Diary of Curmudgeons in and around York (Part 1)

Two slightly grumpy 50-somethings go Church Crawling and see an Old Door

This church-crawling trip was a surprise one, arranged just the week before. I don’t normally go away on weekends which include a bank (public) holiday because - well - people everywhere. But this was an exception.

On Friday afternoon I switched my work computer off, loaded up the car and set off with my Travelling Companion (let’s call him TC for short). He’s not a great passenger and the Friday-before-a-bank-holiday traffic had him clutching the sides of his seat and pressing the imaginary brake with his right foot fairly soon after we got on the road.

To distract himself he gave me lessons on the patois of the young employees in his office. Language is a fascinating thing, constantly evolving. He started with the word “innit”. The word technically means “isn’t it” and is used by a particular demographic, mostly male. I discovered that the word has different meanings, depending on intonation, much like Chinese.

So “innit”, said at the end of a sentence in a fairly flat tone, is just an extra word of emphasis with no real meaning.

“Innit!” said at a higher pitch expresses excitement at whatever they are talking about, while “innit” said at a lower pitch with a slight decline at the end expresses disappointment or sadness.

Other phrases were equally interesting. An alternative for saying that someone is anxious about something is “It’s tight on him.” That, I think, accurately reflects the physical feeling that comes with anxiety. The one I laughed at most, however, was the phrase to describe a woman who works out at the gym and is, as a result, quite well-built in terms of muscles - “she’s hench.” I have since looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, which tells me it is a recent word, coming from black inner city youth culture, seemingly London at first. But there it relates to men, not women. Of course, we have historically had the word henchman and even henchwoman, with connotations of criminality and involvement in joint enterprise crimes. But the word “hench” now seems to apply to gym-going young women in Blackburn, which is a surprise!

Having survived the fraught journey, we arrived at the outskirts of York and then spent 20 minutes travelling the last 3 miles. York, like many ancient cities, was not built for cars and it took ages to reach the guesthouse. Having settled in, we set out on foot to find some dinner as the city centre wasn’t far. We went along the riverside path.