1. You're probably right
2. Yes
3. You're boring me
4. Mmm-hmm
5. Damn right

1. Child
2. Person from Falkirk

1. A thick gated entryway into an ancient city. York, for example, has famous bars.
2. Pound stirling, as in "another 30 bar in his pocket".

1. stubborn
2. warlike (ex: early Scots)
3. an inconsiderate neighbor
4. divorcing you
5. suing you
6. not liking and appreciating you

And from Kirsty: "Plus, Granpaw is the scallywag, and whatever Paw does, he always gets found out. They have been going since before WWII, and along with their compadre, Oor Wullie, have given rise to several phrases which have become embedded in the Scottish psyche, not the least of which is "Jings, crivvens, help m'boab!" (An involuntary expression of surprise and shock. Most often employed on finding that PC Murdoch has foiled one's latest cartie exploit. (PC Murdoch = the resident polis in OorWullieland. Cartie = wooden box on wheels much loved by children in Dundee in the first half of the previous century. Presumably.)

"And Kens, fancying Maggie? Very shallow, I'm sorry!! Daphne is obviously the one with hidden depths. You guys..."

Kens: "Yes, but Maggie is a fox. You don't need to have hidden depths when you look that good approaching your 70s."

Check out The Sunday Post for more info.

Anyways, reading from top to bottom, the Broons consist of:

• Granpaw (the big kid)
• Paw (the heid o' the family)
• Maw (the *real* heid o' the family)
• Joe (the athletic one)
• Daphne (the dumpy unattractive one, who thinks she's the bees knees)
• Hen (the lanky bean-pole with the moustache)
• Maggie (the gorgeous one I've fancied since I was a wee boy)
• Horace (the swot)
• The Twins (two tearaways who bear an uncanny resemblance to Oor Wullie except without the dungarees)
• The Bairn (the baby of the family, and Granpaw's favourite. Also known as 'ma wee lamb')

  All the stories are based around the same sort of premise: one of the family gets into a scrape and everyone rallies around only to find out it's been some major misunderstanding, but that all adds to the charm. After all, PG Wodehouse essentially used the same plotline in all his books, and Haydn wrote the same symphony over a hundred times, but nobody minds that!

1. Criminal record
2. Level at school

• pain/agony
• exertion
• grief
• fun

'When I haver, well I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who's haverin' to you.'

They don't write them like that any more."

Marmite is a concentrated yeast paste, enjoyed at any time of the day, whether on toast for breakfast, in sandwiches at lunchtime or as an added ingredient in stews and casseroles, or so goes the marketing bumf.

Personally, I think it's howfin'. Still, some people seem to like it, and it's not that bad for you 'cos it's 100% veggie *and* provides a rich source of vitamin B12, Riboflavin and Niacin and Follic Acid, so I guess it's just the thing to get a craving for with pickled ice-cream when you fall pregnant.

As for the taste - I guess you could call it the working man's caviarre - it's very salty and very definitely acquired. I still haven't cultured my palette, but my mum likes it with cheese on plain bread. Still, it's sold by the bucketload and it helped the allies win the war, so I guess the 'my mate Marmite' ad campaign must have at least a little bit of truth behind it.

1. v.: Steal
2. n.: Jail

1. Territory or area of expertise, as in "stay off my patch"
2. "Not a patch on...": Not able to compete in comparison

1. My turn, as in my turn to buy the drinks
2. I win

"...[smirr and dreich] both pertain to that favourite British topic, the weather. Dreich should really be prefaced with gey, as in 'It's gey dreich the day.' People may have various ideas on this, but in our house it means a really grey, wet, depressing day, where everything is sodden and very gloomy.

Smirr is a very fine light rain, like a spray

1. n. A bookworm, one who is studious to excess. Me when I was a second year UG at uni (all I did was study, work, eat and sleep - I got *so* rich 'cos I didn't have time to spend any of my wages!). I was truly Kenny Naemates, though.
2. n. a pedant or someone who enjoys displaying their theoretical grasp of acquired knowledge to the belittlement of others. Usually used in the oprobrious sense.
3. v. to study hard

"In Weege-speak, a teuchter (pronounced choochter - first 'ch' as in 'cheese' second as in 'loch') is used as a slightly derogatory term to describe a person who comes from the Highlands and Islands - anywhere north of Loch Lomond is probably fair game. It's sort of like calling someone a yokel or a redneck.

As an extension, hoochter-teuchter music is the traditional Scottish country dance music that we all like to birl to as often as we can." (See also hoochter.)

"Hmm, tenement. It used to have negative connotations, especially when applied to some of the slum areas of inner cities. The most famous was the Gorbals in Glasgow, but this doesn't mean that Edinburgh was any better, so hold back there Kens! They can now be found in some very douce and expensive areas of town. Basically it's a terrace of three to four levels, with two to four flats (apartments) on each level.

"Long ago a flat was more likely to be 'a room and kitchen' with shared toilets, indoors if lucky, outside if not. I don't really know the date of the decision to demolish these in the town centres, but the famous sense of cameraderie was lost when populations were moved wholesale into high rise blocks. These were meant to operate like a street, but on a vertical axis. However, not having several of the attributes of a horizontal street, they quickly became targets for vandals, and left many people feeling very isolated and housebound.

"Plus, as the song so accurately puts it, 'You cannae throw pieces from a 20 story flat, 50,000 hungry weans'll testify tae that, be it something cheese or jeely, be it plain breid or pan, the odds against it reachin' earth are 99 tae wan.'

"Old habit of throwing a sandwich down to children playing in the back court was also lost. (Piece = sandwich, weans, pronounced waynes, = children, but only on the west coast! jeely = fruit jelly or jam, plain breid = thick white bread with an inedible crust, pan = floppy white bread with all the taste and resilience of a J cloth.)"

The Spirit of This Offering

Shortly after this page was mounted, I received a horrid letter (anonymous, of course) from someone who was very, very disgusted with me for thinking a brambleberry was like a blackberry when (in his opinion) a brambleberry is a blackberry.  Other unhappy comments were included.

This made me sad.  This offering is lighthearted and affectionate and no one could be more surprised than I was to find it had spurred strong feelings.

So let me be sure to repeat what is said many times in the journals -- I am far from expert on matters British or Scottish.  I am merely an enchanted traveler, happy beyond expression to have the chance to enjoy all that these isles purvey, hoping to bring to you at least a few of the many smiles inspired by what I heard and did.  If you're needing a true, authentic expert, you're very much in the wrong place, and should seek amongst the vast numbers of sites that provide same.

I was also attacked for including Scottish phrases with the British.  Here is what the experts tell me:  Scots are British, though not all British are Scots, and Scots are most emphatically not English.  If you disagree, (polite) dissent is welcome.

All that having been said, the above is my attempt to make meaning -- for me, at least -- across the seas.