May 30 2005
Sometimes lovely things just happen.
Sitting at my desk, two messengers come into the library, one a new guy, the other an old hand. Old hand asks me about my recent driving test and the conversation takes off, we’re chatting, the three of us, about failing when new guy says, with a soft lilt to his voice. “Ahh, weil, see where I tuck me test, there wis nae roond-aboots, or mottorways.”
“Oh?” I reply. “Where was that?”
“In Orkney.”
My accent changed instantly, *instantly*, while old hand is from London and I’m anglicised when chatting to him, the English in my voice dissapeared in a snap.
“You’re kidding! Beuy, I’m fae Papay!”
“Naw! But your voice….”
“I ken, I ken, hid’s working doon here that does it…so where are you fae?”
“Sanday.”
“Sanday! You’ll ken the X family.”
“The X family that owned the hotel?”
“Aye.
“Aye, I ken them well.”
“And you’ll ken V X? Their daughter?”
“Aye, she wis in my year at school.”
“Ohhh, you’ll know my brother, her husband? N?”
“N’s your brother? He wis in the year below me at the grammar school!”
“And my other brother? J? He’d be ages wi’ you.”
“J’s your brother?! He wis in my dorm!”
We went on like this for a good 10 minutes, laughing away with our wobbly, bouncy accents, soft vowels, tongues and glottal stops shaving the hard edges off consonants, thrilled to have found a common link in this grey city, where the sea is blotted out by container ships and dockland warehouses.
Now, I have tea and biscuits to consume, and a lovely warm feeling of being a little less adrift.
