What are you thinking right now?

[Minty]

I'm told by most I have a variable accent. I used to get cross with people asking me if I was on the phone to someone why I'd changed my accent & I'd ask them what they were talking about, but seems it's an unconscious habit, probably from years of dealing with the most ignorant part of the population south of Hadrian's Wall giving me the "I don't understand you Jockos with that accent" pish. Up here I'm often mistaken as being English or posh because I don't slur my words.

Back in my school days, the leader of the mental girl's gang used to tell me off with a genuine sense of offence (along with her mates) if I ever didn't speak "properly" (& anyone who laughed when she did swiftly regretted it). It was one of those quirks that between causing mayhem in the yard or classes, they'd get very put out if they ever heard me speak improperly.

It was only years later I realised that they'd always spoken properly amongst themselves in class, & it was one of the characteristics that made them stick out like sore thumbs. All of them came from poor families, on the social since what seemed like forever, victims of deindustrialisation when the breadwinners were middle aged & disinterest by successive local governments in retraining them after. As the rest of society changed with the times passing them by, they clung to what standards they could, & speaking properly - as once a large part of the British working class prided themselves upon - cost nothing.

There used to be a tv show up here called Scotland on film, where they interviewed some people from the old slums in Dundee back in the 40s or 50s, & at the risk of sounding a right snob I was taken aback at how "properly" they spoke, especially in comparison with what passes for speech today, my own included.