4.13 .06
Pond Scum: My Words
By Steve Finbow
-------------------------------------
Miss me? How long has it been? I missed you. No. I did. Honest. What has been happening with you? Did you tidy up your bedroom? Did you cut out that third cup of coffee? Did you get that Prince Albert you have been promising yourself? Things have changed in my life but you do not want to hear about that. You want scandal and intrigue. You want it down and dirty. You want to be spit-roasted like a squealing porn pig. You want it in both holes while you are tugging and sucking at the other end. Here goes.
By Nicholas Allanach
I am working on a film script. I did not write it. An American guy (bloke) wrote it. I am not going to give away the plot because I know there are thieves (tea leaves) out there. Suffice to say, it is a heist movie with a twist. What I have been asked to do is Cockneyfy it. (Cockneyfy does not go red on spell check for some reason.) The writer decided he wanted to set the movie in London (the Smoke) and that his characters would come, mostly, from London (Cockneys) with a smattering of Irish (Paddies), Welsh (Taffs), and Scots (Sweaties). My job is to go over the script and change any obvious Americanisms into Londonisms. Take swearing. Although I am quite Americanized, having lived in New York City, read thousands of American novels, and watched many American movies and television programmes, I do not think I have ever called anyone a motherfucker or a son-of-a-bitch. I have called people a tosser, a wanker, and a twat. I have called many people a cunt. Strangely, the seemingly inoffensive berk is actually Cockney rhyming slang – Berkshire hunt = cunt. However, it is not only the words that differ but where they appear in a sentence. Americans would say, “I am not fucking going to the hospital.” A Brit would say, “I am not going to the fucking hospital.” I would say, “I am not going to the hos-fucking-pital.” I have not gone over the top with this project. I do not have a character saying, “I’ll just give the trouble a good seeing to. Clean me Hampsteads. Put on me titfer and me Tonies. Drop the dustbins off. Then I will see you at the top of the frog and we’ll go down the rub-a for a pint of Gary. ‘Old on, me old China, my plates are killing me. I’ll be down the apple and pears as soon as I’ve finished on the dog. Innit?” Oh, no, not me. What-ho, old bean.
This brings me nicely to my mobile (cell) phone. It has a nifty little thing called “My Words” which allows one to add words to the phone’s dictionary. Here are my words: Calcutta, Casanova, bastard, caviar, Beelzebub, bitch, blinis, budgie, covent, crap, Argh!, asshole, cunt, Burroughs, DeLillo, Dickens, Finbow, dollface, Dolores, freaking, fuck, fucking, Duh-uh!, hairdresser, goddamn, Ishiguro, guffaw, kleptomaniac, Lola, Mao, milady, Ophelia, NYC, schucks, penis, piss, pissed, plonker, Soho, snorkel, Speedos, Stepford, strop, sweetcheeks, uhz, Underworld, Vollmann, Tourette’s, Trellick. Why they are not in alphabetical order is a mystery. What does this tell us about my use of language? Well, I have a potty mouth that is for sure. I like Russian food. I use my swimming costume to smuggle budgies. I have a penchant for 20s-style endearments, babykins. Where the Ophelia comes from is anyone’s guess. I have not read or seen Hamlet since the fag end of the punk/new wave era. If I remember correctly it was at the Royal Court Theatre, King’s Road, Chelsea, it starred Jonathan Price, and I was accompanied (I think we went to the Chelsea Potter for a few bevvies first) by the lovely but slightly mad Alison Stewart – my girlfriend at the time (for about a year, I think) who is now sadly deceased. But I digress. Have a look at your mobile (cell) and if it has the “my words” function, compile a list and send it to me and I will analyse the fucker.
I admit above that I have not seen or read Hamlet since The Moors Murderers played the Man in the Moon. There is a game played by characters in… oh, shit, it is either David Lodge’s Small World or Changing Places or Tim O’Brien’s Tomcat In Love; sorry, memory like a whatsitsname… anyway, the characters (mostly English literature academics) have to admit to never having read a famous book. Here is my small confession: I have never read Catch-22. There. It is out. Oh, I have started it. Many times. I have read the gumph, the blurbs, the puff, and the preface but I just cannot get past The Texan. I do not know why. I know many people find it difficult getting beyond the bananas in Gravity’s Rainbow, but I swung by them like a demented baboon. Heller’s other books look interesting but I fear I will never read them until I have read his magnum opus. But here are some books I have read since you last heard from me: non-fiction – I would recommend Rats by Robert Sullivan, Points of Departure by James Cameron, Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmond O’Hanlon, Tales from the Torrid Zone by Alexander Frater, and Why Do Men Have Nipples? by Mark Leyner. In fiction – Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll, American Gods by Neil Gaiman (I regressed to my adolescent love of fantasy – forget JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, check out HP Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson and the spookily brilliant John Collier), M/F by Anthony Burgess, and The Catastrophist by Ronan Bennett.
Wow! My word, that felt good. I feel satisfied, satiated, and spent. I am full up with love juice. OK. That is it. Will you all please extract your organs from mine? You can all roll off me now. Wipe yourselves down with my underwear if you must. Get dressed. And, please, do not bang the door on your way out.
Click here to read previous Pond Scum columns.
-------------------------------------
Click here for Steve Finbow's bio and a list of works published.
© 2006 Me Three
