Friday 15 July 2011

A Quart of Whelks, Please, Guv


Two nations separated by a common language indeed! The little seaside stalls that are so numerous near the harbour sell cockles and mussels, prawns, whelks (saltwater snail-like mollusks with grey or brownish shells), and so on in little plastic containers called pots, but on the two occasions that I’ve ordered a pot of whelks the local behind the counter, frowning in confusion, has started filling up a pint glass of the sort from which a Brit might sip ale that tastes like soap at a “pub”.
A few days ago, after I’d walked Claire’s dog, a fellow around the corner seemed to want to talk to me about her (the bitch, not Claire). I was only barely able to surmise that he was trying to ascertain if Jessi is a greyhound or whippet.  And when Claire and I meet her dear friend Dave at the pub, he and I exhaust each other, I from asking him constantly to repeat himself, and he from constantly repeating himself. At the same time, the locals, if I don’t say pot, are invariably able to understand me just fine.
I have two choices here, I can think myself an imbecile (a conclusion Claire believes my new Royal Wedding commemorative mobile phone confirms) or hearing-impaired, or I can hypothesize that I’m dealing with accents to which I’ve not been much exposed, whereas the Brits have been hearing my own accent on TV all their lives.
I bought my mobile phone, by the way, because it was £1, and because I suspected it would inspire the sort of person who gets excited at the sight of a mullet to snicker derisively. Others may prod bears with sticks, but I have long preferred to bait the sort of person who imagines himself with-it-, arty, and cultured because he’s come to understand that mullets are supremely unfashionable. 
I suspect there are those who might shudder at the idea of eating the whelks as I do, without first extricating their tiny intestines (or, as we like to euphemistically call prawns’, veins), but I believe that that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. I have not yet mustered the daring for jellied eels.

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