A Dictionary of Historical Slang. And the horrors of the United Kingdom

This blog has become the runt of the litter over the last few months due to the myriad demands on your dear narrator but no more. It shall cast aside its status as runt as ascend to the heavens like any good underdog should. I've got a dictionary to spank about below and it might be worth reading if you want to expand your knowledge of expletives and how to chat like a 18th century vagabond. 

But for the time being I wanted to bring your attention to the above, which is taken from the Howard League for Penal Reform journal (insert blah quote about Dostoyevsky and judging society yadda yadda yadda) which puts into context the Guardian offering weekend breaks to Tripoli in the middle of a civil war. The article in question focuses on why we ( the British people) place some much faith in trial by jury which is frankly a bit worrisome when most people are complete morons who can barely follow the plot of Eastenders let alone complex trial led by men in wigs.

What is most damning is the response to the question "To equal treatment entering and leaving the UK irrespective of race or colour". In 2000 82% strongly endorsed this right (okay 18% of the population are still racist which isn't great but we'll live to fight another day) but by 2010 only 66% felt this was important. Fair enough the insidious Murdoch press has set about gutting the UK of any moral fibre and the Tories are using immigration as the putty to hold together their feckless ideology together but shurely, surely, surely we should be able to recognised that race or colour shouldn't make a blind bit of difference. 

Personally, I still blame Konnie Huq. The moment she ruined Blue Peter, the death knell of the United Kingdom rang out loud and true and we all died a little.

Anyway, onto things more fun. A dictionary of Historical Slang, picked up in an occult bookshop near the Strand for less money than a copy of Razzle but it is at least ten times a filthy. And unlike most dictionaries it has a humorous front cover which hints at the joyous irreverence of the editor.  

The entry for fuck is a work of genius and opens up some many avenues of filth that at first one is overwhelmed but then the potential for indecency is fully perceived for the first time. And lo it is mighty fine. And lets be honest, most, if not all, people who first pick up a dictionary immediately find themselves scrolling through the letter "F" until their eyes rest upon the word fuck and chortle absentmindedly.

 For example, "Michael Gove you are a man of unscrupulous kidney and a total fuck beggar." Brilliant. And true. So everyone is a winner.

I.e. Gideon Osborne is a pig-widgeon.

 I.e. Eric Pickles is a Bartholomew-Boar Man, which gives that bloater and unwarranted air of drama and romance akin to a distant back woodsman rather than Tory putrescence.

What a bunch of dicks.

This blog entry is not about dictionaries you will all be devastated to know, as I'm far too interesting to limit myself to just Ugly Jesus and dicks, however pretty they may be. But this is about dickery of an all together higher quality.

Firstly, a disclaimer. Now, I read the Guardian and love its delightful mixture of indignation, absurdly pretentious clothing that only crytpo-facist bankers could afford and the fact that Comment is free forms about 25% of my job description but occasionally you despair. Oh and when they select a "wreck of the week" they choose a derelict French chateaux with only one standing wall that will only cost £123,456,789 to repair. These are all editorial decisions driven by the fact that the Manchester Guardian, once the voice of the working class, is now read by a small cult of media luvvies, guilt - ridden Londoners who want to change the world but couldn't possibly start without ensuring they had an adequate supply of Chateauneuf du Pape and other well meaning but ultimately hopeless brigands but advertising a trip to Libya seems a bit silly to me. Although, I'm sure William Hague might well have promoted his adviser had someone recommended this 8 day trip rather then using the SBS to harass some local farmers.

This was on their website yesterday (14th March 2011). Brilliant. I'd like to think you could probably negotiate a handsome discount if you were to ty and book this holiday anytime soon, given the almighty fuck up that is unfolding there, despite David Cameron's best effort to come across like a man of action and not an effete bout of flatulence. And I suppose it might be targeting those who like a bit more authenticity in their holidays so that when they return to Crouch ENd they can show their daughter Zulieka the real piece of shrapnel embedded in their faces and then write into the Guardian magazine experience column saying "I went on holiday in a war zone and my ipad saved my life." It's presumably only a matter of time before the advert appears for a surfing trip to Japan. The Dolts.

Surely a more appropriate use for advertising space regarding Libya might be for the Red Cross or a link to the rebel's just giving page so that they can buy some more British made weapons so that they can not get totally fingered by ol' Gadaffi. And help save those struggling arms companies keep Britain's economy going.

A Dictionary of Science

This book is, quite frankly, a work of utter genius not in a Dave Eggers sense but the old school brilliant way. The classy, unadorned cover makes this the book equivalent of that grandfather we all have, or all should have, that shames you by wearing a tie even when asleep (and also calls the local cab driver "that giant negro fellow.") Similarly, just as ones grandfathers knowledge of all things ended in about 1955, when he retired, this book has not aged well and would doubtless lead any keen young scholar  trying to pass his eleven plus astray. Although clearly they should being to the local comp rather than succumbing to lure of the local toffery.

In fact this mighty tome probably underpinned the scientific knowledge of two of my educational nemeses while at prep school and some other silly school that rather shames my socialist leanings. Mr. Preece was a noted incompetent famed for his scientific horror stories including the famed story of the man who ate a pork scratching and ended up having all his limbs amputated (I'm not really sure what the moral of that particular story was but I've yet to eat a pork scratching for fear of ending up like a creation of Dalton Trumbo) and the dangers of carbon monoxide (you get sleepy, ever so sleepy and then ...... YOU DIE). He also managed to leave me and another young private school boy behind in the Science Museum leaving us vulnerable to the evil glances of passing Paedophiles and slack jawed yokels from passing comprehensive schools with their radical hair styles and unpolished shoes. As for Mr. Croft, you Sir got your comeuppance when that heaven sent seagull fired down that angelic shit onto your head whilst you trundled along a beach on the Isle of Wight. Never has being a 10 year old fat, gruddily ginger prep school boy been so utterly wondrous. Sadly, it all ended in tears when we managed to accidentally flood our hotel and had to leave the island under armed guard.

And just to prove how amazing this dictionary is I've included my favourite entry (well second favourite after heroic zero nought definition that is a work of art) that I'm sure will have fallen out of any contemporary dictionary of science despite it being a key part of modern civilisation. The electric bell. Amazing. Like the Dictionary of embroidery, it is this sought of basic knowledge that will put me at the forefront of post-Rapture society. 

Mary Thomas's Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches

When first purchased Mrs. Big Dicks [phwoar], for I managed to snare an innocent before revealing my darker side, was somewhat cynical about this dictionary but it has proved itself to be an invaluable addition to the household. Our lodger, Sir Alexander Fairfax-Cholmeley was so overcome by delight upon seeing it on our shelf he was compelled to immediately call his mother (who also owns a copy) and then once that trip down maternal memory lane was complete latheringly regaled us with stories about how he once used the lesser seen Albanian heterodox latinate reverse stitch to re-attach a button to his favourite great coat whilst simultaneously winning the under-14 Duns Tew Croquet championship. 

And given our increasingly straitened times owning a repository of every stitch known to man and how to deploy it on some unsuspecting piece of fabric will prove invaluable. So when the Rapture comes and all those holier than thou muppets that you've spent valuable time sniggering at ascend to heaven and water turns to blood and most things fall apart I will immediately one up on the rest of the doomed population of the  Earth and will soon be able to have London Fashion Week back up and running. 

The Time Literary Supplement, no less, states that "Nothing is too complicated or too simple for Miss Thomas... This book will do much to improve the already rising standard of work in England; it is delightful in every respect" while the Scotsman, somewhat oddly, focuses on "the cover of the book, [which] by the way, is not the least of the charms." While the cover, shown above, can't compare to the cover of a piece of contemporary chick-lit emblazoned with a with a giant spurting phallus and a pair of Jimmy Choos I think the Scotsman might be being little contrary. That said a nice stout font embossed on the linen cover is slightly hornifying, is it not?

Just for good measure, I include a copy of the first page of the Dictionary of Stitches and the Algerian Filling Stitch, which is embellished with a nice jaunty illustration of suitably stereotypical image of something Arabic like a camel being fed a large piece of water melon by a small negro child. Stitching and casual old school racism. I mean this is bound to be a big seller in the care homes of Dorset. The rice stitch is illustrated by an equally tasteful mushroom cloud over a cross-legged Japanese man. I might have made that bit up. But I might not. 

If you weren't a fan of this blog five minutes ago, how can you not be now? Insight, rapture, filth, silly aristos. Press control-D now and make your life a slightly better place.

The next dictionary will be little bit more filthy so I can include lots of expletives, as much like the internet is a conduit for porn the first thing most people do with a big dick [not me anyway] is to look to see if it contains the word "fucknut" and how it is best deployed in modern conversational English.  

A Flava of the sort of profound shit to come.

I was seriously tempted to write this particular blog in a font entitled "Irish Growler", because if that didn't attract passing pornographers, what will? What possesses a typesetter to call a font "Irish Growler" and who would ever use it? Maybe the IRA? Or the Real IRA just to prove how mean they are.

Anyway, I digress in as far as I have a vague point to make. It is not very often you come across any profound dictionary quotes so when I was on the tube reading this evening, having just had my evening wasted enduring the latest bit of Coen Brothers frippery, I came across this.......

"We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect."
                                  - Stan Collymore lamenting the inability of football commentary to describe the game.

I could continue with some profound analysis of words and dictionaries but I've got a bagel to eat and Chelsea vs. Fulham to fret over. However, this is just the sort of cutting, thoughtful stuff that this blog will become known for among its untold number of followers.

Spurting Dictionaries

For all the web 2.0 chicanery which dominates the broadsheets these days it is often forgotten that really, deep down, the internet is just a conduit for conveying pornography to the world, so the only way to make this blog really attract any web traffic is to splatter it with odd snippets of filth in the hope that some randy teenager stumbles across your website whilst trying to navigate with only one hand hoping to find some chutney banditry or what Richard Keys would describe as "smashing."

In order to facilitate my own rise through the ranks to internet stardom, and hopefully an Aaron Sorkin penned script about my hitherto crapulent existence, I've created a page called big dicks (and the prep school boy within me is already blushing and guffawing [almost certainly sic] and giggling like a sexually immature newt) to try and ensnare some traffic onto my site.

Big Dicks is not sadly for those who like a bit of long schlong and sadly we have no pictures of teams of clydesdales getting deep but an index of my burgeoning collection of Dictionaries, Encyclopaedias and Cyclopedias. And if you're really lucky I might even include my favourite entry. But frankly that might be pushing it.

So bad luck to our one handed friends. But I'm sure with only a few clicks or mice they'll find something suitably lurid. The dictionary of slang can be very blue and if you don't believe me google Black Shrimp.

This will probably receive even fewer hits than Ugly Jesus but what the hell, it might raise a smile among the passing onanist and keeps me from thinking how utterly horrid most of the world is. HUZZAH.