Louise Rennison_Georgia Nicolson 07 (18 page)

 

naff
• Unbearably and embarrassingly out of fashion and nerdy. Naff things are: Parents dancing to “modern” music, blue eyeshadow, blokes who wear socks with sandals, pigtails. You know what I mean.

 

nervy spaz
• Nervous spasm. Nearly the same as a nervy b. (nervous breakdown) or an f.t. (funny turn), only more spectacular on the physical side.

 

nicked
• Stolen.

 

nippy noodles
• Instead of saying “Good heavens, it's quite cold this morning,” you say “Cor—nippy noodles!!” English is an exciting and growing language. It is. Believe me. Just leave it at that. Accept it.

 

noughts and crosses
• A “game” on paper where you try to fill in squares with either a nought or a cross. The first person to get three in a row wins. It is a terribly, terribly boring, pointless game, probably invented by Hawkeye.

 

nuddy-pants
• Quite literally nude-colored pants, and you know what nude-colored pants are? They are no pants. So if you are in your nuddy-pants you are in your no pants, i.e., you are naked.

 

nunga-nungas
• Basoomas. Girl's breasty business. Ellen's brother calls them nunga-nungas because he says that if you get hold of a girl's breast and pull it out and then let it go—it goes nunga-nunga-nunga. As I have said many, many times with great wisdomosity, there is something really wrong with boys.

 

pacamac
• A rainproof coat that folds up into a tiny packet that you can pop in your handbag. It keeps you dry but you look like a fool.

 

panstick
• Stick of makeup that you use to cover up spots with. Or in my mutti's case to cover up the ravages of time and a careless attitude to skin care.

 

Pantalitzer
• A terrifying Czech-made doll that sadistic parents (my vati) buy for their children, presumably
to teach them early on about the horror of life. Essentially the Pantalitzer doll has a weird plastic face with a horrible fixed smile. The rest of Pantalitzer is a sort of cloth bag with hard plastic hands on each side like steel forks.

I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but I am not reassured that Eastern Europeans really know how to have a laugh.

 

pantibus
• Latin for pants. Possibly. Who cares? It is a dead language. Who is going to complain if it isn't Latin for pants—Romulus and Remus?

 

Pavlov's dog
• Pavlov was some Russian bloke who had some dogs. He trained them to dribble when he rang a bell. Don't ask me why. The Russians are, as we all know, a bit on the strange side. Cossack dancing, for instance. I rest my case.

 

pence
• English currency. We used to have pounds and shillings and pennies until we “went metric”; now we have pence (or pee). (Although try telling Elvis the school caretaker that we have gone metric; he lives in the twilight world of the very elderly. I don't think he knows Queen Victoria is dead yet.)

 

pensioner
• In England we give very old people some money so that they can buy thick spectacles and snug incontinent pants and biscuits. This is called their pension money.

 

pingy pongoes
• A very bad smell. Usually to do with farting.

 

Pizza-a-gogo land
• Masimoland. Land of wine, sun, olives and vair vair groovy Luuurve Gods. Italy. (The only bad point about Pizza-a-gogo land is their football players are so vain that if it rains, they all run off the pitch so that their hair doesn't get ruined. See also Chelsea players.)

 

porkies
• Amusing (ish) Cockney rhyming slang. Pork pies = lies. Which is of course shortened to porkies. Oh, that isn't shorter, is it? Well, you can't have everything.

 

prat
• A prat is a gormless oik. You make a prat of yourself by mistakenly putting both legs down one knicker leg or by playing air guitar at pop concerts.

 

red bottomosity
• Having the big red bottom. This is vair vair interesting
vis-à-vis
nature. When a lady baboon is “in the mood” for luuuurve, she displays her big red bottom to the male baboon. (Apparently he wouldn't have a clue otherwise, but that is boys for you!!) Anyway, if you hear the call of the Horn you are said to be displaying red bottomosity.

 

Rolf Harris
• An Australian “entertainer” (not). Rolf has a huge beard and glasses. He plays the didgeridoo, which says everything in my book. He sadly has had a number of hit records, which means he is never off TV and will not go back to Australia. (His “records” are called “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport,” etc….)

 

rucksack
• Like a little kangaroo pouch you wear on your back to put things in. Backpack.

 

sailor's hornpipe
• Ah yes. Speaking of dancing. As I have pointed out many, many times, England is a proud seafaring nation and our sailors on the whole are jolly good chaps, etc. However, when they were first invented, in the olden days, they had a few too many rums and made up this odd dance called a “hornpipe.” Which largely consists of hopping from foot to foot with your arms crossed. Well, you did ask.

 

sidies
• Bits of face hair that men grow down the sides of their ears to their chins. If you are asking me why, try asking yourselves why, as I believe you will find George Washington started it.

 

snogging
• Kissing.

 

soldiers
• Toast cut into narrow strips and then dipped into your boiled egg. It's an Olde-English-nursery-rhyme thing. Before you ask, no, toast dipped in egg does not look like a soldier. Obviously. Soldiers are not generally an inch high and covered in butter. As I have told you, we English are a mystery even to ourselves.

 

spangleferkel
• A kind of German sausage. I know. You couldn't make it up, could you? The German language is full of this kind of thing, like lederhosen and so on. And Goosegot.

 

spondulicks
• A Sudanese term for money. Possibly.

 

The reason we use it is because in olden days English people used to go to other countries where the weather was nicer (i.e., everywhere) and say to the
leaders of these other countries:

“Hello, what extremely nice weather you are having, do you like our flag?” And the other (not English) people would say: “Yes, it's very nice, is it a Union Jack?” And the old English people would reply: “Yes. Where is your flag?” And they would say: “We haven't got one actually.” And we'd say: “Oh dear. That means you have to give your country to us then.”

That is how we became world leaders and also how we got foreign words in our language.

By the way, it is a very good job that I have historosity at my fingertips; otherwise certain people (i.e., you) would feel hopelessly dim.

 

spot
• Officially a blocked pore that gets all red and inflamed and sometimes has a white top on it. In reality something you get every time you need to look your best. You never get spots in concealed places—they are always on your nose or chin or on a sticky-out bit. Americans call them “zits” and I hope against hope this has nothing to do with the noise they make when you pop them.

 

squid
• Squid is the plural of quid and I do know why that is. A bloke owed another bloke six pounds or six quid, and he goes up to him with an octopus with one of its tentacles bandaged up, and he says, “Hello mate, here is the sick squid I owe you.” Do you see?? Do you see? Sick squid, six quid??? The marvelous juxtaposition of…look, we just call pounds squids. Leave it at that. Try and get on with it, people.

 

strop
• A “strop” is No. 3 on the famous “losing it” scale—see f.t.

 

swot
• A person who has no life and as a substitute has to read books and learn things for school. Also anyone who does their homework on time.

 

tart
• A girl who is a bit on the common side. This is a tricky one, actually, because if I wear a very short skirt I am cool and sexy. However, if Jackie Bummer wears a short skirt it is a) a crime against humanity andb) tarty.

 

titches
• A titch is a small person. Titches is the plural of titch.

 

toadying
• This is when a person is all slimy and sucky and tries to get stuff by pretending to be nice.

 

tosser
• A special kind of prat. The other way of putting this is “wanker” or “monkey spanker.”

 

tushy pegs
• Tush rhymes with mush, which means face (keep up), so the pegs in your mush are your teeth. Now do you see?

Well, just accept it.

 

vicars-and-tarts party
• A traditional fancy-dress party that “grown-ups” think is hilarious. Everyone goes to the party either dressed up as a vicar or a prostitute. It is sad. What is even sadder, though, is that I was coming home once and accidentally bumped into Call-me-Arnold the vicar wheeling his sad bike home. I
was trying to get away from him when a group of lads came by and said, “Oy, where's the party?” because they thought we were dressed up as a vicar and a tart. Good grief. It is quite bad for someone to think you are dressed up as a tart but much much worse is the idea that they may have thought Call-me-Arnold was my boyfriend.

 

wally
• See prat. A wally additionally has no clothes sense.

 

welligogs
• Wellington boots. Because it more or less rains all the time in England, we have special rubber boots that we wear to keep us above the mud. This is true.

 

wet
• A drippy, useless, nerdy idiot. Lindsay.

 

whelk boy
• A whelk is a horrible shellfish thing that only the truly mad eat. Slimy and mucuslike. Whelk boy is a boy who kisses like a whelk, i.e., a slimy mucus kisser. Erlack a pongoes.

 

woad
• The ancient Britons used to dye themselves blue with a plant called woad. I don't know why they didn't like pink as a skin color. They just preferred to be blue. But that is the ancient Britons for you.

 

Womble
• Yes. Now,
The Wombles of Wimbledon
was a crap TV show about these creatures who lived in Wimbledon. The Wombles were supposed to be giant hamsters but were quite clearly tubby blokes in hairy costumes. They mostly wandered about Wimbledon
Common collecting litter. Oh, and they had a number-one hit with “Remember I'm a Womble.” The lyrics were: “Remember I'm a womble, remember I'm a womble and I'll womble, womble, womble back home.” That is how great the whole thing was.

 

woopsie
• Ordure and
merde
. OK, have it your way…poo.

 

wyncyette
• Is like fluffy nylon material, usually pink. If you wear it, it makes your hair stand on end because it is so full of static electricity. The elderly insane LOVE it.

Cover art © 2006 by Howard Huang

Cover design by Sasha Illingworth