Tuesday Bonus: On the Costa Del Geordie

Oh, my mp3 player is a little bundle of surprises. I have thousands of tracks to choose from, and going through them manually is time-consuming, so I get Windows media player to do it for me, randomly slotting this, that and the other onto the player. This means I end up with a playlist with one or two jarring moments - imagine listening to punk one minute and then dropping into a spot of Paul Robeson singing some churchy tune. It's not always like that; since I have a great fondness for Folk, Blues and Reggae & Ska, there is an accordingly proportionate amount of those genres popping up when I use the player. However, to hear this one suddenly come out of the speakers I was using at the time, it was still a case of "ye gods!"

I still like it - it's a fun tune.
Julie likes it as well, although I'm not too sure what part of Spain inspired her lyrics...

Apparently, Newcastle (UK) is now somewhere in Spain...

ABBA were from Bristol, you know.

Last Saturday night, there was an ABBA tribute act in town, followed by an open-air screening of the film Mama Mia. As part of Julie's birthday present, I bought us tickets to go and see it. What I didn't know, was that Julie would be bringing Reynard, a cuddly toy hedgehog with us.

ABBA tribute in the dark

Julie and Reynard the Hedgehog

I think it was something of a cheek for people to be giving us odd looks, considering the outfits they were wearing... I mean, I know ABBA wore the jumpsuits and flares, but some folks were wandering around in full-on 60s flower-power regalia.
That aside, we were chatting away, enjoying ourselves, when our accents suddenly underwent a seismic shift a hundred miles or so to the West. I know I have a wandering accent, and there's a family tendency to pick up the accent of an area we're barely even passing through. Also, Julie has previously demonstrated a certain inability to fail an accent by immense distances (see this one for proof). However, for us to both spontaneously move from a sub-cockney accent to something akin to The Wurzels was a little odd, to say the least.
Not as odd as the following conversation though.

Er... what?

A wandering accent or a wandering country?

Yes, it's another geographically themed Gem.

To be honest, I could probably fill reams with all such Gems; Julie's grasp of Geography, distance and spatial awareness is comparable to (ex-US president) Bill Clinton's sense of fidelity and sexual restraint. Even basic knowledge, such as the names an locations of the continents are sometimes a mystery.

It's certainly a mystery to me. My wife is actually really rather intelligent and has a job with a certain amount of responsibility which requires deep and flexible thought. We'll have lengthy discussions, not all of which devolve into mud-slinging about our admittedly disparate musical tastes.
And then she'll go and spoil it all by coming out with something like this:

Now, normally, I will counter this with a pithy quip. This time, the best is could manage was a blank stare and, "......... no." To her credit, though, Julie did realise what she'd said and laughed about it.

Once again, I'm not going to give the answer, let's see which of you out there can resist the urge to Google and tell me in the comments below what the country really is.
Also, another Facebook fans-only bonus feature available. Come on in - the water's nice and warm.

What? At least it was on the right island!

The title to this one is pretty much a quote from Julie, although it's not strictly speaking accurate. Usually, the first thing she'll come up with when she sees my look of incredulity at her comment will be, "at least it was in the right country... it was, wasn't it?" And then she'll work upwards in size until she finally finds a landmass large enough to be general enough to be right.

Unfortunately, this only works for situations where we're actually discussing places. If, for example, Julie asserts that Mumbai is in South America, then she'll justify it by saying it was on the right planet. When we shift to accents though, it all goes for a tumble.

Brits will already get this, but others may need a little explanation. The comment, 'way-ay, man' is an exaggerated version of a standard Georgie phrase. Geordies live in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (generally known just as 'Newcastle'). There's a little bit of distance between them, along with one or two different accents...

For a full size version go to http://tinyurl.com/56fmlz 

And if that doesn't help, here's a clip of people talking Welsh, and a clip of a mouse animated to a soundtrack of a Geordie talking.
Overall, the effect is like someone referring to the Texan accent in a 'Noo Yoik' style...