Oggy, oggy, oggy

I find regional dialects all too easy to pick up.

Having come from the land of cockney rhyming slang, no turn of phrase is too preposterous for me.

I used to knock around a bit in Somerset where locals would call each other ‘babba’. It sounded so affectionate and endearing – so much softer than the London trend of calling everyone ‘love’. It stuck to the roof of my mouth like Dairylea, and wouldn’t come down.

Worse than that, it’s impossible to say "alright, my babba?" without employing a hugely exaggerated southwest twang. And use it, I do. Frequently. Now other friends have complained that they’ve picked it up from me, and I’ve vowed to cut down its usage.

It only takes a short while to overhear and adopt the idosyncrasies of regional language, but some are better known than others.

In research carried out by Travelodge, 40% of the country recognised the ‘affectionate’ Cornish name-calling of tourists as 'emmets', while only 20% knew that an 'oggy' is a pasty.
Having said that – when was the last time you actually heard someone other than your dad call it an oggy?

Just 2 hours up the road in Cheddar, some good friends of mine refer to me, an outsider, as a 'grockle'.
I think I prefer this term, as said with something of a London twang, a grockle sounds like a warm fuzzy feeling one might get after having a long hot bath – “oooh, I’m feeling a bit grockle...”.

From what I can tell, however, it means exactly the same as ‘emmet’, just applied to a different part of the Southwest - a mildly derogatory term for anyone who isn't local.

But even the locals disagree on the definitions sometimes. A colleague of mine assures me the term ‘emmet’ only applies to someone who has actually moved, and is now living somewhere they weren’t born locally.

The Urban Dictionary however (I won’t link it due to some of its over-enthusiastic characterisation of the stereotypical tourist) most definitely applies it purely to those tourists (mainly northerners) who sun themselves on the Cornish beaches between the months of July and August.

One thing is for sure – I am bound by birth to never be able to thrown my hands in the air and raise my eyes to heaven at the summer traffic jams to cry ‘bloody emmets!’. Bit of a shame really.

I will just have to start my own lingo.

Drunk dialer

I think I could do with one of these. Or rather, the people around me could do with one of these.

Step aside in-car breath tests, step up the breath test for email.

Are you sure you want to send this email? Are you really, really sure?

The Urban Dictionary defines the problem thus:

So it is with a collective sigh of relief that at long last a safeguard has been designed to stop one rattling off a message when ‘emotionally charged’ (or indeed, my personal favourite, ‘alcoholically challenged’).

Brainchild of an employee at Google, activating late at night and on weekends, the gismo asks a series of ‘short mathematical posers’ (love that phrase) which you have to answer before the email or text sends.

Now, ordinarily I’d like to think myself supreme enough to be able to answer a ‘short mathematical poser’ even after a few jars, but wise with the experience of ballsing up about a hundred late-night sudokus while on the last train home, I know different. It’s harder than you think.

Having been on the receiving end of many a drunken email and text, and admittedly sending a couple myself, this can surely only be a good thing.

My only worry – don’t make them too hard, guys. Otherwise I can imagine, even without the dealy ingredient of alcohol, struggling after about 3 o’clock every day.