Wednesday 5 August 2009

Welsh Whisky?


Oh my God! My blog is now attracting adverts from vitamin C barons and purveyors of dubious flu remedies from quack emporia about the flu vaccine being dangerous.

Take a look at this Google advert that was at the foot of my blog yesterday. No - better still, see if it’s at the foot of today’s post and click on it, making the buggers pay a commission to me.

It’s the usual suspects of colloidal silver, blood electrification (whatever that may be) and magnets. The sad thing is that people will actually believe this crap. The really funny bit on the advert is: “Council workers given grave digging courses.” Could be a solution to the unemployment crisis.

QED.

Apparently Russian football fans attending next week’s World Cup qualifier in Wales are being urged to drink whisky in order to avoid swine flu. 'Welsh whisky is on offer to Russian supporters as a disinfectant,' Alexander Shprygin, the head of the Russia national team's fan club, said. Welsh whisky?

Further to this Saturday’s Old School Reunion and the above reference to Wales, here’s a list of some of the slang we used to use at school (which was in Wales) in the late 60s:

Band Shag: Member of the band and/or 'free thinker'
Bishop: Out of date or old fashioned
Bilge Cod: Fish, which was rarely served
Boris: An unclean cadet
Boris Box: In the New Block each cadet had a chest of drawers for their belongings so the old sea chests were superfluous. Rather than throw them away, they were cut down in size, placed at the foot of each bunk and used to store dirty laundry until wash day. The term Boris meant an unclean cadet so the boxes were soon nicknamed Boris Boxes.
Brightwork: Anything shiny or polished.
Brightwork Juice: Brasso.
Cheese Crap: Cheese & Potatoes
Clouts: Pieces of threadbare bedcovers that cadets would slide around on to improve the shine of their section of deck and to avoid damage to it.
Connyonny: Condensed milk.
Cow Juice: Milk
Cuts: Being struck over the backside with the Teaser.
Dead man's leg: Jam roly-poly
Dead man's tool: Long suet pudding with sultanas.
Ditching the gash: Throwing out the Gash
First Spare!: Request for any uneaten food
Fresh juice: Water
Galley Trogs: Welsh kitchen staff.
Gash: Another word for Yak
Grease: Butter
Grit: Sugar
King of the Woods: The most powerful QB (see QB). Later the QB most other cadets thought should have been a cadet captain.
Meat Crap: Meat and potatoes
Murphy: Half a baked potato
Nervey: Impertinent as in 'You nervy bastard'
New Chum: New cadet just joined the ship
Nix A Buff: Look out - someone has broken wind.
Nix Oh!: Look out!
Pretty spare chum: Bullshit
QB: Senior cadet in his last term
Returning gash!: The Yak tub was emptied over the side. Anything blown back onto the ship was called out as...
Scouse: Irish stew (obvious really)
Skilley: Tea (any hot drink in earlier years)
Shag: The shape a cadet bent into his cap. The more independently minded the individual - the greater the shag in his cap.
Shit On A Raft: Kidneys or liver on toast.
Slack party: Group of cadets performing a punishment detail
Sodduck/sawduk: Bread.
Suction: Suction was the equivalent of modern brown-nosing. When anybody obtained an unusual favour it was always put down to suction, often accompanied by horrible sucking noises, rather like a pump running dry
Sweep: An area of the ship that a cadet was responsible for cleaning and maintaining. Every cadet had one.
Teaser: Ropes end used for corporal punishment of cadets (by senior cadets). See Cuts
To vulch: See Vulture
Toe Nail Pie: A stodgy pud with "bits" in.
Train Crash: Tinned tomatoes on toast.
Vulture: These were people you would eyeball your plate in the hope you left something worth eating
Yack: Rubbish or dirt
Yack tub: Sawn off bits of old barrel ends, fitted with rope handles on either side, and used as rubbish containers.
Yuck: Pilchards in tomato sauce

The Conway Grace
"We thank the Lord for what we've had,
It wasn't good, it wasn't bad,
The sodduk was stale, the skilly was green
But thank the Lord the plates were clean"

6 comments:

The Irascible Fairy said...

Well that brings it back!!!

Richard x x x

Chairman Bill said...

Richard: Still worried about the prospect of having to stay at the Adelphi after reading the reviews.

Alan Burnett said...

Someone bought me a bottle of Welsh Single Malt Whisky for my birthday last year. It is called "Penderyn" and according to the blurb on the side of the box "whisky distilling in Wales goes back 250 years". It then slightly spoils itself by suggesting that whisky distilling in the Principality died out some 200 years ago when the distillers went off to establish the American Bourbon industry. The bottle's not open (I'm still working my way through others I received for my 60th) When I eventually open it I will send you tasting notes.

Chairman Bill said...

Alan: Well, whisky turns up in some surprising places. Suntory is a well known Japanese brand that I have been known to imbine. Sells like hot cakes in Japan, but then the genuine stuff is astronomically priced there - and they only go for the best.

Anonymous said...

Gosh I enjoyed "this" -- whiskey was one of those drugs I tasted and didn't like. Glad of that. Some of my friends did dumb things -- like driving their cars down the sidewalks on Saturday night, trying to run over people. A shameful act that resulted in time behind the big fence. My favorite bad taste is that Greek gin with the licorice taste. One fifth of that lasted me 11 years before I threw it out.

Chairman Bill said...

Abe: Welcome from across the Pond. I presume you mean ouzo. Just as well you didn't try Greek brandy - Metaxa. Carries a punch like a Tyson uppercut.