"Auld Reekie" -- and why is it called that, Damian?
Can you distinguish UK accent from US when singing?
Edinburgh is nicknamed Auld Reekie (Scots for Old Smoky), because when buildings were heated by coal and wood fires, chimneys would spew thick columns of smoke into the air.
"Those home-made Cornish mushy peas were fantastic - and peas HAVE to be mushy to go with fish, especially those caught on the very same day you eat them, and all the fish served in the restaurant of that pub overlooking the harbour in Newlyn every evening of the week were caught that very day or so we were told by the very, very rhotic (almost incomprehensible) old salts in the very noisy public bar there, and who were we to doubt them?"
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Cornish mushy peas? Mushy peas are mainly eaten in Northern England, not Southern England.
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Cornish mushy peas? Mushy peas are mainly eaten in Northern England, not Southern England.
Cornwall is in the Westcountry, that's not really the South. (Some would say certainly not England, but that's another story :).)
You're right though, Mushy peas aren't Cornish,... but are still great.
You're right though, Mushy peas aren't Cornish,... but are still great.
Uriel: Auld Reekie - George has given a pretty good explanation of this. In the bad old days of yesteryear - very yester, in fact - there was much air pollution in what is now known as the Auld Toon (old town in Scots) of Edinburgh - emissions of smoke from the myriad of chimneys on all the old buildings and tenement blocks of the oldest part of the city - the only part in those days. Auld - old, of course. Reekie - well, you can work that out for yourself! ;-)
It was in those days that people in the Auld Toon used another, even less savoury, expression - "Gardie loo". They used to yell it out as a warning to passers by in the street below as they tossed the contents of their chamber pots (or piss pots if you want clarification) out of the window of their tenement blocks. It comes, of course, from the French "Gardez l'eau!" (beware of the water!) The piss pots were their urinary conveniences and generally kept under the bed.
In the film "The Yanks" - starring Richard Gere as an American soldier who accompanied many thousands of his fellow US servicemen to Britain during WW2 where they remained here until the time was ripe to invade and liberate Continental Europe from Nazism - these two American servicemen (one of them being Gere, of course) had got a wee bit blootered and were hammering on the door of this pub in the village in Northern England where they were based in an attempt to get the publican (the bloke who ran the pub) to open up and serve them more ale even though it was way past midnight, and in wartime Britain pubs closed early anyway as beer was in short supply, just like everything else. They wanted a pint of a beer concoction popular in the North of England at that time (1943) called "half and half" - half bitter beer and half mild ale.
Their banging of the front door of the pub roused the innkeeper from his bed and he opened up his bedroom window and shouted out to the thirsty Americans to sod off back to their camp base as the pub was closed. "We want a half and half!" the two Yanks yelled back at him.
"OK, a half and half coming up then!" the innkeeper grinned back down at the two poor blokes. The innkeeper retreated back into his blacked out bedroom (this was wartime remember) and returned carrying a chamber pot. "Here's your half and half, guy's - enjoy! Half's mine and half's my wife's!" And he emptied the lot down onto the heads of the two hapless Yanks.
Mushy peas are not made from your ordinary garden peas - they have to be made from marrowfat peas. They automatically come with fish and chips (fries if you are American) - no matter if the fish is cod, haddock or whatever you want.
Again during WW2 but in reality this time and not in a film....the "friendly invasion" of Britain by the American military saw the "Yanks" reaching every single corner of the UK in huge numbers. Before they came over each man was issued with a small booklet titled "Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain 1942", preparing them for life in what seemed to them as quite a strange country in so many ways even though we were the closest of allies and supposedly spoke the same Language. As soon as they got here they discovered that "the same Language" bit was not strictly true - it did not take them long to find that a good many words had quite different meanings over here. That was only one of the perplexing things they found out about Britain....there were more than just a wee bit of others, but I won't go into them here.
Back to fish and chips - fish and chips was a new experience to the Americans, presumably so were mushy peas (which are NOT the sole preserve of the North of England, Adam! You can get mushy peas in F&C shops all over the UK). oing into a fish and chip shop in Marlborough,
There was the occasion when an American serviceman went into a F&C shop in Marlborough,Wiltshire, and being served with his "one cod and three pen'orth of chips" (meaning one portion of fish and three pennies worth of chips" (Britain had a different currency system prior to 1971).
He went into the restaurant part of the shop and scoffed the lot. He liked them so much he went back and ordered and paid for a second helping. The tiny wee lady behind the counter looked at him in astonishment but still served him the same again. After he'd polished off that lot he went back and asked for the same again. This time the lady was so gobsmacked she said in her strong Wiltshire(West Country) accent: "Good God, man - where do you put it all!"
I studied Social History at university (along with English) and did a thesis on life in Britain during the Second World War. I find the topic fascinating and quite an eye opener in so many ways.
Anyway, here's Adam's precious mushy peas. Believe me, they really ARE very tasty! NO serving of F&C is complete without them.
http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/mushy-peas
It was in those days that people in the Auld Toon used another, even less savoury, expression - "Gardie loo". They used to yell it out as a warning to passers by in the street below as they tossed the contents of their chamber pots (or piss pots if you want clarification) out of the window of their tenement blocks. It comes, of course, from the French "Gardez l'eau!" (beware of the water!) The piss pots were their urinary conveniences and generally kept under the bed.
In the film "The Yanks" - starring Richard Gere as an American soldier who accompanied many thousands of his fellow US servicemen to Britain during WW2 where they remained here until the time was ripe to invade and liberate Continental Europe from Nazism - these two American servicemen (one of them being Gere, of course) had got a wee bit blootered and were hammering on the door of this pub in the village in Northern England where they were based in an attempt to get the publican (the bloke who ran the pub) to open up and serve them more ale even though it was way past midnight, and in wartime Britain pubs closed early anyway as beer was in short supply, just like everything else. They wanted a pint of a beer concoction popular in the North of England at that time (1943) called "half and half" - half bitter beer and half mild ale.
Their banging of the front door of the pub roused the innkeeper from his bed and he opened up his bedroom window and shouted out to the thirsty Americans to sod off back to their camp base as the pub was closed. "We want a half and half!" the two Yanks yelled back at him.
"OK, a half and half coming up then!" the innkeeper grinned back down at the two poor blokes. The innkeeper retreated back into his blacked out bedroom (this was wartime remember) and returned carrying a chamber pot. "Here's your half and half, guy's - enjoy! Half's mine and half's my wife's!" And he emptied the lot down onto the heads of the two hapless Yanks.
Mushy peas are not made from your ordinary garden peas - they have to be made from marrowfat peas. They automatically come with fish and chips (fries if you are American) - no matter if the fish is cod, haddock or whatever you want.
Again during WW2 but in reality this time and not in a film....the "friendly invasion" of Britain by the American military saw the "Yanks" reaching every single corner of the UK in huge numbers. Before they came over each man was issued with a small booklet titled "Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain 1942", preparing them for life in what seemed to them as quite a strange country in so many ways even though we were the closest of allies and supposedly spoke the same Language. As soon as they got here they discovered that "the same Language" bit was not strictly true - it did not take them long to find that a good many words had quite different meanings over here. That was only one of the perplexing things they found out about Britain....there were more than just a wee bit of others, but I won't go into them here.
Back to fish and chips - fish and chips was a new experience to the Americans, presumably so were mushy peas (which are NOT the sole preserve of the North of England, Adam! You can get mushy peas in F&C shops all over the UK). oing into a fish and chip shop in Marlborough,
There was the occasion when an American serviceman went into a F&C shop in Marlborough,Wiltshire, and being served with his "one cod and three pen'orth of chips" (meaning one portion of fish and three pennies worth of chips" (Britain had a different currency system prior to 1971).
He went into the restaurant part of the shop and scoffed the lot. He liked them so much he went back and ordered and paid for a second helping. The tiny wee lady behind the counter looked at him in astonishment but still served him the same again. After he'd polished off that lot he went back and asked for the same again. This time the lady was so gobsmacked she said in her strong Wiltshire(West Country) accent: "Good God, man - where do you put it all!"
I studied Social History at university (along with English) and did a thesis on life in Britain during the Second World War. I find the topic fascinating and quite an eye opener in so many ways.
Anyway, here's Adam's precious mushy peas. Believe me, they really ARE very tasty! NO serving of F&C is complete without them.
http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/mushy-peas
Apologies to both Adam and George - it was Adam who responded to Uriel regarding Auld Reekie. Thankfully smoky chimneys have long since been consiged to history.
Marrowfat peas? Never heard of them, but this isn't getting any more appetizing!
Can't imagine fish and chips being anything new to Americans -- Long John Silver's would have been out of business long ago, and we do have coastlines -- I was forced to eat fresh seafood (which I hated) every time I went to visit my relatives on Cape Cod. Fried fish, fried clams, fried oysters (then you know your oysters died), fried shrimp -- ah, but do you all in the UK have hushpuppies? Bitesized balls of cornmeal deep-fried along with the fish -- now that's good eatin'! I would scarf (not scoff, but I imagine it's a cognate) those things down, and leave the battered denizens of the sea behind!
Can't imagine fish and chips being anything new to Americans -- Long John Silver's would have been out of business long ago, and we do have coastlines -- I was forced to eat fresh seafood (which I hated) every time I went to visit my relatives on Cape Cod. Fried fish, fried clams, fried oysters (then you know your oysters died), fried shrimp -- ah, but do you all in the UK have hushpuppies? Bitesized balls of cornmeal deep-fried along with the fish -- now that's good eatin'! I would scarf (not scoff, but I imagine it's a cognate) those things down, and leave the battered denizens of the sea behind!
The name "marrowfat" is very misleading - they are peas, but of a special kind, larger than your ordinary, humble little garden pea, a different shade of green, they have absolutely zilch to do with marrows, and they have a very low fat content, but are bursting with fibre. They are, in fact, processed, and can be either dried and packaged or packed into tins in which case they do not require pre-soaking before consumption.
Go down to Tesco or Sainsbury's or Waitrose or Morrisons or Asda, or wherever, and choose whichever kind you like. If in a tin, once opened, simply heat in a pan and then heap it onto your plate next to your battered cod and chip shop chips. Pour out a dollop of tomato ketchup, butter a slice or two of thick cut bread (white or wholemeal or whichever kind of bread you fancy), have your steaming mug of tea close by and that's it - lovely jubbly!
That pub in Mousehole, Cornwall my mate and I went to told us that they processed their own mushy peas on the premises. . They did seem a wee bit special, tasted fantastic, so we were in no position to argue with them....we simply scoffed them.
btw scoff here can either mean to treat someone contemptuously, or to eat ravenously. We did the eating scoff.
http://www.wherryandsons.com/food_products/marrow.html
Go down to Tesco or Sainsbury's or Waitrose or Morrisons or Asda, or wherever, and choose whichever kind you like. If in a tin, once opened, simply heat in a pan and then heap it onto your plate next to your battered cod and chip shop chips. Pour out a dollop of tomato ketchup, butter a slice or two of thick cut bread (white or wholemeal or whichever kind of bread you fancy), have your steaming mug of tea close by and that's it - lovely jubbly!
That pub in Mousehole, Cornwall my mate and I went to told us that they processed their own mushy peas on the premises. . They did seem a wee bit special, tasted fantastic, so we were in no position to argue with them....we simply scoffed them.
btw scoff here can either mean to treat someone contemptuously, or to eat ravenously. We did the eating scoff.
http://www.wherryandsons.com/food_products/marrow.html
Marrow has a plural? ;) We only use it to mean the tissue inside a bone that produces blood cells, but in the UK it's also a vegetable of some kind, isn't it?
Aye, you're right - a marrow is like a hugely inflated courgette (zucchini to you guys) - properly called a vegetable marrow (which you guys over there call a marrow squash, apparently). I suppose a squash is similar, but more yellowish in colour rather than green, and eaten as a vegetable, while over here a marrow can either be stuffed with all sorts of fillings or made into a soup which is really yummy and simple to make - all you need is the innards of the marrow, potatoes, butter, vegetable stock and seasonings and a blender.
Next to the marrows and courgettes on the supermarket shelves are the aubergines - a dark purple colour in sharp contrast to the greens and yellows. Or as you guys call them - egg plants, so called because of their shape? You tell me...... Those American servicemen over here way back in 1942 sure needed that little booklet - without it they didn't have a hope in hell wondering what the heck Brits at the time were talking about.
Many of them when they arrived here didn't even know that Brits inexplicably drove on the "wrong" side of the road, let alone call a zucchini a courgette or an egg plant an aubergine or a faucet a tap as well as all the other linguistic differences between us. I'm glad they exist, aren't you? It makes it more interesting when baffling each other.
I don't think marrowfat is ever pluralised - just the pea bit.
Next to the marrows and courgettes on the supermarket shelves are the aubergines - a dark purple colour in sharp contrast to the greens and yellows. Or as you guys call them - egg plants, so called because of their shape? You tell me...... Those American servicemen over here way back in 1942 sure needed that little booklet - without it they didn't have a hope in hell wondering what the heck Brits at the time were talking about.
Many of them when they arrived here didn't even know that Brits inexplicably drove on the "wrong" side of the road, let alone call a zucchini a courgette or an egg plant an aubergine or a faucet a tap as well as all the other linguistic differences between us. I'm glad they exist, aren't you? It makes it more interesting when baffling each other.
I don't think marrowfat is ever pluralised - just the pea bit.