The Cocky Companion (5)
By:
June 17, 2010
Every other week, Patrick Cates (HiLobrow’s Magister Ludi) produces The Sniffer, a PDF newsletter mailed to those who’ve pledged at least $10 to support our serialization of James Parker’s novel, The Ballad of Cocky the Fox. (Subscriptions are still available; check in with Cates for details.)
Each edition of The Sniffer features an extract from “The Cocky Companion,” a Rosetta Stone for decoding Cocky’s London vernacular. This week’s Sniffer (#5) includes the following glosses on vernacular from Parker’s Fit the Fifth.
BLOODY HELL: Just as there are conjectures in mathematics that elude proof by even the sharpest Cambridge minds, so there are phenomena in linguistics that defy, and will continue to defy, explanation by even the most talented of polyglots. To wit: Why does it sound so wrong when an American utters the profoundly British ejaculation “bloody hell”? Is it that the American renders the “oo” too roundly and the “d” without a scintilla of sibilance? Perhaps. So distressing to the English ear is this insipid American facsimile, that many Britons have fled the burning Troy of “bloody hell” and settled in the embryonic Rome of “shitting hell.”
TEAR-UP: Hyphens are everything. In this case, the humbly horizontal connector tells us that we’re dealing with fighting and not crying (although the fighting might lead to crying if it involves the testicles). Should you ever find yourself in a tear-up, don’t stand around wondering when the tearing happens and what gets torn. Just kick your fellow tearer in the bollocks.
SOD IT: There are no two syllables that better capture the laissez-faire defeatism and resignation of an island nation of post-imperialist discontents than “sod it.” “Germany vs Argentina in the final? Sod it. I’m going fishing.” “She’s not interested? Sod it. Give us another Stella, Gary.” “Nuclear catastrophe? Sod it. Got any peanuts?”
CACK: When an American gentleman announces to an English gentleman over the telephone that he is wearing “khaki pants,” the English gentleman stifles a guffaw. For he has heard “cacky” and he has taken “pants” to mean “underpants.” “Ha! Not only has this American oddball gone and shat himself, but he’s actually telling me about it!”
NORTH CIRCULAR: The best description of the North Circular, that miserable semicircle of solid traffic that was strangling London when the M25 was still a sketch on the back of a town planner’s envelope, is actually a wordless description. It’s a piece of music by the East London electronic experimenter, Squarepusher. Called simply “North Circular,” this six-minute agglomeration of beats, bleeps and analog farts is monotonous, claustrophobic, unsettling and occasionally scary. Most appropriately, it lasts three times as long as it should.
KIP: On Boxing Day of 1965, Ronnie and Reggie Kray sit down opposite Eddie and Charlie Richardson in the upstairs function room of a Soho boozer for the 5th Annual East London vs South London Gentleman Gangster Scrabble Competition. During the third game, Ronnie whispers to Reggie, receives a nod in response, and then lays down the word KIP on a triple-word square. The word doesn’t yet exist and Ronnie knows this. As he places the tiles on the board, he stares straight into the Richardsons’ faces and awaits the inevitable. “KIP? What the fuck does KIP mean? Are you taking fucking liberties?” Ronnie doesn’t blink. A moment or two of silence. “It means…” Another pause. His eyes dart around and let the cat out of the bag. “It means… sleep.” On the other side of the table, brows furrow and lips curl. “Fuck off it does.” Charlie Richardson flings the board up in the air and, under a hailstorm of plastic letters, it all kicks off. A brawling mess of brother bosses and their sidekicks. The ruckus rumbles down the pub stairs and out into the street. There is blood and shouting and fleeing. But eventually, Greek Street settles down again and the hiding bystanders rear their heads. Before the night is out, London begins commemorating this electrifying brains-and-brawn showdown by replacing all talk of “sleep” with that of “kip.”
Each installment of THE BALLAD OF COCKY THE FOX was complemented by an issue of THE SNIFFER, a COCKY THE FOX newsletter written and edited by Patrick Cates. Originally sent only to subscribers, they are now all freely available here.