Friday, April 17, 2009

Lost In Translation

Sometimes you need to re-frame things in terms people can relate to.

Last weekend, whilst having gone bush, one semi-drunken conversation lead to another and the topic found itself lurching around to dogging. Now you have to factor in that dogging is not a widely known term (or activity) in Australia, and the woman trying to explain the phenomenon was a) tipsy and b) almost incomprehensibly Irish. The conversation turned to the complicated system of car headlight codes that mean you can watch, you can join in, or you can feck off you ugly bastard. (As she put it.) One of the members of the university faculty (and fellow homosexualist) was struggling to get a grip on the concept.

Until I turned to him and said "It's a beat (cottage/tearoom)... for straight people."

Bingo.

6 comments:

LaDivaCucina said...

F*ck me dead, STRAIGHT people have a beat?! LOL!

Ur-spo said...

I love slang and local terms like this
I forget what it was, but when my brother lived in Sydney for a month, without at job, he said he was sa something or other - a term for a person not working but living off of somebody

The Other Andrew said...

"Sponger" maybe?

Tom said...

Slang is great, especially the frequently incorrect but humorous etymology! Laughed at tea-room, never heard that before!

PS @Ur-spo Bludger?

The Other Andrew said...

You never heard tearoom? LOL. I always thought 'cottage' had such a lovely quaint sound about it!

worldpeace and a speedboat said...

that is hilarious! never heard of dogging or tearoom either. dogging does sound very, very British, eh what?