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WARNING: This entry includes fruity British colloquialisms for which no apology is made – ed.
There’s a Brit that’s best avoided – but is all the same unavoidable. When I lived in London we used to call them wide boys, the lads, the blokes that Blur and Oasis made fun of. They speak with a Hollywood version of Cockney English. The stereotypical imitation that any mid-westerner might make when they’re attempting to sound English. Dick van Dyke’s chimney sweep in Mary Poppins is the prototype.
There are actually Londoners (by which we mean the greater London area as defined by the M25 [look it up]) that sound like Dick(s). That’s because they’ve abandoned their homes for the warmer climes of Los Angeles, Miami, and Fort Pierce. That hard to fathom Catford or Bromley drawl has been mollified over the years into something else, a mid-Atlantic and grating version of the chim-chiminey sweep’s brogue.
Let’s call him The Gecko. I’m being generous, but for context he sounds like the Geico Gecko (which, by the way is not speaking with an Australian accent, but that of a bastardized south London yob). At the pub near the Fort Pierce Marina, we sat down and there he was, chatting up a bird by talking about train schedules – I kid you not. She was either drugged or desperate or both, but paid sufficient attention that he went on about the virtues of trains for the better part of an hour. Let’s see, mid-40’s, short, spikey dark hair in the upward style that was so popular 15 years ago, leather jacket, beer belly and a face you’d want to punch. (Oops! did I say that out loud?). Sorry, we can do better than that. His is a round face with eyes closely set, a button of a nose above the lubricious lips hiding a slight overbite that intimates the ‘f’ bomb at any second, all straddling a double chin. It belongs in a pub in Streatham, not Florida.
How’s yer favver? Gor blimey! Wot a twat! Leave it out John! Gordon Bennett! He wore on our evening. It was as well we were done and gone before the denouement of his date was complete. Given how many English expatriates live in Florida something like this was inevitable. Still, I’ll be damned if he didn’t turn up again three days later and 30 miles south in Jensen Beach.
Carol and I had headed out for a swift half before dinner. Conchy Joe’s, a local hotspot for seafood, was crowded and noisy thanks to a bad reggae band. Because of the din we left after five minutes and walked back up the street to Hoffmann’s bar and restaurant. There we were told one of the kitchen staff was off sick (probably typhus) and dinner was delayed at least 20-30 minutes. Not a problem we said, heading out to the dockside bar.
And there he was. I recognized him immediately. He did a quick double take, then went back to chatting up the bar lady, half his age, spouting something about the virtues of darts, ‘motors’, and how to play cricket. Fortunately, my hearing was sufficiently conditioned by this time and had already clicked on my tosser band pass filter.
Carol has her version of the Gecko. In her case it’s a 68-year old, pint sized New Yorker down for the winter in the pub with her girlfriends waxing lyrical about the great state of America. Loud, and louder still when she laughs. Yet, while I understood Carol’s point of view, my band pass filter had already clicked in and my thoughts were my own.
