The English Game

One of the natural advantages of being English is our reputation for dissimulation and hypocrisy, which means that most anything we say may have whichever interpretation we choose at any given moment. This in turn means that the merest thing can be turned into the most outrageous innuendo with barely an ounce of effort.

A demonstration: see what happens when you add the coda "that is not an innuendo" to any phrase. Such as...

"I've just put a load of washing in the tumble drier. That is not an innuendo."
"Downloads of The Bottom Line are available on-line. That is not an innuendo."
"There'll be a substantial bit of spotted dick in it for you. That is not an innuendo."

No wonder the well-oiled grannies of the shires are banging away on the cottage upright in celebration of the wonderful tongue of old England.

National Poetry Day

Place-Names of China
Written by Alan Bennett

Bolding Vedas! Shanks New Nisa!
Trusty Lichfield swirls it down
To filter beds on Ruislip Marshes
From my lav in Kentish Town

The Burlington! The Rocheter!
Oh those names of childhood loos -
Nursie rattling at the door knob:
'Have you done your Number Twos?'

Lady typist - office party -
Golly! All that gassy beer!
Tripping home down Hendon Parkway
To her improved Windemere.

Here I sit, alone at sixty,
Bald and fat and full of sin,
Cold the seat and loud the cistern
As I read the Harpic tin.

By popular demand

Concerning the vision of loveliness that walked through the door, the charitable observer could only think she had a kind heart. Many are the words defined as beyond the pale in civilised society; a good number of these could be traced in her varicose veins. Time had passed by the stains on her T-shirt and so, I think, should we.