dummy • Like a rubber nipple you give babies to shut them up. A pacifier.
Esther Rantzen • A terrifying woman on TV with big teeth. She is always saving people (even if they don’t want to be saved). She’s a do-gooder, which is good, but you wouldn’t under any circumstances want her to come round to your house and do any good there.
fag • Cigarette.
fancy-dress party • Costume party.
first former • Kids of about eleven who have just started “big” school. They have shiny innocent faces, very tempting to slap.
football • Soccer.
form • A form is what we call a class at English secondary schools. It is probably a Latin expression. Probably from the Latin “formus ignoramus.”
fringe • Goofy short bit of hair that comes down to your eyebrows. Someone told me that American type people call them “bangs” but this is so ridiculously strange that it’s not worth thinking about. Some people can look very stylish with a fringe (i.e., me) while others look goofy (Jas). The Beatles started it apparently. One of them had a German girlfriend, and she cut their hair with a pudding bowl and the rest is history.
Froggie and geoggers • Froggie is short for French, geoggers is short for geography. Ditto blodge (biology) and lunck (lunch).
full-frontal snogging • Kissing with all the trimmings, lip to lip, open mouth, tongues . . . everything. (Apart from dribble, which is never acceptable.)
games • Sports.
GCSE • General Certificate of Secondary Education.
glandular fever • Mononucleosis.
gorgey • Gorgeous. Like fabby (fabulous) and marvy (marvelous).
Guy Fawkes Night / Bonfire Night • November 5th. Called Guy Fawkes Night because Guy F. tried to blow up Parliament hundreds of years ago. He was caught, so they burnt him and Parliament was saved. Hurrah!!! Obviously we celebrate every year by building bonfires and burning replica Guys and setting off fireworks.
hair grip • Bobby pin.
have the painters in • An expression to indicate that a girl is . . . er . . . having her . . . you know whats. Oh, come on, you do know. Having her . . . er . . . well to put it plainly . . . her . . . well that the “red flag is flying,” that her “little friend has come to visit.” Period. Menstruation. Menses. Women trouble. Trouble at the mill. I can’t go on with this; it is making me tired.
hold-up stockings • Stockings that have grippy bits at the top so that you don’t have to wear a suspender belt or garters.
hols • Vacation. In olden days when bishops wanted a day off, they decided to have a Holy Day or, as it has become, a Hol-i-day. Shortened to hols for obvious reasons. (Life is too short to use long words.)
Along with the fact that Anne Boleyn, Henry Vlll’s wife, designed dresses with long sleeves because she had a sixth finger growing out of her little finger, this is the only thing I remember from history class.
“how’s your father” • A boy’s . . . er . . . penis (or penid as I thought it was until I was eleven). Well, you wanted to know.
jimjams • Pajamas. Also pygmies or jammies.
joggerbums • Trousers that you jog in. Jogging trousers.
jumping-jacks • A hellish combination. This is about twelve bangers all tied together. When a jumping-jack is lit, not only does it bang A LOT, but it leaps all over the place and chases you about. Banging. Boys think it is hilarious to light them and chuck them into a group of girls. As I said, boys are weird.
knickers • Panties, briefs, things you wear to conceal girlie parts. Boys don’t wear knickers; they wear underpants or boxer shorts. Some of them wear underpants that have a Union Jack or a funny joke on them. So Jas says, but she is, as we are all only too aware, mad.
lead • A long leather strap that you attach to a collar and put around animals’ necks. Then you can take them for ‘walkies” without them running under cars or attacking other animals. However, the exception is Angus. Even before he ate his lead it was more a case of him taking me for walkies, or rather me being dragged around behind him up and down hills and under cars as he searched for things to destroy (i.e., poodles.)
loo • Lavatory. In America they say “rest room,” which is funny, as I never feel like having a rest when I go to the lavatory.
maths • Mathematics.
Milk Tray • A type of box of chocolates.
mini • A really trendy car in the 60’s. It is now trendy again.
naff • Unbearably and embarrassingly out of fashion and nerdy. Naff things are: Parents dancing to “modern” music, blue eyeshadow, blokes who wear socks with sandals, pigtails. You know what I mean.
nappy • A cloth that goes on babies and toddlers (and sometimes very, very old people) to stop all their poo and other unwanted excretions going on the carpet, etc., and getting on everyone’s shoes. Diaper.
Neighbours • A really crap daytime soap opera set in a suburb in Australia. Kylie Minogue was in it.
NHS • National Health Service. A scheme where everyone pays some money out of their wages and you get free medical attention. Well, that is the theory, but if you get my doctor you’ll be lucky to get a cast even if your leg is dropping off.
nuddy-pants • Quite literally nude-colored pants, and you know what nude-colored pants are? They are no pants. So if you are in your nuddy-pants you are in your no pants, i.e., you are naked.
O-levels • “Ordinary” level exams that perfectly nice teenagers were made to take when they were about fifteen. Now called GCSE’s (General Certificate of Secondary Education). These exams are of course sadistically timed for the summer months by teachers, etc., who have no life and therefore want to spoil it for everyone else.
one-four-one • The code you dial before a number if you don’t want the person you are calling to be able to trace your number. Like a secrecy code.
Paloma • Paloma is a perfume made up by Paloma Picasso who is the daughter of the famous artist Picasso. Her dad used to paint people with eyes on their cheeks—he invented this. It is not bad art, apparently, but “abstract.” Anyone could say that about anything that was really crap. They could say, “No, you are mistaken, this is not a really bad drawing of a cow that looks more like a monkey, it is abstract art.” But perhaps I am cynical.
pence • English currency. We used to have pounds and shillings and pennies until we “went metric”; now we have pence (or pee). (Although try telling Elvis the school caretaker that we have gone metric; he lives in the twilight world of the very elderly. I don’t think he knows Queen Victoria is dead yet.)
pips • On a pay phone when the money you have put in runs out there is a “pip pip pip” noise to warn you to put another coin in, otherwise you will be cut off.
playschool • Nursery school, daycare.
po faced • A “po” is a sort of basin thing that goes under your bed, like a bedpan. In the old days very poor people would use a po instead of a lavatory. They then poured the contents of the po out onto the streets onto innocent passersby. Ergo “po faced” means someone who has a face like a lavatory bowl.
poxy • From Olde Englishe. “The pox” was crumbly horrible spots that Olde Englishe people got from not having proper lavatories. Or maybe it was rats. I can’t remember. Anyway, hence the expression “poxy” meaning horrible.
prat • A prat is a gormless oik. You make a prat of yourself by mistakenly putting both legs down one knicker leg or by playing air guitar at pop concerts.
pushchair • A little seat on wheels that you push children around in because they are either too little or too lazy to walk. Stroller.
PVC jacket • PVC is that shiny wet-look material that wotshername in The Avengers used to wear about a million years ago. It is fashionable again (although never on my mutti and vati). PVC has come back into fashion again, but some things never will. Culottes for instance. These will never be fashionable again; they never were, apart from with Swiss people. I rest my case fashionwise.
redundancy
• Layoff.
Reeves and Mortimer • Are a comedy double act. They are very mad indeed. But I like them.
Ribena • Black currant flavored drink.
Rolf Harris • An Australian “entertainer” (not). Rolf has a huge beard and glasses. He plays the didgeridoo, which says everything in my book. He sadly has had a number of hit records, which means he is never off TV and will not go back to Australia. (His “records” are called “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport,” etc . . .)
roll neck • Turtleneck.
romper suit • All-in-one garment that some sadist designed for children. The legs and body and arms are all joined together, which makes it impossible to get on or off. (And in Libby’s case if she has an accidental poo attack in one you can imagine the result.)
row • Argument.
rucksack • Like a little kangaroo pouch you wear on your back to put things in. Backpack.
runner • To escape. To run away. Hence the saying, “to do a runner.”
sandwich spread • Stuff in a jar that looks like throwup that you spread on bread.
Sellotape • Sellotape is a clear sticky tape. Usually used for sticking bits of paper to other bits of paper but can be used for sticking hair down to make it flat. (Once I used it for sticking Jas’s mouth shut when she had hiccups. I thought it might cure them. It didn’t, but it was quite funny anyway.)
shirty • Flustered and twitchy and coming on all pompous.
snogging • Kissing.
spot • Officially a blocked pore that gets all red and inflamed and sometimes has a white top on it. In reality something you get every time you need to look your best. You never get spots in concealed places—they are always on your nose or chin or on a sticky-out bit. Americans call them “zits” and I hope against hope this has nothing to do with the noise they make when you pop them.
stone • A measure of weight; it equals fourteen American pounds.
stroppy • Stroppy is a very useful expression and is a state in between having a nervy b (nervous breakdown) and a tantrum. For instance you would get stroppy or “throw a strop” if your mum would not let you borrow her Chanel handbag for no reason other than she says you would lose it. You would not quite have a nervy b because it is after all just a handbag. However you are perfectly entitled to get stroppy if you can’t have what you want.
swiz • An unfair thing. Another girl gets a boy you like, that is a swiz. One of your friends gets to pierce her navel and your boring vati won’t let you. This is an obvious double swiz.
swot • A person who has no life and as a substitute has to read books and learn things for school. Also anyone who does their homework on time.
tosser • A special kind of prat. The other way of putting this is “wanker” or “monkey spanker.”
trainers • Running shoes.
TTFN • Ta ta for now. Ta ta means “good-bye.” I think this is a World War II expression like “Chocks away” and “Luftwaffe at 5 o’clock,” but so much of life is a mystery to me, I can’t be absolutely sure on this one.
wally • See prat. A wally additionally has no clothes sense.
wet • A drippy, useless, nerdy idiot. Lindsay.
whelks • A horrible shellfish thing that only the truly mad (like my grandad, for instance) eat. They are unbelievably slimy and mucuslike.
Louise Rennison, Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging
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