My workmate Emma has cast me into a pit of despondency. It wasn’t even something she said to me. It was something she said to our 20-something colleague Declan. Declan was struggling with some recalcitrant technology and so Emma said, “Oh, whack it like Fonzie”.
Declan – did I mention he’s 20-something? – looked at Emma as if she was speaking a strange foreign language. He certainly didn’t know who or what a “Fonzie” might be. “Whack” isn’t part of his day-to-day language. And he was confused by the idea that he was being invited to physically attack a delicate piece of audio technology, one owned by his employer, a government instrumentality, especially as he normally looks up to Emma.
Emma, sensing his incomprehension, then changed her advice. “How about you switch it off and then on again?” she said. This Declan tried, to some considerable success, which led me to shout “Hurrah”.
Do what like who?
Yet the conversation left me feeling gloomy. If “whack it like Fonzie” is now considered incomprehensible, how many more outmoded expressions are sitting there in my kit bag? Starting, I guess, with kit bag.
When I was at school, the kit bag was used in cadets. It was a bag in which to keep one’s kit. Not me, of course. I wasn’t in cadets. I was the theatre chap. But “kit bag” is still my go-to expression.
I also say “Not Happy Jan” even though no one knows who Jan was, and if you tell people “she featured in a Yellow Pages advertisement 23 years ago”, they’ll say “Really? And what was the Yellow Pages?” Ten minutes on, and you’ll be trying to explain alphabetical reference books, landline phones, and TV ads that everyone saw.
Do they even know the much-loved face of Jan?
Such linguistic pitfalls litter the path ahead. The next day, rushing towards the lift, I saw a young colleague with whom I needed a word. The door lift was closing on him, so I just had time to say: “Can I see you Ron?”
“Ron”, maybe you know this, means “later on” to Australians of a certain vintage. We talk of saving a slice of cake “for Ron” and love the idea that this suggests some other bloke who’ll eat the cake, when really, yum-yum, it’s just us. All the same, the phrase may lack currency. Certainly, as the lift doors closed, the young man gave me a look which contained that most challenging of emotions: sympathy.
If I can summarise the look, it expressed the view: “Oh poor Richard, he’s so old he’s forgotten my name is Trent, and now he thinks I’m called Ron, which, frankly, is not a name that anyone my age has had for many decades. I wonder if there’s a charity for old journalists to which I could make a small donation.”
As the lift took off, I felt like running up the five flights of stairs, to confront him on his exit. “Huh, huh, huh, huh (that would be me trying to get my breath back), that Ron thing is just an expression, you know, it’s Aussie slang for….”
At that point, I’d collapse from the strain of the stairs, plus the embarrassment of my predicament, and he’d be forced to carry my body to the ambulance while thinking: “How weird that I’m saving his life, and yet he still thinks I’m called Ron”.
Of course, his generation is not the first to grapple with the inexplicable expressions of the past. My mother, throughout my childhood, spoke in a Lancashire patois which prevented me from ever understanding a single thing she said.
My mother described people being “as mad as a two-bob watch”, which, I later worked out, described watches that were so cheap their mechanisms worked in a haphazard manner. But she also criticised me for “sitting there like cheese at four pence” – a reference to inactivity, since cheese at four pence was, in her mind, so expensive it would just sit in the store window, unpurchased.
My mother’s phrases have not stood the test of time. These days, no one wants to buy a watch, certainly not a cheap one, even though they now cost less than those French cheeses with built-in botulism. These days it should be “sitting there like a $10 watch” and “as mad as an imported cheese”.
Yet, despite my mother’s cautionary example, I continue to pepper my speech with expressions no one understands. “That’s a Claytons policy” I might say about one political party’s gambling policy, only to be faintly offended that no one knows what I mean. Or, “it’s a joke Joyce”. Or, “don’t mention the war”. Or, “it’s only a flesh wound.” (References: Graham Kennedy, Fawlty Towers, Python).
Or I’ll reference films: “call that a knife”, “tell him he’s dreaming” or “you’re terrible, Muriel” only to see the furrowed brow of my interlocutor.
The only good news: mainstream media has been so chopped and diced by the TV streaming services there’s now no such thing as a shared reference. Drop a line from a TV show from two months ago, and you’ll still get the confused look.
Maybe I should write a list of all these references, new and old, and pin it on the office notice board. I’d do it, if it weren’t easier to leave it to Ron.
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