Accents

and vague insecurity

There’s this woman I see on my dog walks a lot. I’m dogpilled so I’m forced against my will to stop and talk about dogs with anyone who has one.

“He’s got the best ears ever,” I say about the little scruffy one.

“Aye,” she says. “Shuhhstoppahs, int they?”

“A knurrr,” I reply, the Leeds accent coming in thick as a lizard brain reaction to hearing it.

Problem is, I don’t really have a Leeds accent.

My family are all from various parts of Yorkshire, right back to the 1600s as far as I can tell. My childhood was a symphony of “eyup” and “aye lass” and “sithee? tha’s got nobbut tripe in thi head”, whereas I only have the ghost of the accent. It pops in sometimes with certain words, or if I’m with my extended family. I think it got watered down somewhere starting with my grandparents’ delusions of grandeur and my mum’s pretending to fit in with the poshos at grammar school, and it’s left me sounding like the slackest jawed yokel to any one from the South, and the plummiest la-di-da wanker on earth to anyone up here.

So what I actually did was that embarrassing thing where you mimic someone else’s accent like you’re taking the piss.

I saw her again today.

Her dog was going hogwild on some rabbit poo.

“Ah can’t stop ‘im, I can’t tell ‘im NOWT.”

I nod towards Barky. “Aye, e’s the sehhmm,” comes out my mouth.

And now I have to keep this up forever until one of us dies.

FUCK.