Friday 1 February 2013

Sink or basin

Yesterday after a hard long day at work Hubby and I arrived at my mum and dad's house for tea.  Apparently roast dinners don't taste the same if not eaten on a Sunday (in my mum's world - and people wonder why I am strange....) but she made a roast dinner on a Thursday just for Hubby who loves them.  What does this have to do with sinks and basins I hear you ask.

My dad was in the army until I was 6.  When he left the army apparently my sister and I talked 'posh' - garage was pronouned 'garaaage' and such like.  However, living with my mum has left me with a 'northern' accent and I tend to drop into a broader dialect when with her.  Hubby lived further down the country until he was 14.  I generalise by saying that most people from 'down South' talk posher than we do up North. My broader dialect had me deleting ".....us up North."  

Yesterday morning mum and dad went off to the DIY store to buy a plug for their bathroom sink.  In the UK, a plug for a sink is 1/2 inch and for a bath 3/4 inch.  Naturally, they bought the plug for the sink.  When they got home it was too big.  The conversation went like this:

Mum:  "Ribena, what do you call that thing upstairs that you wash in?"
Me:    "A shower, why?"
Mum:  "No, that you wash your hands in..."
Me:    "A sink, I assume there is a point to this question?" (laughing)
Mum:  "Not a basin then?"
Me:    "No that is a bowl!"
Mum:  "You are wrong. Hubby, what is it called?"
Hubby:"A basin." (being posh)
Me:     "Ooooh, get you!"
Mum:  "Apparently a sink plug is for the kitchen but a plug for a bathroom sink is a plug for a basin."

So a trip back to the DIY shop to buy the correctly sized plug.  They had to actually look at sinks to discover bathroom sinks are basins and what they needed was a basin plug. I wasn't having this - these southeners were obviously infiltrating DIY shops now!

Me:      "Hubby, Google it.  What is the difference between a basin and a sink?"  
Hubby: "A sink is located in the kitchen and a washbasin is located in the bathroom."
Me:      "Damn Google...."

Mum has a habit of talking all day long, mostly random stuff.  She also has a habit of talking to my dad from the kitchen when he is in the living room (sitting room or lounge if you are from down south).  He has to get up and go into the kitchen to talk to her.  This drives me mad personally. 

Dad said she talks all day; I said "Tune her out.  Hubby does with me."  I will agree that I am very much like my mum.  Dad is laughing at me and Hubby says "If I listened to everything Ribena said in a day my brain would explode."

He demonstrated this later in the evening when I was talking to him and during the conversation said something along the lines of:  "Well, that is okay because they live over there."  What it actually sounded like was "Well, that's okay cos they live oorrr therrrrr"

Me:       "Hubby, did you listen to that?"
Hubby:  "No, I tuned you out."
Me:       "Well that's okay cos they live oooorrrr therrrrr?"
Hubby:  "What?" (with a confused expression)
Me:       "I say it all the time.  It's over there."
Hubby:  "Never heard you say that before.  Just say over there."
Me:       "Yes, I say it all the time, especially if talking when driving as I am doing two things at once."
Hubby:  "Thank you. I am so much more confident as your passenger now."

It has left me wondering how he does half of the things I ask him to or what conversations he actually understands.  I can only assume that his brain is automatically filling in the words he doesn't understand by using the rest of the sentence. Apparently I don't talk as broadly at home.  I only start talking to my family with that accent when around them.  Maybe I talk posh when around Hubby?

Doubtful, seen as this post is full of sentences that are not grammatically correct but make perfect sense to me.

 

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