I was an avid (well, sort of) follower of Fandango, but then he had to change his blogging identity and I’ve only just found him again. You can run, but you can’t hide, sir.

Anyway, before he melted away, I was thinking about joining in with his Flashback Friday theme, where you reblog an old post in order to present some of your earlier work to a new (or in my case ‘any’) audience.

I started this blog back in 2012 as something to do after my retirement from the world of work. I think I was reasonably prolific for the first few years, but innate idleness and chronic writers’ block eventually got the better of me and it fizzled out until it became essentially a vehicle for contributing to Jim Adams’ Song Lyric Sunday. More recently, I’ve begun to offer up ideas for Pensitivity101’s ‘Fibbing Friday’. I guess I’m just trying to ease my way back into the swing of things.

Anyway (again), I have taken this particular plunge now, so here’s something I originally posted on May 1st 2013, the earliest, nearest date I could get to where we are today,. Checking the stats, I see that it’s been read, until now, by no fewer than five people. Not bad for only twelve years, eh? It was produced in response to a WordPress prompt that called for something to be written in a regional accent. Translations are available on request.

Yer Can Take The Lad Owra Liverpool…

So anyroad, I wuz skivin’ around disavvy, as per, lookin’ at dis WordPress business, an’ I seen dee ‘ad this thing called a ‘Weekly Writing Challenge’.

Sounded a bit poncey, if yer ask me (especially the first paragraph), burra persevered like, an’ it said dee wanted yer to write one of dem blog posts in a regional accent.

Big problem der is I doan’ ‘ave a regional accent, coz I’m a scouser. It’s all dem woollybacks, mancs and cockney bastards that can’t talk proper.

So I asked meself wedder I could be arsed wid it, but then I thought yeah, go ed lad, give irra go.

For a kick-off, I ‘ad a look at dat Wikipedia thing. Bloody ‘ell. I mean, I got the bit about the characteristic glottal stop and da’, but apart from that I curren’ understand a wird of it – I mean, what’s an allophone when it’s arrome?

Just ‘avin’ a glottal stop tells yer nowt about Scouse, anyway. I mean, even dem divvies from the smoke have it, but I’m talkin’ about Mersey Eshtaree English, not the Thames. An’ we don’t drop our haitches, neider, especially when we’re tryin’ ter talk posh.

Tell yer wha’, get dem tossers from TOWIE up ‘ere, wid der orange judies an’ der crap trabs, an’ dee wurren’ last five minutes with the proper scallies on The Only Way Is Croxteth.

Now I know dere’s loads of explanations goin’ round of why us scousers talk as good as we do, but frankly most of ’em are bollocks. I mean, dat one about it being down to the draught from the Mersey Tunnel blockin’ yer sinuses: what kind of soft lad d’yer ‘ave to be to believe da’?

Nah. I reckon I’ve got de answer and it all goes back to our proud tradition of being poverty-stricken wirkin’ class (apart from the dockers, obviously). What it was, back in the day they didn’t ‘ave de ackers to afford all the consonants dee needed, so dee never bovvered wid de ones at the end of der wirds. Basic.

Dere yer go, den. Sorted.

Look, lah, I’d luv to expand further on this, but dey’re open so I’m goin’ down de ale-‘ouse now for a few bevvies of ‘iggies an’ a good barney outside the chippy.

Sound.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday