[Jayne Osborn]

Glad you enjoyed my poem over on Met, Charlotte.

It's funny how we talk about the 'shires' but it's never pronounced 'shire' on the end of the counties. (Your "shuh" is a better way of writing it phonetically, and is closer than 'sher' to how it's mostly pronounced.)

I find such things fascinating too! (Some people would say we need to 'get out more' )

[Rory Waterman]

Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale

American vistors to the Ebbw Vale Garden Festival pronounced "Cwm" as "Quim", blissfully unaware of its anatomical connotations.

I spend much of my time in Wales (in fact, I've just returned from a long weekend in Powys, chucking myself into plunge pools and whatnot). A few months ago I stayed in a place called Pumpsaint. Raised a chuckle or seven, so it did. Cilycwm is about five miles away. I know how to pronounce Welsh words for the most part, but that needn't be an impediment to schoolboy (or schoolgirl) mirth. I think pant cudd means hidden dip, doesn't it? Which sounds about right on those narrow, tight country lanes of mid Wales, only it isn't pronounced how it 'should' be.

[Rory Waterman]

Originally Posted by Charlotte Innes

Northerners tend to lengthen syllables, don't they? And I think it IS Lanca-sheer, Jayne!

It's just not that easy to generalise. I'm imagining lots of Yorkies at a football match chanting 'YAAARK-shuh! YAAAARK-shuh! YAAARK-shuh' (ad nauseam). It almost never rhymes with hire, of course, unless the syllable stands alone - which is the mistake lots of uninitiated Americans make in my experience. I'm from Lincolnshire. to me, it ends -sheer, but not to everybody. What would Queenie do? -shuh? But so would Geoffrey Boycott, wouldn't he?

[Charlotte Innes]

Has anyone ever encountered this poem by Danny Abse? Below with note and link! (It's different...)

NOT ADLESTROP

Not Adlestrop, no - besides, the name
hardly matters. Nor did I languish in June heat.
Simply, I stood, too early, on the empty platform,
and the wrong train came in slowly, surprised, stopped.
Directly facing me, from a window,
a very, very pretty girl leaned out.

When I, all instinct,
stared at her, she, all instinct, inclined her head away
as if she'd divined the much married life in me,
or as if she might spot, up platform,
some unlikely familiar.

For my part, under the clock, I continued
my scrutiny with unmitigated pleasure.
And she knew it, she certainly knew it, and would not
glance at me in the silence of not Adlestrop.

Only when the train heaved noisily, only
when it jolted, when it slid away, only then,
daring and secure, she smiled back at my smile,
and I, daring and secure, waved back at her waving.
And so it was, all the way down the hurrying platform
as the train gathered atrocious speed
towards Oxfordshire or Gloucestershire.

Dannie Abse

Found on this blog (with note below) and also there's a piece about him on the Guardian link below!

http://poemsandprose.blog.co.uk/2011...trop-11655178/


"Dannie Abse, now nearly 80 is the best-known living Welsh poet. He has enjoyed a long and successful literary career, from the publication of his first volume of verse in 1948 to a 2003 volume, 'New and Collected Poems'. Remarkably, most of this career has been conducted while holding down a full-time job as a doctor in a London chest clinic. He has also edited poetry anthologies, been a playwright, a literary journalist and a writer on medical affairs."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/mar/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview31

[Marcia Karp]

Neither is this Adlestrop, but Dannie Abse, and a wonder. You can find him reading it online.

Cousin Sidney

Dull as a bat, said my mother
of cousin Sidney in 1940 that time he tried
to break his garden swing, jumping on it,
size 12 shoes -- at fifteen the tallest boy
in the class, taller than loping Dan Morgan
when Dan Morgan wore his father’s top hat.

Duller than a bat, said my father
when hero Sidney lied about his age
to claim rough khaki, silly ass;
and soon, somewhere near Dunkirk,
some foreign corner was forever Sidney
though uncle would not believe it.

Missing not dead please God, please,
he said, and never bolted the front door,
never string taken from the letter box,
never the hall light off lest his one son
came home through a night of sleet
whistling, We’ll meet again.

Aunt crying and raw in the onion air
of the garden (the unswinging empty swing)
her words on a stretched leash
while uncle shouted, Bloody Germans.
And on November 11th, two howls
of silence even after three decades

till last year, their last year,
when uncle and aunt also went missing,
missing alas, so that now strangers
have bolted their door and cut the string
and no-one at all (the hall so dark)
waits up for Sidney, silly ass.

[Dannie Abse]