"Neil experienced some confusion when he first came to New Zealand because of the word pissed". Nothing to the horror that overcame me when, a day or two after first arriving in NZ, a new acquaintance invited me to accompany him to a party he'd been invited to with te words "we might as well go over there and drink their piss".
I’m going to pay more attention to the young’uns over here in Australia. I haven’t noticed biscuits being replaced with cookies or your other examples. But maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention!
On the topic of biscuits, an American FB friend who spends a few months in Australia every year recently posted a photo of a supermarket biscuit section and proceeded to educate his American friends about how important biscuits are in the Australian “diet”. Most of his US friend were taken aback because apparently “biscuits” just aren’t really a “thing” in the US! Who knew?
Love the way you slipped in “small bikkies” - that just wouldn’t work with cookies would it?
When my NZ-born, Australian-dwelling brother comes home for a holiday, he always stocks up on all his favourite biscuits and lollies. I'm talking hundreds of dollars worth. I do have a photo somewhere of one of these biscuit shopping sprees
When I first moved to North Carolina, here in the southeastern U.S., back in the 1980s, I was struck by the phrases “might could” and “might should” as well as one of my personal favorites “cut half in two.” Traveling in the mountains, I sometimes heard the old grammar/syntax of earlier times—“I knowed” or “I known” rather than “I knew.” “Fixin’” for “getting ready (I’m fixing to take my dog for a walk). “Liked to have” as in “almost” or “could have”—“He told that joke and I liked to have peed in my pants.”
My friends who grew up in the South still drop these sorts of phrases into their speech from time to time, but regional vernacular speech has pretty much been drowned out, first by radio, then by TV, same as everywhere else.
Regarding the old gardeners secret, I find it's better not to tell consumers how your produce managed to grow so well. Apparently Queen Victoria's gardener had that habit also.
Another hot vintage tip from the Farmer is using the fine tilth off the top of molehills for potting mix! Apparently, bonus fact, one can find interesting things in molehills, ceramic fragments etc. The technical term for the moles digging stuff up for you is 'bioturbation'. In some no-dig archaeological sites in the U.K., Roman ruins etc., archaeologists are allowed to molehill-comb.
I wrote this Note between my last post, On Joy, and this one. I put it in the comments there, and I'll put it here, too, because otherwise Notes tend to fall down the memory-hole. I often feel that my writing is just a weaving of webs of connection between related things (on a scale of directly to tangentially to tenuously). It's interesting that it's a kind of writing only possible online- the embedding of links and songs and so on, I mean.
"Neil experienced some confusion when he first came to New Zealand because of the word pissed". Nothing to the horror that overcame me when, a day or two after first arriving in NZ, a new acquaintance invited me to accompany him to a party he'd been invited to with te words "we might as well go over there and drink their piss".
I’m going to pay more attention to the young’uns over here in Australia. I haven’t noticed biscuits being replaced with cookies or your other examples. But maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention!
On the topic of biscuits, an American FB friend who spends a few months in Australia every year recently posted a photo of a supermarket biscuit section and proceeded to educate his American friends about how important biscuits are in the Australian “diet”. Most of his US friend were taken aback because apparently “biscuits” just aren’t really a “thing” in the US! Who knew?
Love the way you slipped in “small bikkies” - that just wouldn’t work with cookies would it?
When my NZ-born, Australian-dwelling brother comes home for a holiday, he always stocks up on all his favourite biscuits and lollies. I'm talking hundreds of dollars worth. I do have a photo somewhere of one of these biscuit shopping sprees
Does it involve Tim Tams? 😂
Likely.
When I first moved to North Carolina, here in the southeastern U.S., back in the 1980s, I was struck by the phrases “might could” and “might should” as well as one of my personal favorites “cut half in two.” Traveling in the mountains, I sometimes heard the old grammar/syntax of earlier times—“I knowed” or “I known” rather than “I knew.” “Fixin’” for “getting ready (I’m fixing to take my dog for a walk). “Liked to have” as in “almost” or “could have”—“He told that joke and I liked to have peed in my pants.”
My friends who grew up in the South still drop these sorts of phrases into their speech from time to time, but regional vernacular speech has pretty much been drowned out, first by radio, then by TV, same as everywhere else.
Oh man, I love that. It's so colourful
Thanks Rosie,
Regarding the old gardeners secret, I find it's better not to tell consumers how your produce managed to grow so well. Apparently Queen Victoria's gardener had that habit also.
Another hot vintage tip from the Farmer is using the fine tilth off the top of molehills for potting mix! Apparently, bonus fact, one can find interesting things in molehills, ceramic fragments etc. The technical term for the moles digging stuff up for you is 'bioturbation'. In some no-dig archaeological sites in the U.K., Roman ruins etc., archaeologists are allowed to molehill-comb.
Omg molehill combing is a concept I never knew I needed in my life!!! ❤️
I wrote this Note between my last post, On Joy, and this one. I put it in the comments there, and I'll put it here, too, because otherwise Notes tend to fall down the memory-hole. I often feel that my writing is just a weaving of webs of connection between related things (on a scale of directly to tangentially to tenuously). It's interesting that it's a kind of writing only possible online- the embedding of links and songs and so on, I mean.
https://substack.com/@rosiewhinray/note/c-70081590