Come Join The Circus

Sorry that my promise to occupy the Monday "blogspot" (which Gmail keeps on correcting to "bloodspot") was not kept in the GENERATION GAP week.

I wrote a piece which I may post later if my iMac starts behaving itself, and have needed help to set up this direct access function.

As you will have seen, this daily "blogspot" occupied by members of Lancashire Dead Good Poets has its source in Blackpool, a most cosmopolitan seaside resort where many people settle after enjoying a holiday here.

So we SandGrown'uns (people actually born in Blackpool) are a relatively small proportion of the population, and are very used to hearing various accents, jargon and dialects - unlike the villages of the Fylde Plain, we tend not to label those who come and settle here as INCOMERS, though holidaymakers are sometimes referred to as "grockles", a local dialect word.

I always think of my birth at the end of World War II as being into a gigantic circus.

The Heyworth clan of my family settled here mainly because Dad saw out his decades in the RAF by being demobbed in Blackpool where my Uncle Frank (married to one of Mum's four sisters) was fortunate to get a regular multi-instrumentalist job with Geraldo, then Head of Music for Blackpool Tower Company.

Uncle Frank had been born and grew up in Jarrow, worked briefly and unhappily in a shipyard, and never lost his North East accent nor his automatic reliance on dialect forms - "gannin" for going; "scannin" for looking around.

And as my aunt and uncle supplemented income by letting out a couple of small rooms during the Summer Season from Easter to The Illuminations, I grew up hearing Irish, Scots, Welsh, Midlands ("mi duck"), and even the occasional cockney speech patterns.

The other great purveyor of language that shaped how I talk was the radio.

It was on permanently with its three BBC channels in my childhood home - The Home Service, The Light Programme and Radio Three - but the delivery was RP (Received Pronunciation) until The Pirates broadcasting in the early 60s made even the BBC wake up to the fact that around our relatively small islands there is a wealth of dialects and accents.

I may add to this in COMMENTS later, but that's it for the first of my pieces to actually make it to the Monday slot even though today it is Thursday.

I hope you will wish to add "Your Twopennurth".