Some of you may remember how excited we were here in Baroque Mansions over the Facebook language option of “English (Pirate).” The Baroque Facebook was set on Pirate for months. (I know: lame. I just never got tired of it.) Well, now an ATM operator in the East End of London is introducing a similar element to its services: over the next three months, five of its machines will be in Cockney rhyming slang. To get your sausage & mash you’ll need to enter your Huckleberry Finn, & the machine will contact your rattle & tank… I see they’re being polite about it!
The ATM company has this to say:
“Whilst we expect some residents will visit the machine to just have a ‘butcher’s’ (look), most will be genuinely pleased as this is the first time a financial services provider will have recognised the Cockney language in such a manner.”
While I must and do applaud this effort – really I do! – it does remind me what a desperate place the East End is, and always has been. It’s addictive. It attracts a particular kind of tourist, like the Victorian missionaries. It’s a place people think they have to go and fix, and then they get hooked 0- because you can never fix it, you can only wreck it – and stay. It has its own laws, and no one outside the place can possibly understand them: seven years gave me a smattering of comprehension only, but a great love of it. It’s a place (I refer specifically in this instance to a day in Poplar, or was it Bethnal Green?) where two very small, old men can approach one another on the street, laden with plastic shopping bags, with this joyous greeting:
Geezer One: “Fucking cunt!”
Geezer Two, in raptures: “Fuck off you fucking cunt!”
So I have to say, I think the locals will know they are being patronised. But they do have a sense of humour in the East End, and for that reason it may well be okay. Either that or they’ll just think the ATM people are a load of city bankers.
Less okay is the £1.50 they will be paying, in an area severely overlooked by vital services (even while it is overlooked by Canary Wharf) to get their hands on their own money.
5 Comments
August 24, 2009 at 2:15 pm
This Yank thought all east-enders sounded like Michael Caine. Go know.
August 26, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Quite hilarious! I lasted three days on Pirate, because it stopped me getting any work done.
As the daughter of an East Ender who has not only the language (suppressed in the interests of raising middle-class children) but also the voice, my abiding memory of rare visits to my paternal grandparents was hearing my father, both his parents, his brother and two sisters all talking at the tops of their voices and NOT KNOWING who was speaking, male or female, young or old, unless I looked up. Raucous, yes, but so bloody vital. My own bland voice reproaches me by contrast.
September 6, 2009 at 3:52 am
I had hysterics over Pirate and had it up for ages because the entertainment value was almost infinite. OK, I’m lame too. OMG just noticed how long your blog roll is. Life is short, but I’ll endeavour to keep reading yours…
September 6, 2009 at 9:36 am
Hi Helena T, you are so right: “the entertainment value was almost infinite.” Yes it was!
And you’re also right about the blogroll, I’ve been thinking it needs a major overhaul. But do keep coming here, we like that!
September 6, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Thanks, I will return to visit. Unlike some (er, no one comes to mind but I’m sure they’re out there), I’m not a blog whore, which makes the few I do follow even more enjoyable. I’m particularly interested in those who have adopted another homeland, because I’ve done it twice myself.