It's Football

I returned from Manchester to find the New York weather had gone all English on me - sullen grey skies followed by mild sunshine. Someone up there was sympathetic. Such a brief time away, but I always like that brief dislocation when you're back in place physically but your head still has some catching up to do.

Though I only went inside the National Football Museum to use the restroom, I did notice photographs of George Best and Brian Clough, and seeing the old heroes up on a wall made me think of Saturday afternoons on the Deepdale terraces, watching the Preston games with my sister. Outside the museum, there was a little training routine set up for kids. They were a cute group. The instructor was cute too.

When you go back you never use "restroom" or"cute," words that once were foreign but now lurk in your vocabulary, only to jump out unannounced.  Here though, you manage to rein them in.  In Britain there are any number of names & euphemisms for visits to the pisser, and they all betray class. W.C, lavatory, the lav, the lavvy, toilet, bog, the Ladies, the Gents. Spending a penny, using the facilities, a wee, a tinkle, a poo, a slash,   And so on.

The words are easy, but the accent, oh the accent.  Even though you make an instinctive shift back to old intonations and old vowel sounds, and sort of get it half-right at least, to a native, you'll always give the game away.