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| Nah, this isn't it, but it's vaguely similar |
Here's a true tale of something that happened around 34 or 35 years ago that I've suddenly just remembered. I was walking home one evening, along a route that took me past a school, when I suddenly noticed that the bottom glass panel of a door had been kicked in. I was all for passing on, when curiosity got the better of me. Perhaps someone had broken the pane to gain access, and maybe they were still inside. If so, they'd be bound to be teenagers, and I was then strong, fit, and confident that I could look after myself - even against more than one person. (Maybe one day I'll relate a couple of events that demonstrate I'm not just confusing ambition with ability. Hark - is that John Williams' SUPERMAN theme I hear?)
Anyway, I walked over to the door and crouched down at the aperture, listening to hear if I could detect any sounds of activity from within, but there was nothing. I decided to call the police when I got home and alert them to the vandalism, assuming that they'd check to see if anyone was on the premises. Thing is, by the time I got home, I was so lost in thought that I took the dog out for a walk and forgot all about it, and never did call the local constabulary. When I eventually remembered a couple of days later, I figured it was too late to bother and that the door would have had at least a temporary repair effected by then anyway.
Cut to quite a while later. I no longer recall whether it was weeks or months afterwards, but I know it wasn't in the immediate aftermath. As I was again walking home one night, I heard one of two or three passing boys say to the other(s) "That's the guy who broke into the school!"* It was a mumble, and at first I had to think whether I'd heard right, but that's what it sounded like. Of course, by then, I'd completely forgotten about the broken panel, and it took me a while to work out what the boy could've been referring to. (Which is why I know it wasn't any time soon after the event.) Then it hit me - the boy must have seen me (from some hidden vantage point) crouching beside the door, listening, and assumed I'd been the culprit.
I fully expected a chap at my door at some stage after that, but nothing ever came of it. It bothered me though (still does in fact) to discover that I was viewed as the perpetrator of the very crime I'd intended to report, but didn't. These boys will be all grown up by now with wives and kids of their own, and I can't help but wonder if they still remember me and consider me a vandal or a burglar. The school seemed to be a regular target for neds, as some years later it fell victim to arson, sadly necessitating its demolition and the construction of a new building in its place. The new edifice was more like a fortress than a school, but given its history, is it any wonder?
Anyway, this has been a rambling reminiscence - I hope you found it worth your while to read.
*There's another possibility of course. It now occurs to me that the boy might've said "That's the guy from when we broke into the school!", meaning that they were the perpetrators and had seen me crouched at the door, or had seen me through a window walking away. I'd really only heard the key words... 'guy - broke into - school'... and filled in the blanks to make sense of it, so I could've got it wrong.
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*There's another possibility of course. It now occurs to me that the boy might've said "That's the guy from when we broke into the school!", meaning that they were the perpetrators and had seen me crouched at the door, or had seen me through a window walking away. I'd really only heard the key words... 'guy - broke into - school'... and filled in the blanks to make sense of it, so I could've got it wrong.
12 comments:
"I fully expected a chap at my door..."
My father also used the word "chap" meaning knock at the door :D
Maybe I should've said a chap ON the door, just to make it clearer, CJ. I wonder if 'chap' for 'knock' is a Scottish thing?
Kid, a chap AT the door was perfectly clear.
And 'chap' for 'knock' probably is a Scottish thing.
Some more of my father's words: kist meaning chest (the kind you keep things in) and stank meaning drain. Are they familiar to you?
I'm not too familiar with 'kist', but I certainly am with 'stank'. Whenever we lost any marbles through a drain grating, we'd say "Ach, it's gone down the stank!" 'Burn' is another one, which means a watercourse or small stream.
I haven't heard of "Kist" for chest used in many a year Colin, but I recall my gran using that if I had a "cold in my kist" etc. Stank is a brilliant word and it describes what it is perfectly (although I used to lose "my bools doon the stank" I wasn't posh enough to have marbles). One of my favourites is "Sataboot" as in "what is that all about!" We have such a rich language no wonder no one understands us.
Apologies, PM, I had to cut and paste your comment after correcting a typo in mine, in order to keep them in sequence. Is 'sataboot' an actual word though, or just the way we pronounce 'what's that about'?
And isn't 'bools' our way of pronouncing the second syllable of 'marbles'? I know it's also how we say 'bowls' (as in game of bowls), but I think it's also a contraction of 'marbools'.
Yeah "sataboot" is just the way some of us say that phrase , it just tickles me. Wasn't aware of the word "marbools" that's interesting.
I didn't mean to suggest that 'marbools' is an actual word, PM, but more the way we Scots tend to pronounce 'marbles'. (So it's more phonetic than an actual word.) Hence, possibly, why some people refer to them as 'bools'.
So it goes like this: the 'bles' of 'marbles' sounds like 'bowls', which is then uttered as 'bools', either as slang, or deliberately, or because that's the way it's pronounced depending on what part of Scotland you come from. After a time, it just became the way everyone (in Scotland) referred to them. That's my theory anyway.
My father left Glasgow and moved to London around 1950 so over the following decades he dropped most of his Scottish pronunciation, except in a few cases. I know 'burn' for stream but that's quite a well-known Scottish word as is 'kirk' for church. In the famous poem "The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge the Mariner sets out from his homeland and sails
Below the kirk,
Below the hill,
Below the mountain-top...
...so was the Ancient Mariner supposed to be Scottish??
By a fortunate coincidence, he just happens to be visiting me right now, so I'll ask him... hey, Mariner...
I'm not sure whether 'kirk' is exclusively Scottish or not though, CJ, so the answer to your question is... I dunno.
Looked it up, CJ. Apparently (if I understand correctly), it's Norwegian in origin (derived from Greek), and as well as Scotland, is used in the north of England. Who'da thunk it?!
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