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Source: (consider it) Thread: The Pond Gap
Custard
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# 5402

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I once boycotted a sports equipment shop because of a large poster which said "Some people have got it. Others don't."

Others don't got what?

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blog
Adam's likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp thine image in its place.


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Jane R
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Ariel:
quote:
Here's the Wikipedia guide to U and non-U English. Enjoy.
If you worry about whether calling that thing you sit on a sofa or a settee marks you as socially inferior you are most definitely non-U.

We call it a couch. [Devil]

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venbede
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# 16669

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quote:
Originally posted by Yam-pk:
(To be fair, most of the Mitfords were fascists, so not sure how much weight to give such unutterable rubbish as "U and non-U" phrases, unless...)

Nancy voted for Clement Atlee. Dinner for C18 aristocrats was an afternoon meal,and the main meal of the day.

Since my main meal is in the evening - midday was a sandwich when I was at work - I don't see it is pretentious to call the evening meal "dinner".

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

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Angloid
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quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Actually, eating in the kitchen is a sign that you don’t have/use a dining room [Razz]

I took the reference to be to the 'kitchen suppers' so popular chez Cameron.


Exactly. Eating in the kitchen is a sign [a] that you are posh enough to have room for a big enough table, and [b] that you are trying to pretend you are not posh by inviting friends for a 'kitchen supper' rather than a dinner party.

But this is more about the cis-pond class gap than trans-pond differences.

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Brian: You're all individuals!
Crowd: We're all individuals!
Lone voice: I'm not!

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Angloid
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quote:
Originally posted by Custard:
I once boycotted a sports equipment shop because of a large poster which said "Some people have got it. Others don't."

Others don't got what?

As long as it hasn't driven you to mass murder. I've just read an Italian short story (L'assassino by Michele Serra) in which the anti-hero sets out to eliminate shopkeepers who give their businesses trendy names or who speak meaningless commercial gobbledegook.

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Brian: You're all individuals!
Crowd: We're all individuals!
Lone voice: I'm not!

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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
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quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:

We call it a couch. [Devil]

Hence Lion Couchant, which is heraldic for The cat is on the settee.
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Jane R
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[Big Grin]
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Uncle Pete

Loyaute me lie
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quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:

We call it a couch. [Devil]

Hence Lion Couchant, which is heraldic for The cat is on the settee.
We could do a whole series of those. I call dibs on Lion rampant: The damned cat scratched the curtains to hell

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Even more so than I was before

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Palimpsest
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and in the other direction, I'm hoping that "Brilliant" doesn't become common usage in the U.S.

I'm still trying to figure out if "Omigod" is an archaism or British usage.

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Cara
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I echo what Stercus Tauri said about translation of British books into American.

Don't, oh dear Lord, don't get me started.

But. It is so so ridiculous and infuriating. I think I may have ranted about it on the ship before...

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Pondering.

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Penny S
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Lion Passant - change the vowel.
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Leorning Cniht
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quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
Lion Passant - change the vowel.

In that case, I'd better bag dolphins urinant before anyone else does.
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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
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Lion Dormant - The cat appears to be sleeping (but is probably plotting).
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quetzalcoatl
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I can't remember if anyone has mentioned 'first base', which might also come from rounders of course. But there's an interesting story here as well, since Jane Austen mentions baseball, around 1797, in 'Northanger Abbey'.

But there has been quite a lot of discussion about whether this really refers to baseball, or possibly to a game called 'stoolball'.

This picture is supposed to be from 1744, but again, may refer to another game.

http://tinyurl.com/o2mcjl4

The other point to make is of course, that none of this is particularly important.

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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.

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L'organist
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Not important!!! [Eek!]

Everytime my step-daughter asks if we're having coffee in the lounge I squirm.

Despite being born in the Thames valley she also chose to use diaper (rather than nappy) and informed me she was going to a friend's baby shower [Ultra confused]

I blame if on Friends... [Snigger]

As far as dinner goes: if we eat in the kitchen then we have supper and dinner is in the dining room its dinner; coffee in the sitting room in winter and on the terrace in summer.

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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

The other point to make is of course, that none of this is particularly important.

What?! Traitor. [Disappointed]

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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou

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quetzalcoatl
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We still have tea at 6pm; not with cakes, but a cooked meal. But that's probably (tremulous sob in voice) my home-sickness for the North Country. But my wife, very posh background, Irish earls and so on, has started having a cup of tea with her tea. What? I said to her, would you like bread and butter with that (an ancient Northern custom)?

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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.

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quetzalcoatl
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Actually, ancient reports of baseball seem quite common. A bishop is supposed to have preached against it in 1700; and there is a diary entry in 1755 by a lawyer, describing how his whole family went off to play it.

However, none of these reports are able to explain why the reference is not to a different game such as stoolball, which sounds a bit like French cricket, i.e. protecting a target with your hands or feet. However, stoolball is very old - medieval.

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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.

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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
# 619

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What happened to parlours? Haven't seen one of those for a while.

We have a sitting room (where the settee and the armchairs live). And a kitchen - where we also eat - and a scullery (I refuse to have truck with 'utility room').

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quetzalcoatl
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Sculleries! Ah, it's like a Proustian madeleine.

When I was a kid, we had a dairy, which was Yorks for storage room for butter, etc; and we had an outhouse.

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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.

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Uncle Pete

Loyaute me lie
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In our lower class home a parlour was called a living room. Not that we did much living in it, except when the television was powered up after 1953. We did our living in the large kitchen ŕ la Canadienne. In addition to a large table for 8, we had a sewing corner, a rocking chair, a chalkboard, and lots of room for littles to play. The kitchen table, in early school years, also served as a study centre, but was always cleared at meal times. We had dinner at noon, and a lighter repas at supper.

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Even more so than I was before

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Taliesin
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# 14017

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That sounds lovely, I'll come clean, and admit that I can't remember if my Canadian friend said 'sofa, 'settee' or 'couch' but the idea that she called it a chesterfield because they wanted to be English was really weird. I made up the settee bit for a little irony... [Razz]

I've never met anyone who has a parlour. Do they exist anymore? I love the idea of calling our utility room a scullery - does yours have a sink in it, Firenze? My nan started her career in service as a scullery maid, aged 13.

My mother was a nanny for upper middle class people, hence my language being wrong for my income/social group. As you can imagine, that was lots of fun at school. [Waterworks]

Then I met a properly middle class girl who called her parents mummy and daddy, ate supper in the evenings and didn't know what a settee was, and she had an even worse time...

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Gill H

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# 68

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quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I'm still trying to figure out if "Omigod" is an archaism or British usage.

Definitely not British. The musical version of Legally Blonde (which, in London at least, worked a great deal better than the film IMO) begins with a song called 'Omigod You Guys' and typifies the kind of characters who use that expression constantly.

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*sigh* We can’t all be Alan Cresswell.

- Lyda Rose

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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
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quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
I love the idea of calling our utility room a scullery - does yours have a sink in it, Firenze? My nan started her career in service as a scullery maid, aged 13.

It does. I think even from the construction of the flat (c 1928) it was meant to be the wet room, since it has a cement floor rather than floorboards. Now of course it has the washing machine and dishwasher, but I imagine it was tubs and mangles back then.
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nickel
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# 8363

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sofa, settee, couch, chesterfield = davenport?
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Jengie jon

Semper Reformanda
# 273

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What happened to parlours?

Can anyone in the current age afford to give up a room for the sole purpose of impressing the neighbours? The parlour was a sitting room in which you did not sit but showed off your best chairs and china in a china cabinet. If you had expensive books then they might be placed in a book shelf.

Jengie

[ 01. August 2013, 20:49: Message edited by: Jengie Jon ]

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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge

Back to my blog

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Penny S
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My granny's maisonette (Victorian, like a two up two down but all upstairs so the builder only had to build one set of stairs) had a scullery in the protruding bit at the back with a place for a copper and a shaped base for it with a space for a fire underneath. Rather like the counters in Ancient Roman eateries. I never saw it used.

Stoolball is nothing like French cricket the way I played that, with a cricket bat. It has two wickets of white boards at just below head height on stands about 16 yards apart, which are defended using solid wood roundish bats* held in one hand and balls like real tennis balls. Teams of eleven, with two innings per match. It is also, however, NOTHING LIKE REAL MEN'S CRICKET.** It is linear, rather than played in a quadrilateral like baseball and rounders.

According to a paper in Sussex Archeological Collections, Vol 133, 1995, it has a very peculiar recent history, involving a revival by a Major Grantham, who was very friendly with the Japanese embassy staff in the 30s. I am surprised that the writers of Foyle's War managed to avoid the possibilities for a plot.

I found this curious history page which seems to be from the west of the pond looking at practically every reference to any ball game by anyone (St Augustine of Hippo!) anywhere. Protoball and has links to other pages with later dates than 1700.

*If you've ever come across Bat and Trap, the bats are similar.
** Quote from the SAC above - "The idea that cricket had any ancestor, instead of emerging fully formed, is remarkably difficult territory to enter." There are religious parallels to this.

There are a lot of religious references in the history of stoolball anyway - played on Shrove Tuesday by mixed groups without distinction between men and women, gentry or labourers, and after Easter as a foretaste of the resurrected world. And banned by various clerics at various times. Gosh, this is interesting.

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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492

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quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
What happened to parlours?


They have specialised ones in The Archers but they are out by the barns and used for milking cows!

I call my living room couch a day bed because that's what Herman Miller called it when they made it more than 50 years ago. The one in the study is technically known as a king-size convertible sofa.

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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.

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Palimpsest
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# 16772

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quote:
Originally posted by Gill H:
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I'm still trying to figure out if "Omigod" is an archaism or British usage.

Definitely not British. The musical version of Legally Blonde (which, in London at least, worked a great deal better than the film IMO) begins with a song called 'Omigod You Guys' and typifies the kind of characters who use that expression constantly.
In current US usage it is part of teen vocabulary. I once heard an excited girl use it 6 times in two minutes. But I wonder if it was a common mild profanity by the religious in an earlier period. As I recall, I've seen it in "Last Exit to Brooklyn".
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460

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Bat and Trap is only played in Bonfire Country. And Stoolball is almost only played there.

That is, of course, East Sussex and adjacent parts of other counties. Penny S will know the truth of this.

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

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jedijudy

Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333

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Our church has a parlor. It has all the pretty chairs and fancy drapes. This is where the bride dresses before her wedding or the family gathers with the pastor before a funeral.

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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.

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Penny S
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# 14768

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Bat and Trap has been observed in Dartford, Darenth, and Canterbury by me. Not Bonfire, ken (except NW Kent in Victorian times, though there are links between there and Brighton in terms of population movement, from there to Brighton, though). I'm not sure if the pub our school staff used to play in in Dartford still plays, as we stopped going there when it was taken over by a member of the NF.
The Beverlie Hotel at Canterbury, where I first met the game, claims to have invented the game and runs the Canterbury league, and there is also a league around the Medway.
It's a bit further spread than Bonfire, but not much. Definitely further spread than stoolball - though my school in Dartford had played that in the past, as it had a couple of wickets and bats, but they were never used in my time. Only the staff used the school Bat and Trap set. (I donated a set to the school when I left! For the children - I think it works well for the less coordinated, from my experience.)
My grandad, whom I never knew as he died young, ran the Brighton railway staff team, and they used to play on the Steyne

[ 02. August 2013, 09:47: Message edited by: Penny S ]

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Curiosity killed ...

Ship's Mug
# 11770

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According to my book of games* (yes, I know, sad) Bat and Trap records go back to 1570 for Ye Old Beverlie Inn, Canterbury - and the "pub overlooks a green where the very earliest 18th century cricket matches took place". The suggestion is that both cricket and bat and trap were developed from stool ball or club ball. There are Bat and Trap leagues: around Canterbury, the Medway towns, Ash and Ashford.

Baseball was apparently brought back to England (Derby built the Baseball Ground) at the end of the 19th century by some American touring teams. It may have been taken to the States from Wales, where Welsh Baseball is played or based on Tipcat - another ancient game.

* The Guinness Book of Traditional Pub Games (1992)

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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat

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Penny S
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# 14768

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Hang on, what about Hambledon and Hesketh Park at Dartford in terms of the ancientry of cricket?

And the Beverlie only opened in the 1740s. There's lots on line about it. This site Ball games history claims the game to be just Kentish (Oh no, it isn't) and to have been dying out by the 1920s (not if there was a league in Brighton it wasn't). The sites about the Kentish game don't seem to know about Sussex.

It looks as if there was revival in both stoolball and bat and trap at about the same time between the wars. My grandad died in 1934.

Given the start of this being about the pond differences, it may amuse the people to the west of the water to know how much disagreement there can be between two adjacent counties on the eastern side.

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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740

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Here is the lovely quote from Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, 1797:

"It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base-ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books."

Classic Austen ironic tone there - it was not very wonderful that ...

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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.

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Albertus
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# 13356

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The kit for Cardiff baseball (also played I think in Newport) is distinctive and refelcts the 'mainstream' games aorund here- players wear what is pretty much football kit and the bats seem to be, or to have orignally been, cut down cricket bats. Apparently US servicemen based around here during the War thought the game was rather different to US baseball.

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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.

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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460

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quote:

It's a bit further spread than Bonfire, but not much.

Ah, but that's due to the sad retreat of Bonfire in the face of Bureaucracy!

quote:

Definitely further spread than stoolball - though my school in Dartford had played that in the past, as it had a couple of wickets and bats, but they were never used in my time.

Stoolball got out a bit as it was taught in schools - probably because some strange Anglo-Catholic-Socialist Folk-Revivalists in the early 20th century thought it was more authentically of the Folk than class-ridden cricket, and better for the Moral Fibre than class-ridden than new-fangled urbanised games like football.

quote:

My grandad, whom I never knew as he died young, ran the Brighton railway staff team, and they used to play on the Steyne

The Brighton Trades Council used to organise a bat-and-trap competition on the Level on Good Friday. Teams got up by scratch on the spot from Labour Party and Trade Union members. Women and kids and oldies mostly. (The more seriously sporty members took part in a long-distance run, ending up in the Labour Club with lots of beer) I played it a couple of times before I started spending that day at church. The pub called the Bat and Ball at the Level had a pub sign showing a game of Bat and trap on the Level.

[ 02. August 2013, 14:17: Message edited by: ken ]

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

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Penny S
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# 14768

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Sounds like I got the wrong place for the game, ken. Or the right place but the wrong name. (I was only ever a visitor is my excuse. Flat green bit in the middle all merged together.) And that you know the stuff in the Archaeology book, as well.

The Good Friday connection also seems to connect ball games with Easter, which is what I found while chasing stool ball around the internet. In that case, Shrove Tuesday and the week after Easter. It's good to hear that the custom was still going on in living memory. Do they still do it?

[ 02. August 2013, 17:10: Message edited by: Penny S ]

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Sparrow
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# 2458

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quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
That sounds lovely, I'll come clean, and admit that I can't remember if my Canadian friend said 'sofa, 'settee' or 'couch' but the idea that she called it a chesterfield because they wanted to be English was really weird. I made up the settee bit for a little irony... [Razz]

I've never met anyone who has a parlour. Do they exist anymore? I love the idea of calling our utility room a scullery - does yours have a sink in it, Firenze? My nan started her career in service as a scullery maid, aged 13.

My mother was a nanny for upper middle class people, hence my language being wrong for my income/social group. As you can imagine, that was lots of fun at school. [Waterworks]

Then I met a properly middle class girl who called her parents mummy and daddy, ate supper in the evenings and didn't know what a settee was, and she had an even worse time...

We had a scullery in the house I grew up in. It was an extension off the kitchen, and it had a double sink, the cooker, washing machine and fridge, and wall cabinets for storage.

The "kitchen" had more storage units and a large table where the four of us ate most of the time.

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Pegasus

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# 1966

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No-one has yet mentioned front room as a name for the room in which one may alternatively sit, live or lounge. I think it is of lower middle class origins, indicative of a house which has only one room at the front, not two or three.

(I live in a flat and both my bedroom and front room are technically front, as both face onto the street. I have helpfully designated the room in which I don't sleep as "the other room".)

[ 02. August 2013, 21:04: Message edited by: Pegasus ]

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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
# 619

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Another cross-pond usage I find causes a lot of mental gear grinding is 'yard' for what in Britain we'd call garden. Or grounds, if you live somewhere really posh.

But yards are typically narrow, walled and paved, full of things like sheds and coal bunkers, dustbins and outside privies, clothes lines and rusting bicycles.

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Carex
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# 9643

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I've seen yards like that, too, except that they usually aren't paved.


Our "yard" includes several flower gardens, a vegetable garden, a brick patio, and the rest is a grass lawn. The latter two would not normally be included in the American use of the word "garden".

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Angloid
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Whereas a lawn is almost a compulsory component of a garden in the UK. (Not ours, because it's too small and we're too lazy to mow: but most gardens, even a tiny pocket-handkerchief at the front of a terrace house, will have a lawn.)

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Leorning Cniht
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quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
Whereas a lawn is almost a compulsory component of a garden in the UK. (Not ours, because it's too small and we're too lazy to mow: but most gardens, even a tiny pocket-handkerchief at the front of a terrace house, will have a lawn.)

Most American houses have lawns too (although I gather in places like Phoenix - basically in the desert - some people have finally decided that watering a load of grass is silly.) It's just that the lawn is found in your yard, where you do yard work.
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Penny S
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quote:
Originally posted by Carex:
I've seen yards like that, too, except that they usually aren't paved.


Our "yard" includes several flower gardens, a vegetable garden, a brick patio, and the rest is a grass lawn. The latter two would not normally be included in the American use of the word "garden".

Sounds like your "garden" is what we would call a "bed". Unless it is like what would be found around a "big house", where the separate gardens would have walls or hedges dividing them from other parts.
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comet

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# 10353

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all these different rooms! even fancy houses up here don't have things like "parlours".

I notice, also, that in european homes (this, mind, is based on a short trip to france 20-mumble years ago, and otherwise, books, TV, movies...etc) there are just so many ROOMS. with walls. and doors between EVERYTHING. and people actually close the doors.* how the heck do you heat a place is you keep closing all the damn doors?! you seem to actually close bedroom doors when you sleep (I never HAD a bedroom door growing up. or even... now) this is bizarre. aside from risking it getting chilly, and making the room dark as death, you're risking the factor of the boogeyman being just outside the door. I'd never be able to sleep.

here, it's kitchen combined with living area, usually one big room. then sleeping quarters of some sort, and if you have a bit of dosh, a bathroom with toilet, shower, etc. (my daughter's previous home didn't even have a door there. which... well, I do like a door when I'm peeing...)

Even the fancy houses. just more bedrooms. maybe a pantry. maybe a closet for laundry. maybe a mudroom. parlour? front room? lounge? are those separate places? how do you heat? who the hell is cleaning all of that unused real estate???

*actually, the door thing seems to apply to the lower 48, too.

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georgiaboy
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# 11294

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It has a floor, almost always a roof, which is likely supported by posts or columns, and may have railings between the posts. It may be raised several steps above ground, and is attached to one or more exterior walls of a house. In the US this is variously termed porch, veranda (rarely), stoop (if rather small), gallery or piazza -- and there may be other descriptors as well. The differences seem to be mostly regional.
So my question is: what is it called in the UK?

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Uncle Pete

Loyaute me lie
# 10422

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Verandah, here. Indian word. From my childhood on. I haven't had one since in Canada

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hilaryg
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# 11690

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Patio (stone) or deck (wood), neither will have a roof.
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Gee D
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# 13815

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quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Another cross-pond usage I find causes a lot of mental gear grinding is 'yard' for what in Britain we'd call garden. Or grounds, if you live somewhere really posh.

But yards are typically narrow, walled and paved, full of things like sheds and coal bunkers, dustbins and outside privies, clothes lines and rusting bicycles.

Which is what we normally used call it here. Over the last decade or so, "yard" has become less common, at least in real estate agent's talk, and is being replaced by garden.

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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican

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