From: Chris Rae [clr@chrisrae.com]

Sent: 04 September 2009 19:01

To: britword@septicscompanion.com

Subject: British Words of the Week: 'twat' and 'brill'

Hello, dear reader.

Me again, back like a bad smell. Actually, I spent last weekend backpacking, so I’ve been more than like a bad smell recently. Several exciting things have happened this week, so I’m going to use some sort of system of headings.

Topless Women

Where better place to start. My sister-in-law lives in Greece, and spent the summer taking several pictures of herself and her friends reading my fine tome. This most recent one has to be my favourite. It is currently causing something of a stir on the Facebook fan page, and I’m hoping it will get me featured in the New York Times.

Rick Steves Interview Airs This Saturday!

Anyone with a very good memory will know that I was interviewed back in March for “Travel with Rick Steves”, a radio show that airs on several local stations in the US. Well, as you will see from Rick’s preview of upcoming shows, my interview airs on September 5^th. I haven’t actually heard the final tape, so here may very well be your chance to listen to me looking like a moron.

Broken Emails

Apologies are owed. The observant of you will have noticed that the last few emails have looked like a dog’s breakfast. This is because they were sent using a pre-release version of Outlook (I work for Microsoft during the day) which had a bug in it. I shall not be doing that any more.

Words of the week, plucked randomly from The Septic’s Companion:

twat 1 n female genitalia. Not to be used in overly-polite company. The word, I mean. 2 v thump; hit: I don’t remember anything after the boom swung around and I got twatted. 3 n idiot. Generally directed at blokes. A suitably confusing example would read “some twat in the pub accused me of having been near his bird’s twat, so I twatted him.” On the female genitalia front, so to speak, the poet Robert Browning once read a rather vulgar protestant polemic which referred to an “old nun’s twat,” and subsequently mentioned a nun’s “cowl and twat” in one of his poems, under the mistaken impression that it was a part of her clothing.

brill adj popular abbreviation for “brilliant.” Well, popular amongst 1980s adolescents.

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