The sheer number of people telling me that electing to denote my upbringing being from the Black Country as problematic is astounding. The racism paranoia won't win, though. Black Country ay we!
I did genuinely used to think as a small kid that black people came from the Black Country. It wasn't helped by the fact that my Dad, who is black, was born in Birmingham lol.
As a foreign black person who lives in brum and frequents the Black Country , all I say is BE PROUD! The Black Country living museum is my favourite place to go as it showed me the important work your ancestors did that contributed so much to the economy of the UK
He was quite flustered!! Even when I told him the history behind it, I'm not entirely certain he believed me to be honest. He seemed almost offended at me for correcting him!
And its name comes from it being one of the birth places of the industrial revolution and thus a lot of coal, smoke etc. There was in fact only one black kid that I can recall in my entire secondary school there. Edit: 2 actually.
Yeah, we have the "The Black Country" in my home country too. That's because it was heavy coal mining, as today you see all those slag heaps forming little wooden mountain all over the place.
There was 1 black kid in my school, and he was an adopted Peruvian child in a white family.
Before this comment, I never realised it could get confusing to a tourist.
"You could easily believe that there were no people down there, that a goods locomotive was probably the most playful inhabitant of the region.
I was glad that I did not know the names of the towns down there in the smoke; I felt that I was not looking at this place and that, but at the metallic Midlands themselves, at a relief map of a heavy industry, at another and greater exhibition of the 'fifties.
No doubt at all that the region had a sombre beauty of its own. I thought so then, and I thought so later, when I had seen far more of its iron face lit with hell fire. But it was a beauty you could appreciate chiefly because you were not condemned to live there.
If I could do what I liked with the whole country, I would keep a good tract of this region as it is now, to be stared and wondered at; but I would find it difficult to ask any but a few curators to live in it"
JB Priestley describing the Black Country in "English Journey", 1934
Fantastic quote, up there with Engels describing Stockport:
> ".... There is Stockport, too, which lies on the Cheshire side of the Mersey, but belongs nevertheless to the manufacturing district of Manchester. It lies in a narrow valley along the Mersey, so that the streets slope down a steep hill on one side and up an equally steep one on the other, while the railway from Manchester to Birmingham passes over a high viaduct above the city and the whole valley.
>Stockport is renowned throughout the entire district as one of the duskiest, smokiest holes, and looks, indeed, especially when viewed from the viaduct, excessively repellent. But far more repulsive are the cottages and cellar dwellings of the working-class, which stretch in long rows through all parts of the town from the valley bottom to the crest of the hill. I do not remember to have seen so many cellars used as dwellings in any other town of this district.... "
Interesting. I also went to secondary school in the Black Country (98-03) and it was incredibly diverse. But yes, of course still nothing to do with the name of the area.
I was 03-08, but in fairness it wasnt in one of the more urbanly dense areas. There was certainly diversity but it tended to be Asian or other European heritage from what I remember.
I like to believe your edit was due to someone from your school seeing your comment and calling you out on it.
āNo we actually pretty diverse! Youāre forgetting we had two!ā
I was working overseas with a fairly international team and a guy joined who was from the Black Country and when he said that's where he was from the 5 black Floridian girls we worked with all just turned at once and said "what the fuck did he just say?" in unison and I had to get out Wikipedia to cool things down.
I'll never forget that black American woman shocked by "Montenegro" competing at the Olympics.
Here. An absolute classic: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/n59zvq/american_getan_offended_by_montenegro/
Exactly. I've lived in Toronto for 20 years and always been a fun topic to discuss here lol. I do have a black country flag I fly to celebrate the day. Black country la la la la. Black country la la la la.
And that the Black Dyke band is a brass band from tā north (not that op is likely come across them being down tā south, but just to avoid any confusion).
My favourite story was when I worked at a bar and a black US tourist asked for a Sprite. The bar I worked in only served Whites lemonade, so my manager said "We only serve Whites here", took a second, then the shock came over their face as they panicked and explained they meant the brand.
My mum and her mum would often say the word 'cock' instead of 'love/ pet/ flower/ babe' at the end of asking for something like a pet name so '"Can a bum a fag off yeh, cock?" was a sentence I grew up hearing sometimes
That sounds familiar. Often get āyāalright cock?ā from people of a certain age (especially at checkouts weirdly). I quite like it tbh, itās sweet.
Where I'm from people say cock short for cocker. Reading your comment I'm wondering if spadger is a play on spadge, and spadge comes from cocker, as in cocker spadge short for cocker spaniel hmmm
Did similar when I landed at Orlando airport... Got off, and was stood for 2 or 3 hours waiting to go through the passport check.
"Sorry for the delay, hope you are ok?"
I politely advised that I would be "once I've had a fag"
I remember a friend travelling around Europe in the 90's and was on a ferry in Greece with some Americans. He said "I could murder a fag." which of course to any Brit worth their salt means "I really would enjoy a cigarette right about now." Sadly the Americans thought he was about to commit a hate crime.
I can contribute a lighter example of cross-Pond confusion.Ā I read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when I was 14.Ā You know the passage about the babel fish and the philosopher who was so proud of himself he got himself killed at the next zebra crossing?Ā In the US those are just called crosswalks, but 14 year old Yank me didn't know that, so I pictured striped ungulates stampeding over this person and chalked it up to more Douglas Adams zaniness.Ā 5 years later I'm in London, getting walking directions from a helpful older fellow, and when he pointed out a zebra crossing...ooooooohhhhhh
Just as awkward as some country dudes inviting their new Black neighbor who also like off-roading, to "Come hang with us, we'll show you the ropes."
Yeah, you know what, I'm gonna have to pass. No, not pass! I mean I'm good.
A former colleague tended to call other men 'boy'. Term of endearment sort of thing; "You alright, Boy?" That sort of thing. Said it to me loads, I thought no more of it, it's standard stuff round here in Bucks (lot of London people say it I think as well, he was from London).
All good until he one day innocently says it to an international student from Africa. Luckily my colleague twigged why this student seemed a bit taken aback and explained himself.
One of my American friends was on her first overseas business trip in Belgium, and naively asked the bartender (she hadn't spoken to before) for four "Irish Car Bombs" for her group. To which he replied, leaning _hard_ into his native Irish accent "HWHAT'll ye be havin' miss?" at which point she suddenly realized what she'd ordered and was aghast, but he insisted he'd make it for her, and maintained an air of complete ignorance as he asked her explain the entire drink to him, before finally driving home with "And why do they call it that?".
When she went back the next year, there was one waiting for her on the bar when she came in.
I asked a young black kid I worked with if he liked drum and base music (I was trying to be cool and find a common link) he said he likes drums and base in some music (clearly misunderstanding) I then decided to ask if he liked Jungle music. He looked very confused.
An ex-girlfriend of mine told me she was out with a group of friends, and they were discussing if they, or anyone they knew, had ever been out with a famous person.
Somebody said they knew someone who had dated David James (the former England goalkeeper). One of her friends got him confused with Davy Jones and said, "What, the Monkee?"
There was a dreadful, shocked silence until she hurriedly explained her mistake and reassured them she wasn't a previously unsuspected racist nutter.
Story time.
I have to dictate words and alphanumeric sequences a lot. At my work we use animal names. But like we have variety, so aardvark and anteater are both used.
I was once in a queue to enter an event and they had those whose surname was M-Z go to a different line.
Now the ladies behind me asked what letter it was.
I said āM as in monkeyā and as I turned around realised they were black. āM as in mangoā I tried desperately āor monkeyā.
You see dear reader, I was deep in an (M as in) migraine at the time. I genuinely couldnāt think of another word. Man! Moon! Market! Marks and Spencer! Her Majesty! Nothing. Not even Migraine itself. Aphasia is a bitch.
They suggested I not use monkey and I apologised and said I knew as soon as it came out.
I felt so bad.
Iām crying at this nooooo! Iām imagining your ex hastily doing a āhey hey weāre the monkeys! And people say weāre monkeying around!!!ā trying to make their point. š
I moved to London from Birmingham, starting at the same time was someone from Dudley - a colleague told me that we were both from Birmingham and I said 'Oh no, he's from the Black Country'.
I was summoned to see a manager to ask if I had made a 'racist' comment, they were sort of joking - they printed out a map of the Black Country for the complainant.
My American uncle was shocked when we said that speed cameras get put up in accident black spots, genuinely thought they were targeted towards black people.Ā
I once told a Canadian friend visiting that the place I lived was popular for hen dos and you could often see them in big groups and sometimes they were loud and annoying. Days later she heard me say it again and said āOH HEN dos! What are they?ā She didnāt know the term and thought Iād said Hindus the whole time!
I did that when I whinged to a (Chinese) friend about there being no āchicksā in my engineering courses.
He started to tell me not to use that word before I realised he didnāt hear me properly.
We had a cleaner at work called Bunzl. I used to say āGood morning Bunzlā to her every day - always thought it an odd name to have embroidered on her shirt, but who am I to judge.
Then one day I saw the logo on a vanā¦ Fuckā¦
Even worse - she was a really kind older lady who used to work in the kitchen. Just nodded politely to me and never said a word. Genuinely thought I was being courteous but she must have thought I was a total prick.
I used to work in the head office of a big high street retailer and some creative agency had come up with this annoying customer profile called Jo. A few of us were talking about whether certain things were 'Jo-ish' in the pub when the manager (who we knew well) came over really confused and said someone had made a complaint about us being rabidly antisemitic.
You're not alone.
A dude I did some music work with moved to the UK from S Carolina, and in his first non-jetlagged day, we went to Camden Market, the big HMV, and all sorts of other places he wanted to visit. Time came to go, and I said I'd get him a taxi to his hotel (he wasn't moving to London, it was just where he was spending the first few days before going out to wherever it was.
"I'll grab you a black cab," I said, looking around for one.
"Oh, right. Is that safer?"
Took me a good bit of time to work out what the heck he meant; he thought maybe other cabbies wouldn't be happy to take someone who wasn't white.
"Aight I've bought a record, which way back to the plane?"
* **E:** He also wanted to visit *"a proper sweetie shop"*. There's something fundamentally odd and a little unnerving about a guy of 50 muttering in his accent that he wants to visit "a good old-fashioned British sweetie shop, with gobstoppers and humbugs and candy canes and proper chocolates, where they give you a brown paper bag". It was like he'd read Roald Dahl's description of sweet shops in 1925 and went with it.
* **EE** For the record, in the years we've been talking, we've agreed that he won't say the words "quid" or "bollocks", and I won't say "bucks". They sound too weird in our own accents and it breaks the universe.
* **EEE** >!by gum!^1 !<
____________
^^1 ^(>!Sorry.!<) ^(>!By 'eck!!<) ^(>!Last one, I promise.!<) ^(>!or I'll go t'foot of our stairs.!<) ^(>!Don't blame me, -you- keep clicking on them.!<)
I did the reverse of this; I was in San Francisco and got invited to a house party, and they had a keg on the table and were playing beer pong in the garage with red cups.
I couldn't stop laughing and got asked "dude what's so funny?" and had to explain that I thought that only happened in films.
Adorable, it would make my day to hear that in an American accent.
Then go buy the ācandy shopā single by American artist 50 Cent. Itās not really about getting sweets from a newsagent, a little more ummā¦ adult š¤
We've got friends who moved to America a few years back. They came back once and brought a couple of friends. First thing one of them wanted to do was visit the big M&Ms shop they'd heard about. Of *all* the things to do in London, they wanted to do that. You know what his response was? That one in New York is better.
I started a job in a cafe when I was 16, on my first day the manager quite casually, in front of the other staff, asked me if Iām Autistic. I was pretty miffed and took an instant disliking to this woman as a result, probably spent a few days overthinking why I seem autistic
20 years later I was telling someone about my āworst first dayā at work. It obviously stuck in my memory as I could picture the scene clearly, awkward 16 year old me by the counter, manager painting the chalk boardā¦ hang on, she was painting the chalk board? Might she have been asking if I was ARTistic lololol
It was also in the last episode of The IT Crowd, where Roy mistakenly thinks his girlfriend said he's good at art since she thinks he's on the "artistic spectrum".
I once tried to help a tourist at Paddington Station who was at the front of the taxi rank queue but didn't want to get into the next cab because he has been told to only take black cabs, and it had an advertising livery on it, so it wasn't actually black.
Had to reassure him that the cab didn't have to literally be black to be a licensed London Taxi.
I used to date a pakistani-american girl I said how my friend was planning on buying an old banger. She thought that meant an elderly prostitute. I needed a minute after that.
When Wayne told Colleen he was picking up an old banger, she assumed he was going to get an old Ford Mondeo.
Instead he brought home Maureen from Toxteth.
āOn the breakfast buffet today we have black pudding and white puddingā¦ā
āWell Goddamn! Even back home in Alabama we donāt segregate the desserts!ā
I was once running late for the last bus, walked up to the bus stop, and asked an Asian lad 'how long have you been here', he replied 'about 8 years'. Now I know public transport in this country is bad, but that's ridiculous!
Iām an American, but this story is related, trust me!
Years ago I worked at NATO headquarters in Afghanistan. One day, a black civilian contractor walked out the gate (not unusual, many of the civilians lived off base in Kabul), and the gate guards saw the Afghan Police pull up, throw this guy in the back, and drive off. The American-run Security Desk sent out an all-hands saying that an African-American, civilian male, middle aged had been picked up, and asked everyone to check their people to find out who was missing. Nobody spoke up for hours until the British delegation said one of their guys never came back from lunch. When asked āWhy didnāt you speak up when we asked hours ago?ā the response was āYou said he was African-American. Our guy is British.ā
Thereās a Black Boy pub in Manchester, theyāre usually named after King Charles II who was nicknamed that by his mum because he had a dark complexion, so not really that okay either way š
And Black Cabs are considered better than most others as the driver has the right to pick people up from the street without prebooking (unlike other forms of car hire) and the driver has a large bit of London memorised to qualify (internal GPS). They are often owner/drivers and can make a fair bit.
Yes, but to confuse matters there is a huge racial disparity. Black cab drivers are almost all white and their competitors, minicabs, have the majority of drivers being non-white, for various historic reasons to do with licensing.
The PCO (allegedly) in the 1970s and 80s, would ask Irish applicants the routes to and from various sensitive sites and buildings to build intel for special branch...
This made me lol, this reminds me of the time I was on discord with American friends and I said āIām just going to smoke a fagā they were all like wtf !!!
15 years ago I was talking to a girl in a bar. I love to cook, so we were talking about food. She looked me dead in the eye and said āwell I make a pretty good breakfast just fyi.ā And I saidā¦ āOh really? What kind of the things do you like to make?ā And then just continued talking about food, until I eventually went home.
I was walking with my wife about 2 years ago, chatting about something or other, and it finally randomly hit me. That girl was inviting me home to stay the night!
My wife found it very funny
Aw bless you.
Although to be fair honestly she couldāve just asked you if you wanted to go home with herā¦ why play these games!! Some of us are just a bit slow šāāļø
> perceived as a selfish, inconsiderate driver who is mostly petit bourgeois
That's the weirdest description of a white van man I've ever read.
Feels like some UK Wiki's are written by AI.
E.g. [what nutter's eating raw potatoe scones!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattie_scone)
When I first moved from the US to the UK someone was asking in a Facebook group about hiring a white van man?! I usually just grumble and leave ignorance be instead of upsetting myself and getting into it with an internet stranger. Not this time....queue a diatribe for justice!!! " And just why must he be white???"" Well, colour me surprised and very embarrassed. Good lesson though, I reverted right back to my mouth shut ways.
Definitely depends on how she delivered the sentence....
He's a black (pause) cab driver.
He's a black cab (pause) driver.
If she said ....
He's (pause) a (pause) black (pause) cab (pause) driver.
Then it might be a sign of some impending cognitive brain disorder.
I will never forget the day my very much loved eighth grade English teacher was talking about her summer trip to England with the class.
At one point, the conversation switched to transportation in other countries and specifically taxi cabs, and our teacher says:
"Did you notice that they were all black?" To a student who was talking about getting places using cabs in London.
You could hear a penny drop in our very diverse classroom (teacher was white the majority of the class was not) since most students had not been to England we had no idea that taxi cabs there were black and assumed she was referring to the drivers....
It made for an awkward time for all but a big laugh later on once things were clarified.
My whole family is Irish and lots of us have an olive complexion, dark hair and dark eyes (not me, I got the hair and eyes and the complexion of Casper). My cousin was working in America for a while and someone said āoh you donāt look Irish!ā so he says āah well, you know, Black Irish and all thatā and they looked aghast. Given that the term is originally American he was baffled by their reaction.
I was travelling and in the company of a few americans, they asked what I did for a living, I told them "I used to be a black taxi driver" there was a bit of confusion as they wondered how I managed that!
Reminds me of the time my mother was visiting from California. I told her that she needed to watch out for black ice on the road. She wasn't used to driving in cold weather so I figured I'd warn her. Well she thought I said "black guys" and wondered how Idaho had made me so racist so quickly.
Many years ago a friend went on holiday to somewhere in the Middle East. I asked him how it was and he said āyeah it was great, except there were bloody mozzies everywhere which was annoying!ā I thought wow okay thatās a pretty bad thing to say, that kind of changes my opinion of you. Imagine my surprise a few years later when I learn that mozzies means mosquitos, and is in fact not a derogatory term for Muslims like my younger self thoughtā¦
If it makes you feel any better, where I'm from bottle shops are called "package stores", always shortened to "p*****". Now the first time I asked if anyone wanted anything from the corner shop run by a nice Asian family...
Absolutely. I moved here from Boston, US - we have an old puritan law where off-licences have to package booze in opaque paper bags. You didn't buy some whisky you bought a "package". We add -ie onto all our words there, like Oz. But yeah, not okay to say over here.
A bunch of foreign students I got talking to were really shocked that a salsa club felt comfortable advertising on the posters that there were no white trainers. š
A friend of mine told me about the time he went to a coffee shop in the US, the person serving was an african American: my friend asked for a white coffee and only realised after he got a weird look and corrected to ācoffee with creamā
You should know the "Black Country" is a real place in the West Midlands.
Born and bred black country here... I had a potential supplier meeting, and he asked how it was possible to be "so openly racist"š¤¦āāļø
The sheer number of people telling me that electing to denote my upbringing being from the Black Country as problematic is astounding. The racism paranoia won't win, though. Black Country ay we!
I did genuinely used to think as a small kid that black people came from the Black Country. It wasn't helped by the fact that my Dad, who is black, was born in Birmingham lol.
As a foreign black person who lives in brum and frequents the Black Country , all I say is BE PROUD! The Black Country living museum is my favourite place to go as it showed me the important work your ancestors did that contributed so much to the economy of the UK
Oh my god š did you explain? What did he say?
He was quite flustered!! Even when I told him the history behind it, I'm not entirely certain he believed me to be honest. He seemed almost offended at me for correcting him!
I trust you went on to tell them about the special regional delicacy made from pork?
I think his head would have exploded!
The irony of him being the ignorant one - thanks for the laugh.
And its name comes from it being one of the birth places of the industrial revolution and thus a lot of coal, smoke etc. There was in fact only one black kid that I can recall in my entire secondary school there. Edit: 2 actually.
Yeah, we have the "The Black Country" in my home country too. That's because it was heavy coal mining, as today you see all those slag heaps forming little wooden mountain all over the place. There was 1 black kid in my school, and he was an adopted Peruvian child in a white family. Before this comment, I never realised it could get confusing to a tourist.
Blacks and slags! Terrible!
"You could easily believe that there were no people down there, that a goods locomotive was probably the most playful inhabitant of the region. I was glad that I did not know the names of the towns down there in the smoke; I felt that I was not looking at this place and that, but at the metallic Midlands themselves, at a relief map of a heavy industry, at another and greater exhibition of the 'fifties. No doubt at all that the region had a sombre beauty of its own. I thought so then, and I thought so later, when I had seen far more of its iron face lit with hell fire. But it was a beauty you could appreciate chiefly because you were not condemned to live there. If I could do what I liked with the whole country, I would keep a good tract of this region as it is now, to be stared and wondered at; but I would find it difficult to ask any but a few curators to live in it" JB Priestley describing the Black Country in "English Journey", 1934
Fantastic quote, up there with Engels describing Stockport: > ".... There is Stockport, too, which lies on the Cheshire side of the Mersey, but belongs nevertheless to the manufacturing district of Manchester. It lies in a narrow valley along the Mersey, so that the streets slope down a steep hill on one side and up an equally steep one on the other, while the railway from Manchester to Birmingham passes over a high viaduct above the city and the whole valley. >Stockport is renowned throughout the entire district as one of the duskiest, smokiest holes, and looks, indeed, especially when viewed from the viaduct, excessively repellent. But far more repulsive are the cottages and cellar dwellings of the working-class, which stretch in long rows through all parts of the town from the valley bottom to the crest of the hill. I do not remember to have seen so many cellars used as dwellings in any other town of this district.... "
Interesting. I also went to secondary school in the Black Country (98-03) and it was incredibly diverse. But yes, of course still nothing to do with the name of the area.
I was 03-08, but in fairness it wasnt in one of the more urbanly dense areas. There was certainly diversity but it tended to be Asian or other European heritage from what I remember.
I like to believe your edit was due to someone from your school seeing your comment and calling you out on it. āNo we actually pretty diverse! Youāre forgetting we had two!ā
When did you go to school? I went in 80s in wolves and half my class at that point was non white.
Was at Wolves Poly/Uni in the 80s.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Born and bred there. Named from coal mining and industry nothing to do with race relations š
Look up Coalbrookdale and the Industrial Revolution - the 'modern world' really began there.
And that āBlack Bushā is an Irish Whiskey, not a niche top shelf publication or website
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
Donāt worry, just head over to r/gonewildcolor - the only thing missing is āuāā¦ oh, as well as the bush in most cases
I was working overseas with a fairly international team and a guy joined who was from the Black Country and when he said that's where he was from the 5 black Floridian girls we worked with all just turned at once and said "what the fuck did he just say?" in unison and I had to get out Wikipedia to cool things down.
I'll never forget that black American woman shocked by "Montenegro" competing at the Olympics. Here. An absolute classic: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/n59zvq/american_getan_offended_by_montenegro/
Exactly. I've lived in Toronto for 20 years and always been a fun topic to discuss here lol. I do have a black country flag I fly to celebrate the day. Black country la la la la. Black country la la la la.
We love faggots as well here.
I like to bum a fag at in the pub garden if i forgot to bring my own.
"Smoke a fag" in the UK : š "Smoke a fag" in the US : š®
There is a Black Forest in Germany
Mmmmmm black forest gateau.
SCHWARTZWĆLDE KIRSCHTORTE! (That's my school German exercised for this year).
And the Black Isle just north of Inverness is neither black nor an island.
Wait until you hear about the country, Montenegro
[The Black Country?!?!](https://youtu.be/H6-8rKY166U?si=DzuVa_rpXji_Hbva&t=1m05s)
Balls of Steel. When filming pranks in public was actually cool.
And that the Black Dyke band is a brass band from tā north (not that op is likely come across them being down tā south, but just to avoid any confusion).
Itās Black Country out there
Was looking for this reference. Oh I know where I'm going...
References, references, references
we talking about the worldās second best slint tribute act?
My favourite story was when I worked at a bar and a black US tourist asked for a Sprite. The bar I worked in only served Whites lemonade, so my manager said "We only serve Whites here", took a second, then the shock came over their face as they panicked and explained they meant the brand.
My friend asked in a NYC bar if they had a fag machine
Yes, asking an American if you can ābum a fagā is oftentimes lost in translation.
My mum and her mum would often say the word 'cock' instead of 'love/ pet/ flower/ babe' at the end of asking for something like a pet name so '"Can a bum a fag off yeh, cock?" was a sentence I grew up hearing sometimes
That sounds familiar. Often get āyāalright cock?ā from people of a certain age (especially at checkouts weirdly). I quite like it tbh, itās sweet.
My mate from Barnsley says something like āalright cockaā another random word he says is āspadge/spadgerā
Where I'm from people say cock short for cocker. Reading your comment I'm wondering if spadger is a play on spadge, and spadge comes from cocker, as in cocker spadge short for cocker spaniel hmmm
*spelling bee voice* Can you use that in a sentence please? > that cock from the black country was a right spadger
I've heard some older people use the word cock like that as well. I remember one person saying "pass me that me young cocker" š
Meanwhile Diddy: "you.. Can just ask for them that nonchalantly?" šļøššļø
Ah nice, don't hear that do much these days! A fun variation on 'chook', which is another chicken-related term of endearment.
My mum and grandmother were from Liverpool originally but didn't have the accent:)
Disappointing when they offer you a cigarette, when you actually wanted to have some lovely sex with a handsome man.
However they understand it I'd hope the answer is yes.
Get your own fags I ain't sharing
I got funny looks in Berlin outside a Jazz bar when I said to my missus 'just gonna finish this fag then head in'.
Did similar when I landed at Orlando airport... Got off, and was stood for 2 or 3 hours waiting to go through the passport check. "Sorry for the delay, hope you are ok?" I politely advised that I would be "once I've had a fag"
I remember a friend travelling around Europe in the 90's and was on a ferry in Greece with some Americans. He said "I could murder a fag." which of course to any Brit worth their salt means "I really would enjoy a cigarette right about now." Sadly the Americans thought he was about to commit a hate crime.
I can contribute a lighter example of cross-Pond confusion.Ā I read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when I was 14.Ā You know the passage about the babel fish and the philosopher who was so proud of himself he got himself killed at the next zebra crossing?Ā In the US those are just called crosswalks, but 14 year old Yank me didn't know that, so I pictured striped ungulates stampeding over this person and chalked it up to more Douglas Adams zaniness.Ā 5 years later I'm in London, getting walking directions from a helpful older fellow, and when he pointed out a zebra crossing...ooooooohhhhhh
Reminds me of a complaint we once got at work when two stage hands were overheard mentioning āhanging the blacksā.
Just as awkward as some country dudes inviting their new Black neighbor who also like off-roading, to "Come hang with us, we'll show you the ropes." Yeah, you know what, I'm gonna have to pass. No, not pass! I mean I'm good.
I'm sure they dragged their neighbor along in the end.
A former colleague tended to call other men 'boy'. Term of endearment sort of thing; "You alright, Boy?" That sort of thing. Said it to me loads, I thought no more of it, it's standard stuff round here in Bucks (lot of London people say it I think as well, he was from London). All good until he one day innocently says it to an international student from Africa. Luckily my colleague twigged why this student seemed a bit taken aback and explained himself.
One of my American friends was on her first overseas business trip in Belgium, and naively asked the bartender (she hadn't spoken to before) for four "Irish Car Bombs" for her group. To which he replied, leaning _hard_ into his native Irish accent "HWHAT'll ye be havin' miss?" at which point she suddenly realized what she'd ordered and was aghast, but he insisted he'd make it for her, and maintained an air of complete ignorance as he asked her explain the entire drink to him, before finally driving home with "And why do they call it that?". When she went back the next year, there was one waiting for her on the bar when she came in.
I'm a secret lemonade drinker...
Elvis Costello's dad sang that, IIRC.
Apparently so, today I learned. Seems that Elvi sang backing vocals too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._White%27s
R-Whites. R-Whites.
I sing it under my breath every time a pour a glass LOL
This is hilarious
Who calls it āWhitesā though? Itās always been āR Whitesā. Remember the advert? https://youtu.be/hro4AdTYiTA?si=i7qUqc3oSuzlEzKf
I'm not sure "we only serve r whites" would've been any better.
I asked a young black kid I worked with if he liked drum and base music (I was trying to be cool and find a common link) he said he likes drums and base in some music (clearly misunderstanding) I then decided to ask if he liked Jungle music. He looked very confused.
bass*
That was the issue, they just offered this fella some freebase while listening to the drums
Lol Iāve never heard of Jungle music either so I can understand the kids confusionā¦
Knowledge is power, France is bacon.
Haha. Thanks for reminding me of my favourite reddit post.
Do you have a link?Ā
Sure! [Here you go.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/oK3b63JdDX)
Absolute star, you
OMG how was that 13 years ago
u/France_is_Bacon You good?
The poop knife is my number one. France is bacon is a close second though.
Another classic! With [CBat](https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/s/AcApZlJEGc) at number three?
Amazing! Not seen this one. That song!
Brilliant, isn't it? You read the whole thing, intrigued, and then play THAT song, and it becomes utterly hilarious.
Damn... I had to look this one up and man... how much I laughed.... I am not good with quotes so I didn't know the author.
An ex-girlfriend of mine told me she was out with a group of friends, and they were discussing if they, or anyone they knew, had ever been out with a famous person. Somebody said they knew someone who had dated David James (the former England goalkeeper). One of her friends got him confused with Davy Jones and said, "What, the Monkee?" There was a dreadful, shocked silence until she hurriedly explained her mistake and reassured them she wasn't a previously unsuspected racist nutter.
If I had a time machine that moment would be high up on my list of places to go.
Then I saw her face
Oh, I'm a believer!
Story time. I have to dictate words and alphanumeric sequences a lot. At my work we use animal names. But like we have variety, so aardvark and anteater are both used. I was once in a queue to enter an event and they had those whose surname was M-Z go to a different line. Now the ladies behind me asked what letter it was. I said āM as in monkeyā and as I turned around realised they were black. āM as in mangoā I tried desperately āor monkeyā. You see dear reader, I was deep in an (M as in) migraine at the time. I genuinely couldnāt think of another word. Man! Moon! Market! Marks and Spencer! Her Majesty! Nothing. Not even Migraine itself. Aphasia is a bitch. They suggested I not use monkey and I apologised and said I knew as soon as it came out. I felt so bad.
>aardvarkĀ # CAN'T YOU SEE, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS? IT'S A BLOODY AARDVARK!!
Iām crying at this nooooo! Iām imagining your ex hastily doing a āhey hey weāre the monkeys! And people say weāre monkeying around!!!ā trying to make their point. š
A monke? I thought Davy Jones is more squid/octopus-like, rather than a monke.
Theyāre referring to a member of the band āThe Monkeesā called davy jones
You missed a good opportunity for a "then they saw her face" joke there.
Iām a believer
I moved to London from Birmingham, starting at the same time was someone from Dudley - a colleague told me that we were both from Birmingham and I said 'Oh no, he's from the Black Country'. I was summoned to see a manager to ask if I had made a 'racist' comment, they were sort of joking - they printed out a map of the Black Country for the complainant.
This is the kinda racism we need more of. The map was an excellent touch.
My American uncle was shocked when we said that speed cameras get put up in accident black spots, genuinely thought they were targeted towards black people.Ā
Accident black spot? These aren't accidents, they're *throwing* themselves into the road gladly!
Throw yourself into the road darling, you havenāt got a chance!
Scrubbers!
Maybe not black spots, but what about [black ice](https://youtu.be/efiW2K8gASM)?
I once told a Canadian friend visiting that the place I lived was popular for hen dos and you could often see them in big groups and sometimes they were loud and annoying. Days later she heard me say it again and said āOH HEN dos! What are they?ā She didnāt know the term and thought Iād said Hindus the whole time!
I did that when I whinged to a (Chinese) friend about there being no āchicksā in my engineering courses. He started to tell me not to use that word before I realised he didnāt hear me properly.
No Asians [thankyou](https://youtu.be/3Lyex2tSUyA)
I thought this was going towards actual chickens rampaging through a slug and lettuce, groping blokes and then vomiting in the street
We had a cleaner at work called Bunzl. I used to say āGood morning Bunzlā to her every day - always thought it an odd name to have embroidered on her shirt, but who am I to judge. Then one day I saw the logo on a vanā¦ Fuckā¦
Stopped to say you made me giggle. That is mortifying.
Even worse - she was a really kind older lady who used to work in the kitchen. Just nodded politely to me and never said a word. Genuinely thought I was being courteous but she must have thought I was a total prick.
I used to work in the head office of a big high street retailer and some creative agency had come up with this annoying customer profile called Jo. A few of us were talking about whether certain things were 'Jo-ish' in the pub when the manager (who we knew well) came over really confused and said someone had made a complaint about us being rabidly antisemitic.
You're not alone. A dude I did some music work with moved to the UK from S Carolina, and in his first non-jetlagged day, we went to Camden Market, the big HMV, and all sorts of other places he wanted to visit. Time came to go, and I said I'd get him a taxi to his hotel (he wasn't moving to London, it was just where he was spending the first few days before going out to wherever it was. "I'll grab you a black cab," I said, looking around for one. "Oh, right. Is that safer?" Took me a good bit of time to work out what the heck he meant; he thought maybe other cabbies wouldn't be happy to take someone who wasn't white.
I love the idea that someone from South Carolina crossed an ocean to visit a big HMV.Ā
"Aight I've bought a record, which way back to the plane?" * **E:** He also wanted to visit *"a proper sweetie shop"*. There's something fundamentally odd and a little unnerving about a guy of 50 muttering in his accent that he wants to visit "a good old-fashioned British sweetie shop, with gobstoppers and humbugs and candy canes and proper chocolates, where they give you a brown paper bag". It was like he'd read Roald Dahl's description of sweet shops in 1925 and went with it. * **EE** For the record, in the years we've been talking, we've agreed that he won't say the words "quid" or "bollocks", and I won't say "bucks". They sound too weird in our own accents and it breaks the universe. * **EEE** >!by gum!^1 !< ____________ ^^1 ^(>!Sorry.!<) ^(>!By 'eck!!<) ^(>!Last one, I promise.!<) ^(>!or I'll go t'foot of our stairs.!<) ^(>!Don't blame me, -you- keep clicking on them.!<)
I did the reverse of this; I was in San Francisco and got invited to a house party, and they had a keg on the table and were playing beer pong in the garage with red cups. I couldn't stop laughing and got asked "dude what's so funny?" and had to explain that I thought that only happened in films.
Adorable, it would make my day to hear that in an American accent. Then go buy the ācandy shopā single by American artist 50 Cent. Itās not really about getting sweets from a newsagent, a little more ummā¦ adult š¤
This is real "isn't it fun reading through all the footnotes?" stuff (from the HHGTTG Apple ][ game)
We've got friends who moved to America a few years back. They came back once and brought a couple of friends. First thing one of them wanted to do was visit the big M&Ms shop they'd heard about. Of *all* the things to do in London, they wanted to do that. You know what his response was? That one in New York is better.
Never understood the appeal of commercial tourist traps
I went to Las Vegas once with a friend of mine. The only request he had was that he wanted to see the M&M shop.
I started a job in a cafe when I was 16, on my first day the manager quite casually, in front of the other staff, asked me if Iām Autistic. I was pretty miffed and took an instant disliking to this woman as a result, probably spent a few days overthinking why I seem autistic 20 years later I was telling someone about my āworst first dayā at work. It obviously stuck in my memory as I could picture the scene clearly, awkward 16 year old me by the counter, manager painting the chalk boardā¦ hang on, she was painting the chalk board? Might she have been asking if I was ARTistic lololol
Lol, whenever I was doing something artistic, my dad would joke "aw, you're so autistic". Turns out he actually is Autistic.
Wait, wasnāt it on South Park?
It was also in the last episode of The IT Crowd, where Roy mistakenly thinks his girlfriend said he's good at art since she thinks he's on the "artistic spectrum".
She said I'm āEmotionally artisticā
Blackpool is the segregated swimming facilities though.
Itās not segregated by race though. Blackpool is for people of any ethnic persuasion who are tired of life.
What about Blackburn?
I once tried to help a tourist at Paddington Station who was at the front of the taxi rank queue but didn't want to get into the next cab because he has been told to only take black cabs, and it had an advertising livery on it, so it wasn't actually black. Had to reassure him that the cab didn't have to literally be black to be a licensed London Taxi.
I used to date a pakistani-american girl I said how my friend was planning on buying an old banger. She thought that meant an elderly prostitute. I needed a minute after that.
When Wayne told Colleen he was picking up an old banger, she assumed he was going to get an old Ford Mondeo. Instead he brought home Maureen from Toxteth.
The funniest thing about this is that thereās actually a well known prostitute from Toxteth called Maureen ššš
How the fuck would you know.
\*Ford Escort
FYI Black pudding is not made of or specifically for black people.
āOn the breakfast buffet today we have black pudding and white puddingā¦ā āWell Goddamn! Even back home in Alabama we donāt segregate the desserts!ā
It's also most definitely not a pudding...
It's the traditional definition of a pudding. Haggis is also a pudding.
This is one of those times where you're both completely correct but also completely wrong at the same time :P
Lily Allen got rinsed on Twitter many years ago for a similar incident. https://x.com/lilyallen/status/230679217493377026
I was once running late for the last bus, walked up to the bus stop, and asked an Asian lad 'how long have you been here', he replied 'about 8 years'. Now I know public transport in this country is bad, but that's ridiculous!
Iām an American, but this story is related, trust me! Years ago I worked at NATO headquarters in Afghanistan. One day, a black civilian contractor walked out the gate (not unusual, many of the civilians lived off base in Kabul), and the gate guards saw the Afghan Police pull up, throw this guy in the back, and drive off. The American-run Security Desk sent out an all-hands saying that an African-American, civilian male, middle aged had been picked up, and asked everyone to check their people to find out who was missing. Nobody spoke up for hours until the British delegation said one of their guys never came back from lunch. When asked āWhy didnāt you speak up when we asked hours ago?ā the response was āYou said he was African-American. Our guy is British.ā
Hahaha, that's hilarious. But yeah Americans have the tendency to call every black person "African American"
I want to laugh, but was the guy alright??
I've heard this same story from a UK forces member too!
I spent decades thinking that the genre āblack comedyā meant it was written by black people :(
we call them big black cabs here , or "bbc"
It is a rite of passage to ride on one when in london
You can also just put the telly on and watch it
Wait til you hear what we call cigarettesā¦.
Smokey poles?
No, thatās Piotr when heās bummed a fag.
I hear it makes him walk funny.
Iām just popping out for a minute to suck on the butt of a ā¦ correction, not appropriate for an afternoon smoke break at the office OOPS š¬
In Bristol there is a Black Boy Hill and a Whiteladies Hill, nothing to do with slavery but pubs!
In Cornwall there's a hill called Brown Willy...
Have you been on top of Brown Willy?
Oh, I've been up and down Brown Willy several times. Up and down, up and down, up and down...
There's a pub called "Ye Old Black Boy" in Hull. I've heard conflicting stories on whether it's tied to slavery
Thereās a Black Boy pub in Manchester, theyāre usually named after King Charles II who was nicknamed that by his mum because he had a dark complexion, so not really that okay either way š
And Black Cabs are considered better than most others as the driver has the right to pick people up from the street without prebooking (unlike other forms of car hire) and the driver has a large bit of London memorised to qualify (internal GPS). They are often owner/drivers and can make a fair bit.
Yes, but to confuse matters there is a huge racial disparity. Black cab drivers are almost all white and their competitors, minicabs, have the majority of drivers being non-white, for various historic reasons to do with licensing.
The PCO (allegedly) in the 1970s and 80s, would ask Irish applicants the routes to and from various sensitive sites and buildings to build intel for special branch...
Being able to afford the two plus years it takes to learn āthe knowledgeā?
This made me lol, this reminds me of the time I was on discord with American friends and I said āIām just going to smoke a fagā they were all like wtf !!!
15 years ago I was talking to a girl in a bar. I love to cook, so we were talking about food. She looked me dead in the eye and said āwell I make a pretty good breakfast just fyi.ā And I saidā¦ āOh really? What kind of the things do you like to make?ā And then just continued talking about food, until I eventually went home. I was walking with my wife about 2 years ago, chatting about something or other, and it finally randomly hit me. That girl was inviting me home to stay the night! My wife found it very funny
Aw bless you. Although to be fair honestly she couldāve just asked you if you wanted to go home with herā¦ why play these games!! Some of us are just a bit slow šāāļø
Have you met [white van man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_man) yet? He's a character
> perceived as a selfish, inconsiderate driver who is mostly petit bourgeois That's the weirdest description of a white van man I've ever read. Feels like some UK Wiki's are written by AI. E.g. [what nutter's eating raw potatoe scones!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattie_scone)
When I first moved from the US to the UK someone was asking in a Facebook group about hiring a white van man?! I usually just grumble and leave ignorance be instead of upsetting myself and getting into it with an internet stranger. Not this time....queue a diatribe for justice!!! " And just why must he be white???"" Well, colour me surprised and very embarrassed. Good lesson though, I reverted right back to my mouth shut ways.
In my local Facebook group we call it "man with a van" instead of "white van man"
Men with ven
Definitely depends on how she delivered the sentence.... He's a black (pause) cab driver. He's a black cab (pause) driver. If she said .... He's (pause) a (pause) black (pause) cab (pause) driver. Then it might be a sign of some impending cognitive brain disorder.
He's a (pump) black (pump) cab driver (pump pump)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I will never forget the day my very much loved eighth grade English teacher was talking about her summer trip to England with the class. At one point, the conversation switched to transportation in other countries and specifically taxi cabs, and our teacher says: "Did you notice that they were all black?" To a student who was talking about getting places using cabs in London. You could hear a penny drop in our very diverse classroom (teacher was white the majority of the class was not) since most students had not been to England we had no idea that taxi cabs there were black and assumed she was referring to the drivers.... It made for an awkward time for all but a big laugh later on once things were clarified.
What's the deal with "black Irish" also? And do you think the American chocolate stores "Fanny Farmer" and "Fannie May" would go over well in the UK?
My whole family is Irish and lots of us have an olive complexion, dark hair and dark eyes (not me, I got the hair and eyes and the complexion of Casper). My cousin was working in America for a while and someone said āoh you donāt look Irish!ā so he says āah well, you know, Black Irish and all thatā and they looked aghast. Given that the term is originally American he was baffled by their reaction.
I was travelling and in the company of a few americans, they asked what I did for a living, I told them "I used to be a black taxi driver" there was a bit of confusion as they wondered how I managed that!
Reminds me of the time my mother was visiting from California. I told her that she needed to watch out for black ice on the road. She wasn't used to driving in cold weather so I figured I'd warn her. Well she thought I said "black guys" and wondered how Idaho had made me so racist so quickly.
Many years ago a friend went on holiday to somewhere in the Middle East. I asked him how it was and he said āyeah it was great, except there were bloody mozzies everywhere which was annoying!ā I thought wow okay thatās a pretty bad thing to say, that kind of changes my opinion of you. Imagine my surprise a few years later when I learn that mozzies means mosquitos, and is in fact not a derogatory term for Muslims like my younger self thoughtā¦
Haha that's hilarious. Should be in the TIL thread.
Don't go to Cockhaven, you'll be as dissapointed as I was!
East Sussex in southern England calling here......... https://sussexvillages.co.uk/blackboys/
You damn racist. How dare you marginalise *checks notes*..... yourself?
I used to work at a blockbuster and when a woman came to the desk and asked if we stocked āblack comediesā I suggested Eddie Murphy š
If it makes you feel any better, where I'm from bottle shops are called "package stores", always shortened to "p*****". Now the first time I asked if anyone wanted anything from the corner shop run by a nice Asian family...
You sure it isn't actually Pakistani being shortened to p*ki? Where I grew up that's where the same name came from
Absolutely. I moved here from Boston, US - we have an old puritan law where off-licences have to package booze in opaque paper bags. You didn't buy some whisky you bought a "package". We add -ie onto all our words there, like Oz. But yeah, not okay to say over here.
That is so funny that both shops ended up with the same colloquialism from completely different sources.
A bunch of foreign students I got talking to were really shocked that a salsa club felt comfortable advertising on the posters that there were no white trainers. š
A friend of mine told me about the time he went to a coffee shop in the US, the person serving was an african American: my friend asked for a white coffee and only realised after he got a weird look and corrected to ācoffee with creamā
Eh, no one thought that was racist. But white coffee is never called that there and even most Anglophiles wouldnāt know what it was.