The last few hours of the day. Last few hours of blue skies. When we wake tomorrow, the rain will have arrived. Then it’s Yorkshire summer weather…. Cool, windy and generally a bit damp. There is a local expression

The kinda weather that puts hairs on ya back.

I would rather have those hairs on the top of my head thank you very much. Like many places we have our fair share of odd local expressions. Books as long as War and Peace have been written about the art of speaking proper Yorkshire. Most of those books are currently waiting translation into other languages, including English. A few examples of the local dialect include

• Did I eckers like (of course I did not)
• Wang eh o’er (please could you pass me that)
• Ow much (that’s rather expensive)
• Ay could’ve huffed tha we ma stic’o Rhubard (how did that batsman miss that really easy ball)
• Ya daf hapeth (that was a bit of a mistake that you have just made)
• Da’s nowt s’queer as folk (people can be a little odd at times)
• Topped his clogs (unfortunately someone has just died)
• Now lad it’s jiggered (excuse me sir that item is broken)
• Tha’s a reyt Bobby Dazzler (you are looking lovely)
• Yer brews mashin (the tea is in the teapot and will be strong enough in about a days time)
• Ya betta count yer goolies (I am very sorry that very hard cricket ball has struck you in that painful spot, are they ok)
• Ya doin ma eddin (You are confusing me)

I have a soft local accent. An accent I guess my Dad would have called ‘posh Yorkshire‘. But it’s still Yorkshire and that’s just fine with me. Ok it does have some downsides. Like no voice recognition software has ever been designed to cope with Yorkshire. I remember having a hire car which when I asked the satellite navigation to ‘take me home’ it would repeatedly switch on the heater. Or the time in a London restaurant when I ordered a mushroom pizza and the rather bemused waiter served me a children’s serving of paella.

That’s why you will never catch me doing a video blog. Especially as I have a face perfect for radio……