house with a powertool or two in it.
friend: she’s very Diesel
wendy: Diesel?
friend: see how her girlfriend looks like a girl?
wendy: yes
friend: it’s clear who wears the trousers in that relationship
Phrases to describe the experience of joining an organisation:
onboarding
ramping up
bedding in
induction
orientation
Can you spot which of these phrases I learned:
Few events can attract my attention as effectively as a TOOL SHOW. And a tool show in a school playground to boot!.
Did I walk past this tool show? No. I bounced right on in!
Looking for a suitable large mechanical warm treat for my impending birthday. To my joy, I was able to handle more tools than you can shake a stick at.
stranger on the street: have you got the time?
This is not a question I was asked in the US. This question has been put to me on several occasions when walking from bus stops to appointments in the UK.
The question always makes me think twice before replying. Am I being asked for the current time or does the asker suspect that I may be a professional street walker?
waiting room receptionist: are you being seen to?
I had my cats ‘seen to’ as a condition of adopting them from rescue centres.
Wendy: someone has been notified of my arrival
Cunningly avoiding providing information on the impending existence, or not, of my reproductory organs.
Phew, near miss!
Not a euphemism for light sabres. 
Also known in the US as ‘Energy bars’. Not a way of describing the throughput of electricity to an electronic device.
High sugar-content (energy) biscuits in a bar shape marketed in the US as a lifestyle accessory for highly active people (Walkers, cyclists, etc). Similar products in the UK appear to be marketed as breakfast bars and stocked next to the breakfast cereals in supermarkets. I suspect they are breakfast replacements for fast-moving executives, children and aspiring anorexics.
I’m trying a few as possible lifestyle accessories for my GREEK SAILING HOLIDAY. Huuuuurrrraaaahhhhh!
A local Holland and Barratt shop lured me in with this ‘Love bar’. I subsequently discovered that the advertising is naughty because Gillian McKieth cannot legally call herself a Doctor in the UK. Her Dr. qualification is reportedly from a correspondence course with a non-acredited US University. The Guardian reported on her naughty non-truths and misleading product information back in 2007. In 2008 she’s still using the title Dr. on product packaging and making questionable claims about their ‘health’ impact…
I am a traveller when commuting, most weekends, and for a couple of weeks in GREECE (Whoooooopieee!).
The word traveller is now used in the UK to describe people that take their home (caravan) with them when they move. It apears to include the older reference groups (Gypsies, Romanies, Tinkers) that I am more familiar with and may include newer groups that I am not familiar with.
Recently, in the spirit of travelling, I rode bus #20 around Lower Earley. For fun. I as able to sit above the driver at the front of the bus and wave at other local Reading people that I knew. I saw some camper-vans parked on the grass of Cintra park (formerly Sutton Seeds sports ground) with people picnicing outside. Get Reading reports that these are travellers that regularly stay in the Park every year, this year they arrived just before a fence as due to be errected with the specific intent of keeping them out. I wonder if they come to take full advantage of Jackson’s summer sale?
One recent Sunday afternoon the neighbours, local Reading celebrities, and a gal from West Sussex dropped by to warm the wendy house over lashings of tea and cake. A jolly civilised affiar with a little bit of dribbling. During the goings-on I discovered many useful facts including:
- a local granny can climb the walls to escape from a locked cemetry after dusk.
- the Wendy House was converted from a garage in 1968 partly explaining the dangerous staircase.
- my nieghbours have lived all over the world – Kenya, Italy, India, Edinburgh before settling in Reading. Excellent company.
- the Readibus preferred gift to welcome a newcomer is a bottle of wine.
- the bath works best for a person under 5ft 2 (as do the stairs).
- house numbers evolve. One person’s home had evolved from without number to number 4 then number 2…
I suspect I missed some real news treats while in the Kitchen warming the pots, I wonder what other goodies these people are going to share with us in the upcoming years….
Not ‘are you apprehended by the police for the ghastly crime of insufficient height’ but another clever euphemism for wanting to go to the toilet. The city of Westminster has signs to help you out with clever stick-people designs to illustrate the problem for those people who don’t understand the idiom ‘caught short’. My favourite part of the sign is the invitation to text toilet, for a toilet. Hoorah, no euphemisims there just send a text saying what you need, effectively the bottom-line…
Off to the shops. The shopping tortutre. Ick. Luckily I was armed with a set of seasonal shopping lists from those short-people* that must be obeyed because of their lung, pout, and innovative-torturing-technique, capacity.
Toddling home armed with short-people pacifiers and a book. A book that lists Reading street names, almost but not quite, alphabetically as it outlines the significance of the names.
Here’s an excerpt from my current Reading, reading, material (my emphasis):
The Reading Paving Act of 1827 – a splendid document written in legalese that never uses one word where three, or better still nine, will do – talks only of ‘streets, Lanes, public passages and Places’. (It also says that occupiers have to sweep the pavement outside their houses, and specifies when they should remove Night Soil or filth from the Necessaries or Boghouses.)
If you asked an English publican, in England, what their ‘rotating tap’ was they would likely look at you quizzically as they explain that it is the thing in the toilets that you turn to get water for hand-washing after having completed the necessaries. In the UK tap is a common referent for a fawcett.
A disconcerting reply to an unsuspecting US person who tries to avoid using vulgar terms like TOILET when the words Bathroom or restroom are more acceptable referents for a room with a toilet in it. Draft beers are described as being ‘on tap’ so after the initial surpirse the move to understanding your actual meaning will not be hard.
By contrast, if you go into a NW US bar and ask what are their guest beers they give you a quizzical look and after some basic clarification they will tell you that what you actually mean is what is their rotating tap. Doh!
is a truncation of the phrase “it’s more than my jobs worth“. It”s a phrase that I heard in the UK, not in the US
To me it means the activity is likely to cost the person their job. It is something they can’t, or wont, do. I’ve not heard the phrase in the US. It’s more dramatic than my experience of typical US ways of expressing which are more literally descriptive. ‘Jobs worth’ is a fairly dramatic refusal to do something outside of known procedures even in the UK.
NPR weekend edition Saturday listed the US soldiers reported killed in Iraq ending with this statistic: “one soldier died in a non-combat related incident“. Non-combat related incident? is this a euphemism for one or more of the following:
It’s the first time I’ve heard this lengthy phrase to describe a death. When civilian deaths are reported the news normally includes some comment that indicates the circumstances by describing where body was found, in a wrecked car on the Interstate, a burn’t house, on the Green river bank.
conversation soon after first arriving in the US
Wendy: “he was the shiniest blackest man I’ve ever met”
USA people nearby: ” __________________________________”
USA person: “Wendy… …..you can’t say that”
Wendy: “say what?”
USA Person: “shiny black, it’s like saying greasy monkey, its offensive”
Wendy: “oh, can I say shiny without the black or black without the shiny?”
USA person: “you can say people of color or African Americans
Wendy: “and shiny?”
USA person: “best avoided altogether”
USA linguistic correctness is complicated. More complicated than spelling words with triple vowels. Apparantly there are white people and people of colour. White people and everybody-else . All skin shades lumped into one category ’not-white’. This is complicated especially if you want to describing different qualities of non-whiteness, or even the different shades of white, which are really colours. I’m probably repeatedly offending people here all over the shop. Hopefully they’ll let me know my social faux pas’ like the above fellow…
people of color = not-white
“The combined science of citrus and ginger”
Citrus is Science?
Ginger is Science?
These two ‘Sciences’ can be combined?
Its enough to confuse a person into tripping up and bumping her nose on the floor. Do they mean ‘good effects’ the good effects of citrus combined with the good effects of ginger? If that is what they mean then I can continue walking without a nose bleed. I can’t be sure. It gets worse. Exfoliating body scrub? I can scrub my body without exfoliating it? Sometimes I can be so pathetic without noticing it.
science = good effect
generic? archetypal? Does a ‘generic’ drug do all the things that specific drugs do because it’s generic? The phrase makes me think of the ‘medicine man’ characters that make appearances in US Western films advertising magical cure-all elixias…
Generic drug is the phrase used in the US to refer to the drug behind the branding, the active component of packaged medicines. Fortunes are made by companies branding drugs, its an obscenity I know little about.
I wonder if black Tea qualifies as a generic drug and how much can I get for my $4?
UK court verdict on US shooting of UK soldier: unlawful, avoidable killing. A US plane twice fired on a convoy of UK troops whose vehicles were marked with the pre-agreed orange fabric. The BBC reports a transcript from the US plane crew:
“At the start of the attack, one pilot notices orange panels on the vehicles and asks whether there could be any friendly units in the area… …Pilots open fire but soon the error is realised and they are informed that friendly units were in the area“
There are lots of disturbing threads to the stories as published in the British press. I hear them daily on radio, TV, internet and newspapers. The most disturbing, unexplicit, storyline is that the US conduct their internal investigations to find themselves innocent. For the USA it is reasonable that they ignore the standard NATO symbol for identifying NATO vehicles. For the USA it is reasonable to make sure evidence is not made available to NATO allies by lying, denying the existence of the cockpit tapes.
The crux of the different verdicts are reported as based around a difference in the UK and the USA ‘rules for engagement’ without these rules of engagement explicitly being reported, a British soldier comments that:
“the incident would not have happened if American troops had as strict rules as the British on opening fire.”
This is not a unique verdit, where the US has been (ir)responsible for the death of UK soldiers. The incident has an analogous dynamic to many USA’s engagements with other Nations and Nationals. The USA look gun-happy in so many ways, internal laws, internal crime statistics, international diplomacy and even in its dealings with its allies.
British people I meet wonder how I can stand to live in the USA, they variously refer to the USA as an immature, ignorant, greedy, fat, dishonest, sick, bully.
do your windows:
The situation is curable with the help of an interior designer and scientifically proven Window Treatments. 8/10 cat owners said their cats prefered Window Treatments to drapery. Window Treatments cure more windows than drapes, curtains, blinds or nets alone. Get some windows treatment now, you know it makes sense.
My voicemail recieved a pre-recorded message from the people that empty my bins: (US = ‘waste disposal service’).
thier tape recorder phones my tape recorder
The impending ‘weather event’ might interrupt my service. Not to worry! They’ll come next week and take twice the rubbish away. Hooray! Wonderfully polite and thoughtful.
‘weather event’?! Seattle services’ way of saying “snow“, “high winds“, ‘something not nice’, ‘some nastiness’ without causing customers to panic. Or, maybe they’re expecting a heat-wave and the bin service people to call in ‘sick’ as they dash to ‘reccuperate’ on the local beaches with their surf boards. ‘Weather event‘ certainly covers a broad range of possibilities.
Near me the weather event turned out to be a couple of hours of snow, producing ‘slush’ on the roads, local Seattle drivers aqua-planning or deserting their cars on the roadside. Some parts of the Seattle region collected over half a foot of snow. Meanwhile, LooSea didn’t even skid in our local 3 inches. Here are LooSea’s tracks mixed with evidence of people, cars and bicyles outside the Wendy House… …in the evening slush..
