Local Lingo and Verbalities

Things heard regularly wandering around Cambridge. These were not heard used by the teachers, bankers, estate agents or Michael's work colleagues I have been in contact with.

1. Hiya - this is the common greeting used between locals who are familiar with one another. ie - bus drivers, or minimart(the local to where we are staying is called 'Sparklemart' and has a length of the neon Christmas lights wrapped awkwardly around the name) owners and regular customers. (said with an upward lilt)
Meaning - hello you

2. Not a bob'o'bother - heard by shop assistants to customers. (run together so that the alliteration and assonance almost drown out the remainder, took a while to interpret this one) Meaning - no trouble (a bob being a pound, which means that it may have originally meant that it was a some effort but not wasted?)

3. All righ'dearie - this only heard in 'Valerie's Passtiere'. All the waitresses are EU students, I had to repeat myself 2-3 times when there for a coffee, obviously my antipodean accent made my English harder for them to understand. This was a set phrase that the three girls used to all the female customers. Sitting alone in a busy restaurant without a book ensures minute aural observations. Someone must have told them that 'Mrs' is not an appropriate address for them to use so they have adopted this slightly patronising term, with their enthusiasm and high pitch is was really only funny. When a tourist of the same origin arrived they chatted away in their own lingo without a dearie in hearing.
Meaning - are you happy? Do you have what you need? Would you like to sit here? (A very versatile phrase)

4. Lettings
Meaning - rental accommodation.

5. Reception rooms
Meanings - lounge, sitting room, dinning room, anywhere a guest may be entertained.

6. River folk - not heard by locals but used by Kevin on the TV show Grand Designs after our walk down the river.
Meaning - those that have renounced regular permanent accommodation and choose to make their wandering homes in a canal boat. Related to the term - circus folk.

7. Rising Bollards - (not a nasty disease of one's lower regions) traffic controls that separate the optimistic from the pessimistic.  Do you take the quick route and hope they are down or a long detour to avoid disappointment.  Surely there is a black market for the lowering transmitter that all buses and taxis have.

There are always large groups of tourists or school groups enthusing vocally in their own language with their own patterns of gestures, the Cambridgians(we're not actually sure what people who call Cambridge home call themselves but Michael came up with this term) completely ignore them until addressed personally in attempted English when they normally reply with "what you want is ...."

Another hilarious experience I have had, observed but didn't realise how commonplace it was until reading a comic called 'How to be British' in the Fitzwilliam Museum, is the complex and over detailed giving of directions. When I asked where the public toilets were of a shop assistant in Boots(a chemist not a shoe shop) I received a very long explanation complete with hints about the usefulness of various landmark stores I'd be passing etc. not at all useful for someone without an intimate familiarity of the place.

Finished reading: Death at Pemberley. Not a very good mystery but her interpretation of the Austin characters improved through the book. Wickham got his ninth life and she managed to allude to several other Austin novels in the dovetailing of clue explanations.

Now Reading: The Gardens of Light by Amin Maalouf an illumination of Manicheanism in novel form.
'Let's admit that I hid some things from you, but I told no lies. If I saw a blossom in bud on this plum tree and said, "Here is a plum," would I be lying? Not at all. I would simply have anticipated the truth by one season." ' p 41

"...time is merely the cask in which myths mature..." p43