Talking Funny

Some coincidence, given this week's theme of dialects, that we have just been paying our last respects to Stanley Holgate, local Lancashire dialect poet, who died earlier in February in his eightieth year.

Affectionately known as Stan the Man (or 'Stanza Man' if you read the Blackpool Gazette), Stanley Holgate only began writing poetry in 2011 after the death of his wife Marlene. They had been together for over fifty years. Although he had a large extended family and was never on his own, he said there was a profound sense of loneliness in the aftermath of Marlene's passing and he just took to writing as a solace. "A poem appeared and then another and it progressed from there."

Stan joined a number of local writers' groups and found himself attending four poetry classes a month. "I can have a poem rattling around in my head and it just keeps me sharp. I just enjoy it so much." In a little over four years he amassed a body of 700 poems, a good number of which were written - and performed - in Lancashire dialect; fascinating for a southerner like me to hear for the first time after my arrival in Blackpool.

He built up a deserved reputation for his poems in local dialect and was invited to join the Lancashire Authors' Association - a whole group of people talking funny and working creatively to keep the unique dialect and idioms of Lancashire's oral tradition alive (much of which, to these outside ears, sounds to be derived from French - not implausible given that the Poultons, local dynasts, arrived with the Norman conquest).

The poem below, which is best read out loud if you can manage it, won Stan the Lancashire Authors' Association Writer of the Year award in 2015.

The lad fared grand as owt. Go Stan!

Somebody What's Special
What sooart a thing is looanliness?
It's not summat tha con touch.
It 'ovvers aw rewnd th'eawse at neet,
Ah wound'd mind so much
If that's weer id ended,
Bud id follas thi like a gooast
An' comes an' sits beside thi
When tha least expects id mooast.

Like when tha'r in a busy street,
Er ridin' on a bus,
Er in a café full a fooak
Id still comes after us.
It's geet nowt to do wi' creawded shops
Aw't faces tha con see.
It's when somebody what's special
Is  no longer theer wi thee.

                                   Stanley Holgate 2014

Thanks for reading. Have a brisk one, S ;-)

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Dialects. Use them - or lose them.

Th'all 'ave to forgive me Lanky dialect today.  Tha' knows I'm a sandgrown 'un wi' watter in me boots but lately, I've bin a bit of a clothead, forgettin' me Lanky roots. I was fair havin' kittens about writin' t'blog terday but t'penny dropped yesterday, 'bout heawf an hour after I got 'ome. I was spittin' feathers and dyin' fer a reet gradely cup a tae by't time I geet 'indoers, tha knows.  I'd been at the crem' seeing off a fellow poet and Grand Lancashire lad and it were fair bucketin' down.  I looked like a dreawned rat.  Anyway, I put wood in'th'ole and it suddenly dawned on me, that I am a native Lanky speaker an' all.

Enough of that for now.  Don't want to lose you all. I need to explain.  I was born in Blackpool, the daughter of a publican, who moved us first to St Helen's when I was four and a year later to the outskirts of Liverpool where we lived until I was eleven. I had developed a soft, scouse accent by then but as any true city born Liverpudlian would tell you, with rising intonation and a rolled 'r', 'Maghull is in the country!"  Unfortunately, arriving back in Blackpool to attend Elmslie Girls Grammar School, with any degree of Liverpool accent was never going to win me house points. The emphasis on the 'ck' in 'Blackpool' went down like a French kiss at a family reunion. 

To add to the 'scouse' twang, Dad had taken a pub in a small village and most of the locals used a lot of Lancashire dialect.  Expressions rolled out of them like a foreign language. 'It'll be reet' or 'es in'th elbow room', would send me in to fits of laughter. The girls in the kitchen and a couple of the bar staff spoke in this strange dialect and I thought it was hilarious.  My two older brothers called them, 'woolly backs.'

In the village was a small, 'sells everything' shop.  They had the most clutter I had ever seen in my life. The owner, Mary Smith was a Lancashire dialect poet and was also the proud holder of the title, 'Worst Singer in The World', for several years running. Mary posted some of her poems on the shop door.  I recall one that was intended to stop people dropping litter, although I doubt that anyone reading it would really get the message. So here I was, a sort of Liverpool girl, living in a Lancashire village, attending a posh girl's school where only 'received pronunciation' would do. The solution.  Electrocution lessons: Worked a treat! 

The poem this week was commissioned by The Imperial Hotel, Blackpool, for a pamphlet entitled, Visitors in Verse.' It is a work to celebrate some of the many famous characters who have stayed in the hotel. There is a George Formby convention here every year.  So here's a tribute from a Lanky Lass to a very cheeky Lanky Lad.

Ooh Mother It’s George Formby

A cheeky little chappie,

‘A Lad fra’ Lancasheer’,

Strummed his banjolele,

Buck-toothed for ear to ear.  

Leaning on a lamp-post,

A little lady walking by,

A beauty known as Beryl.

By ‘eck she caught his eye.  

She became his missus

And managed his career,

He was soon the Nation’s favourite,

The ‘Chaplin over ‘ere.’ 

He made a good few movies,

Some at Ealing studios,

Singing ‘bout what he could see

When he was cleaning windows.  

With his little stick of Blackpool rock,

He said he liked to stroll,

Along the promenade,

‘Cause he was such a happy soul.

And when the wind was bracin’

He was often heard to say

To anybody listenin’

As he went on his way.  

“Turned out nice again then, hasn’t it?” 

 

Thanks for reading.  Adele

                                                                      

 

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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".

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