Me.
I want to.
This feeling has been growing for some time.
I am normally a very well-behaved citizen. As a child I was the one picking items up off the floor in the shop and putting them on the shelf, neatly. I did it so often it was almost reverse shoplifting. Woolworths on a Saturday afternoon was a positive tidy-fest. As for the racks of saucepans, well! You wouldn’t think you could ruffle up saucepans, would you? But they managed it. After I’d sorted Woolworths out I used to pop along to the library and put the books back on the shelves.
Part of the reason my mother was hard as nails was because I always did what I was told and she was looking for a fight. The only matter worth fighting over was the foot exercises. Once a month to correct my flat feet we went to a hospital in Sunderland where I stood with my feet in two metal dishes with water in them and plates on the bottom that electricity ran through. These singularly failed to raise my dropped arches or electrocute me. At home I was supposed to pick up pencils with my feet and I just wouldn’t do it. My mother would scatter pencils on the floor and I would sit among them sulking, and once she left the room to find my father and complain, I would read a book.
But that was it. At school a goody two shoes. A smarmy little git.
As a student, diligent, as I was living at home it was scarcely any different to school, the only time I stayed late was when we were doing the magazine.
As a teacher every lesson had a plan, which was carried out.
As a housewife floors were scrubbed by me, washing was washed, vegetables were grown, budgets were written in a tall thin accounting book and added up each week.
But now.
Well.
If one more politician looking important stands behind a lectern on a podium, or, indeed, off one and tells me what to do, I shall shout ‘Eala! Nese!’* and other Anglo Saxon or Old English utterances.
Little Hitlers in Supermarkets telling me in a jumped-up fashion to: stand there! earn themselves a short sharp ‘Hweat eart pu?’**
Anybody in a queue, pointing, will get a brief, ‘afeallan begenas!’***
The OH being negative or rude can. naturally, ‘faran from.’**** and people at the door asking if I want any trees lopping down, when I plainly have a big hole in the middle of the lawn, can just, ‘geleoran!’*****
As for delivery agents, hurling broken and shredded parcels at the porch and shouting that I should ‘Have a nice day,’ over their shoulders as they scarper, they can aernan from****** as fast as they like.
My goodness, I’ve hardly got started, isn’t this satisfying? I may have missed a vocation scaling the barricades with a flag, or at least a duster on a stick.
There is something deeply edifying about a language that involves a lot of guttural noises, especially one that evolved, having settled in, to tell Viking raiders where to get off. You can just imagine Saxon women shouting it at a pointy hatted hostile legging it with a pig under each arm.
Oh yes, the time for stronger language has arrived coulie (certainly.)
Ic grete ealle mine araedan. Leof hlifian! (I greet all my readers. Friend rise up!)
But in particular to those who are using the current situation to enrich themselves while impoverishing others, to the sellers of tiny bottles of sanitiser for a fiver a go, To people buying vast quantities of sub-standard PPE from dubious places and selling it to hospitals for twenty times the price. To hotels charging exorbitant prices to people needing to isolate. To anyone hiking up the prices of basics. To all profiteers I say (and this is the one you’ve been waiting for) ge-strinian riht feor onweg. GE-STRINIAN RIHT FEOR ONWEG.*******.
Oh yes.
Well, I feel better for that.
Fancy a cup of tea?
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If you must…
* No! Alas!
**Who do you think you are?
***Decay, thane.
****Go away.
*****Leave
******Run away
******* Procreate right far away.
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