A is for Accents

I AM so posh I have eaten Beluga caviar sprinkled with saffron strands on a  bed of toasted olive focaccia. OK, it was fishpaste sprinkled with Sainsbury's dried mixed  herbs on toasted Mother's Pride - but at least I've heard of the other stuff. I have driven a Ferrari but dumped its owner in favour of the dearly beloved in his Morris 1100. Best move I ever made. The DB has now "upgraded" to a white Ford Transit van. That's social mobility for you.

Those who know me will  be completely shocked to hear I was not brought up posh. (No they won't.) My childhood was spent on a farm in the heart of rural Devon with two parents, six brothers and sisters and an extended family of lots of aunts, uncles and cousins. We all talked with a Devon accent. 

My father trained a few racehorses and as he became more successful had to mix with posher people but at no time did  he ever deviate from the accent he was born with and everyone loved him for it. Lord Oaksey once rode a horse of ours at Newton Abbot races and was unseated at the penultimate fence. When my father asked him in his broad accent: "What the bleddy 'ell 'appened?" Lord Oaksey replied in the poshest accent imaginable: "I fell orf the bugga!" They got on well, despite coming from opposite ends of the social scale.

So Dad always stayed true to his roots. Unlike me. I went to a grammar school after passing the 11+ and turned posh overnight - well, I didn't want to get beaten up. I am now a bit of a chameleon and my accent tends to match whoever I am talking to. I don't know I'm doing it and it can sometimes sound like I'm taking the piss but I'm not; I'm just crap at accents.

My foreign friends, especially those from America, think there are only two accents in Britain. We either talk like the Queen (my horsbund end I) or like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins (cor blimey, matey, let's get up them apples and pears). In fact, the accent changes about every 50 miles. 

So if you want to know what the Devon accent sounds like, here are April and June.

 

My favourite April and June video is the one below. I love the punchline!



If anyone wants a translation, I'm happy to provide it!
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I have, probably stupidly, included two blogs in this year's A to Z Challenge. My other one is over here.

The Village Idiots

LOOK, I'm a woman of the world - I've BEEN to Taunton. So nothing annoys the hell out of me more than people making assumptions about me on the basis of my age, the way I look, the way I talk or where I live.

Us down yer in the West Country suffer from this a lot. If you have any kind of an accent you are immediately labelled a carrot-crunching village idiot with straw for brains. As George Bernard Shaw said: "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."

I am, of course, being a little hypocritical because it works the other way. If I never hear another braying woman wittering on about her bargain bedspread woven from the pubic hair of Amazonian indians, it won't be a day too soon. (I've written about this before…..click here).

My friend, born and bred on a Devon farm, was chatting in the village pub to a couple who had just moved into the area. The conversation turned to food and the different varieties of bread. “We like ciabatta,” said the woman, “but I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it.” Why on earth wouldn’t she have heard of ciabatta? She can read. She has visited Italy. They sell it in the local Tesco, for God’s sake.
But she shook her head. “No, I don't think I have,” she replied. “But I did go to ‘Exeturrr’ once,” exaggerating her already quite long Rs.

The woman smiled as the heavy irony sailed miles over the top of her head, and chattered on about bread, giving detailed descriptions of focaccia and sourdough like a teacher lecturing a class of 10-year-olds.

Personally, I would have taken my long Rs and shoved them up hers.

For, you see, the main conflict between country folk and in-comers has nothing to do with taking our houses or swanning into the village at the weekend with carrier bags full of provisions from a little delicatessen in Notting Hill and then complaining when the local shop closes down, or joining all the local committees and trying to take over without any real knowledge about rural life – although all those things can be galling - but treating us like simpletons. Or worse, a different species.

They corner us in our natural habitat, the pub on a Saturday evening, and capture one of us, usually the oldest and scruffiest, and force him to perform. For the price of a drink they expect ‘the local character’ to entertain them. Old George may decide to play up to the stereotype and tell exaggerated stories in an impenetrable accent. He’ll take the role in exchange for free cider all night. He'll then go home to running his agricultural business which employs 200 staff.

This is harmless enough but there are those who expect to tame one of us and take us into captivity. They want their own ‘little man’ or ‘little woman’ who they can train to perform menial tasks. They can then tell their friends, “I’ve found the most perfect little gardener. Of course, I can’t trust him with my azaleas but he can do the small stuff.”

They leave a long list of tasks that if performed properly would take the best part of a day, but pay for two hours. They treat the cleaner like a Victorian downstairs maid. If they had a range, they'd be making her black-lead it. These two have bald patches and dodgy knees, what with all that tucking of forelocks and bobbing curtseys.

My partner makes bespoke furniture; he’s cabinet maker, a craftsman, justifiably proud of his work. But some people, charging hundreds of pounds an hour for their professional expertise somehow seem to think that he should charge minimum wage for his. Not only that but he should abandon a £25,000 job to pop round and fix their faulty hinge – and be grateful for the work. They look askance when the reply is, “Sorry, mate, I’m a bit busy.”

This may sound like we're an unwelcoming, insular bunch, but we're not. Our pubs are full of people who have moved here from other parts of the country. They have settled in and made friends - because they try to join in without taking over and because they are, I don't know, just NORMAL people not trying to put on an act.

We are a peaceable tribe on the whole. It’s just that we can spot a phoney from the other side of a swede field.