Backendish, nithering weather and burning socks! - Tony Cunnane's Afterthoughts

Written on 8 September 2011

This morning the presenter on BBC Look North referred to the weather as being "a bit backend-ish" – a Yorkshire dialect word that I can’t recall hearing for many years. It's not a word that would usually be written down so I'm not sure whether or not it requires the hyphen, although using one does give a clue to the pronunciation and meaning. There are lots of picturesque dialect words to describe the weather, presumably not only in the Yorkshire lexicon. Paul Hudson, the BBC Look North weatherman, often refers to the weather as "nithering" which is perhaps better known than backendish and is one of those dialect words that just sounds perfect if you say it accompanied by a violent shaking of the shoulders and upper arms!

From my earliest years my parents tried to teach me what they called ‘proper English’ and they always corrected me when I used slang and dialect words I'd picked up from school friends. In spite of their efforts and without my knowing it, I spoke in a curious mixture of the Lancashire and Yorkshire dialects because my first five years had been split between Leeds and Salford. Occasionally there were unfortunate results.

One cold and dark winter morning in late-1941 I arrived at Christ Church infants' school on Thornes Lane, Wakefield, during a torrential rain storm. Although still only three months past my 6th birthday, I walked alone to and from school, as did most of my fellow pupils - most Dads were away at the war and Mums had better things to do than walk kids to school. On this particular wet morning the harassed teachers helped us to hang our sodden clothes on the pegs in the cloakroom. In the main assembly hall there was a wonderful roaring fire in the open grate. A latticed metal screen, designed to prevent clumsy children from falling into the fire, stood on the hearth. There were clouds of steam everywhere.

"Tony, go and put these socks on the fire, please," said one of the stressed teachers as she handed me the pair of soggy socks she’d just pulled off another pupil.

So I did as I was told! Fascinated, I watched the wool bubbling and shrivelling as the flames consumed the socks. Having seen what I’d just done, but too late to stop me, the teacher in vain tried to rescue the socks from the fire with a poker but her well-intentioned actions merely hastened the socks’ final disintegration. It was an idiosyncrasy of the Yorkshire dialect that "put the socks on the fire" actually meant draping them on the fire-screen in front of the fire to dry out, not  the literal meaning I'd assumed. I remember bursting into tears of humiliation.

"If you wanted me to put the socks on the fire guard, why did you tell me to put them on the fire?" I asked with some asperity and received a slap on the face for my trouble. That teacher would doubtless have ended up in court these days for assaulting me. As it was, the unfortunate lady presumably had the difficult job of explaining to the child’s parents what had happened to his socks. All clothing in those wartime years was ‘on the ration’ so the boy probably went sockless for weeks after the incident until the parents had saved up sufficient rationing points for a new pair.

My mother was duly informed of my stupidity. "How was I supposed to know what she meant?" I asked Mum, sulkily.

How indeed?

More about my early troubles with my Yorkshire accent here