Original ID : 2869 Created On : 2003-10-30 Last Modified : 2005-11-29
In Kidderminster, nationally accepted standards for playground terms were circulated, mis-heard, and got wrong. Perhaps we’d heard the right version from some dusty-jacketed, worldly wise band of travelling schoolboys, and not understood their Queen’s English.
Take jaffas , the well-known and logical word for boys who shoot blanks. We called them “jaspers”. But we also called wasps Jaspers. It was a confusing time for impotent boys and wasps alike.
Similarly, skill - to us - was and American Bum Disease, even though an American Bum is a tramp, and African Bums are just funnier.
The Kidder version of the Rainbow “Lion Sleeps Tonight” song was;
In the Jungle with George and Bungle, Zippy on the drums.
Jeffrey farted, an earthquake started, and down the rocks they fell.
This is self-evidently a bit crap .
Most inaccurate versions of playground games can be traced to a national game of Chinese Whispers - when they passed through Kidderminster, and we got it really wrong.