38. Yonkey's Dears

I spoke to a smart-arse on the phone this morning.

I looked for a business that does picture framing.  I found one and saw that its address is 358 Green Lanes.  I phoned and found out that they would be able to do exactly what I need.

Green Lanes is a very long road.  It starts in Enfield on the outskirts of north London and runs due south, through Winchmore Hill where I live, to Newington Green in Islington some eight miles away.  It is one of the longest streets in London.

“Three five eight,” I said.  “Where is that exactly?”

“Right next to three five six,” the helpful young lady said.

********

Every morning when I get up my hair is sticking out in all directions.  Combing it doesn’t help and the only way that I can get it to look reasonable is to wash it and sometimes I haven’t got the time for that.

We were driving down Green Lanes a couple of hours ago when Caroline looked over at me and informed me that I looked like, “an escaped mental patient.”

She went on to tell me that the piece of official paper she’d acquired in January 2006 was not really a marriage certificate; it was more of a “Care Order”.

(I’m putting this in the public domain in case I need to provide evidence at a later date.)

********

A fortnight ago Caroline and I went to Jim and Helena’s.  Gareth and Georgia were there too.  We six had been friends in Cayman and this was the first time that we had seen them since our return in July.

Helena had been Caroline’s boss in the School’s Inspectorate when we first arrived there.  Jim had taught science at the leading private school on the island and Georgia taught music and managed very successfully to show Caribbean kids that there are musical forms other than reggae.  I don’t really know what Gareth did in Cayman except that I know that he was Very Important In Education and spent most of his time with cabinet ministers.

Jim and Helena are about to celebrate their 40^th wedding anniversary and on Saturday Helena gave us an invitation card to a function they are having to mark it. “Dress code?” I asked, secretly hoping that it was black tie.  That would have given me the opportunity to revisit ‘Toppers of Tooting’, where I had hired a morning suit in 1968 to attend a wedding at The Savoy.  I used to look pretty good in a dinner jacket forty years ago and I thought that Caroline might be impressed if she saw me in one now. 

“Smart with a flash of ruby,” said Helena.

“What’s a flash?” I asked.  “I’ve got to get this right.”

“Oh, I don’t know.  A tie or a hanky perhaps.”

“That sounds more like a dash than a flash,” I said.

“Twenty seven per cent,” said Gareth, “if you want to be precise.”

“Oh no, twenty seven per cent is a splash,” I told him, authoritatively.

I had better explain that it was well after midnight and they were all getting a little “tired” by then.

Some time later someone was telling a story and mentioned a couple that had been living “yonks away” from them.

“No!  A yonk is a unit of time, not distance,” I interrupted.

That has got me thinking about common, everyday units.  I have compiled a table of conversions between everyday, colloquial units and standard units.  See if you agree:

TIME	Usage Example	Actual time
Flash: The shortest practical measurement of time.	As in: In a FLASH, the terrible truth hit him.	0.012 seconds
Shake: A fairly short time.	As in: In two SHAKES, it was done. (Never singular)	5 minutes
Mo: About thirty seconds in the future.	As in: “I’ll be with you in just a MO.”	30 minutes
Tick: Similar to the mo but shorter.	As in: “I’ll be there in a couple of TICKS.”	1 minute
Sec: Roughly four mos.	As in: “All right!  Give me a SEC!  Don’t rush me.”	2 minutes
Jiffy: Analogous with the sec.	As in: “Just a JIFFY.  I’ll be with you soon.”	2 minutes
Yonk:  ***  See below A long time of indeterminate and variable length.	As in: 1) England haven’t won the World Cup for YONKS. 2) “I haven’t seen Jenny for YONKS. 3) “Have you gone off me?  We haven’t had sex for YONKS.”	44 years 6 months 2 days
AREA	Usage Example	Actual area
Flash: The smallest discernible area.	As in: As she sat down, he caught a FLASH of her lime green panties.	Less than 1cm²
Dash: A noticeable amount.	As in: Dress code – smart with a DASH of ruby.	Between a flash and a splash.
Splash: About the size of a dinner plate.	As in: She finished off her ensemble with a SPLASH of pink	150cm²
VOLUME or AMOUNT	Usage  Example	Actual amount
Glug: In a restaurant, wine to test.	As in: The amount of wine poured while the wine bottle makes one “glug”.	Not enough.
Dollop: A small rounded mound.	As in: “Ice cream?  Just give me a DOLLOP please.”	Half a pint.
Drop: Enough to make something wet.	As in: “Would you like a beer, John?”  “Aye, I’ll have a DROP.”	6 pints
Shedload: A lot – usually money.	As in: Caroline says she saved SHEDLOADS of money in the sales.	£450 (spent)
WEIGHT	Usage Example	Actual weight
Ton: Really heavy.	As in: “Blimey!  This bag weighs a TON.”	10 lbs
Lump: The human body (male)	As in: “You’re on my side.  Move over, you big LUMP.”	172 lbs 4 oz

The yonk is my favourite measurement of time and its lack of precision means that it is never used in the singular.  You never hear anyone say, “There’s no rush.  They won’t be here for a yonk” and things that happened in the past always occurred, ”yonks ago.”  

Someone told me that it is not “a long time of indeterminate and variable length” but it is in fact 5 months and 13 days.  His reasoning is that we have the: Day, Weekend, Week, Fortnight and the Month, but nothing to mark the period between a month and a year.  Therefore that is the yonk.

He’s wrong of course.  I like this explanation: 

Year, mONth, weeK.  It is neat but too contrived. 

However, I think that a much more realistic explanation is that it started as a Spoonerism: Donkey’s Years becoming Yonkey’s Dears. 

I am sure that I never heard the word while I was at school but it was in common usage in the mid-sixties while I was at Durham.

Nelson’s column or the Canary Wharf tower are often used as measures of heights o depths.

Fairly large things are often measured in terms of the length of a double decker bus or football pitch or the area of one.  Recently, very large areas have had Wales as the area unit. I saw once that Grand Cayman has an area of 1½ Washington DCs.  That’s a new unit to me.

We used to have our own unit of time when my three children were very young.  On the long car journey up the A12 to visit their grandparents, we were constantly being assailed by the question, “Are we nearly there yet?”

The journey lasted about three hours or the length of nine ‘Play Schools’ - a 20-minute children’s TV programme that they used to watch.

So if we had just gone through Ipswich I would tell them that we still had two Play Schools to go. “Half a Play School,” told them that we were nearly there and we would be about another 10 minutes.

Right, I’m off to bed now and I’ve invented a unit of tiredness to go after ‘knackered’.  I’m past being knackered.  I’m  jogger tired.