ount of money
very easily.

<B>TILLICOULTRY</B> (n.)

     The man-to-man  chummieness adpoted  by an  employer  as  a prelude for
telling an employee that he's going to have to let him go.

<B>TIMBLE</B> (vb.)

     (Of small nasty children.) To fail over very gently, look around to see
who's about, and then yell blue murder.

<B>TINCLETON</B> (n.)

     A man who  amuses himself in  your lavatory by  pulling  the  chain  in
midpee and then seeing if he can finish before the flush does.

<B>TINGRITH</B> (n.)

     The feeling of silver paper against your fillings.

<B>TODBER</B> (n.)

     One whose  idea of a good time  is to stand behind  his front hedge and
give surly nods to people he doesn't know.

<B>TODDING</B> (vb.)

     The  business of  talking amiably and  aimlessly  to  the barman at the
local.

<B>TOLOB</B> (n.)

     A crease or fold  in an  underblanket, the  removal  of  which involves
getting out of bed an largely remaking it.

<B>TOLSTACHAOLAIS</B> (phr.)

     What the police in Leith require you to  say in order to prove that you
are not drunk.

<B>TOOTING BEC</B> (n.)

     A car behind which one draws up at the traffic lights and hoots at when
the lights go green before realising that the car is  parked and there is no
one inside.

<B>TORLUNDY</B> (n.)
     Narrow but thickly  grimed  strip of floor  between  the fridge and the
sink unit in the kitchen of a rented flat.

<B>TORONTO</B> (n.)
     Generic term for  anything which comes out of  a gush despite  all your
careful efforts to let it  out gently, e.g. flour into a white souce, tomato
ketchup on to fried fish, sperm into a human being, etc.

<B>TOTTERIDGE</B> (n.)

     The riduculous two-inch hunch that people adopt when arriving late  for
the  teatre in  the vain and futile hope that it  will  minimise  either the
embarrassment of the lack of visibility for the rest of the audience.
     c.f. hickling.

<B>TRANTLEMORE</B> (vb.)
     To make a noise like a train crossing a set of points.

<B>TREWOFFE</B> (n.)

     A very thick and heavy drift of snow balanced precariously on the edoge
of a door porch waiting for what it judges to be the correct moment to fall.
From the ancient Greek legend 'The Treewofe of Damocles'.

<B>TRISPEN</B> (n.)
     A form of  intelligent  grass. It grows a single, tough stalk and makes
its  home on lawns. When it sees  the lawnmover coming it lies down and pops
up again after it has gone by.

<B>TROSSACHS</B> (pl.n.)
     The useless epaulettes on an expensive raincoat.

<B>TUAMGRANEY</B> (n.)
     A  hideous  wooden ornament that  people  hang over  the mantelpiece to
prove they've been to Africa.

<B>TULSA</B> (n.)

     A slurp of beer which has accidentally gone down your shirt collar.

<B>TUMBY</B> (n.)

     The involuntary  abdominal  gurgling which fills the  silence following
someone else's inimate personal revelation.

<B>TWEEDSMUIR</B> (collective n.)

     The  name  given  to  the  extensive  vollection  of hats kept  in  the
downstairs lavatory which don't fit anyone in the family.

<B>TWEMLOW</B> GREEN (n.)

     The  colour of some of  Nigel Rees's trousers,  worn  in  the  mistaken
belief that they go rather well with his sproston green (q.v.) jackets.

<B>TWOMILEBORRIS</B> (n.)
     A popular Ease European outdoor game in which the first person to reach
the front of the meat queue wins, and the losers have to  forfeit their bath
plugs.

<B>TYNE and WEAR</B> (nouns)

     The 'Tyne' is the small priceless  or vital object accidentally dropped
on  the floor (e.g.  diamond  tieclip, contact lans) and  the  'wear' is the
large immovable  object  (e.g.  Welsh dreser, car-crusher) that  it shelters
under.

<B>ULLAPOOL</B> (n.)

     The spittle which builds up on the floor of the Royal Opera House.

<B>ULLINGSWICK</B> (n.)

     An over-developed epiglottis found in middle-aged coloraturas.

<B>ULLOCK</B> (n.)

     The correct name for either  of the deaf  Scandinavian tourists who are
standing two abreast in front of you on the escalator.

<B>UMBERLEIGH</B> (n.)

     The  awful  moment which  follows a  dorchester  (q.v.) when a  speaker
weighs up whether to repeat  an amusing remark after nobody laughed the last
time. To be on the horns of an umberleigh is to wonder whether people didn't
hear the  remark, or whether they did hear it  and just  didn't think it was
funny, which was why somebody coughed.

<B>UPOTTERY</B> (n.)

     That part of a  kitchen  copboard which contains an unnecessarily large
number of milk jugs.

<B>UTTOXETER</B> (n.)

     A  small but immensely  complex mechanical  device which is essentially
the 'brain' of a modern coffeevending machine, and which enables the machine
to take its own decisions.

<B>VALLETTA</B> (n.)

     On ornate  head-dress or loose garment worn  by a  person in the belief
that it renders then invisibly native  and not like a tourist at all. People
who don huge conial  staw collie hats with 'I Luv Lagos' on them in Nigeria,
or  fat  solicitors  from  Tonbridge  on  holiday in Malaya  who  insist  on
appearing in the hotel lobby wearing a sarong know wat we're on about.

<B>VANCOUVER</B> (n.)

     The technical  name for one  of those huge trucks with whirling brushes
on the bottom used to clean streets.

<B>VENTNOR</B> (n.)
     One who, having been visited  as a child by a mysterious gypsy lady, is
gifted with the strange power of being able to operate the air-nozzles above
aeroplane seats.

<B>VIRGINSTOW</B> (n.)

     A Durex machinewhich doesn't  have  the  phrase  'So was  the  Titanic'
scrawled on it. The word has now fallen into discuse.

<B>VOBSTER</B> (n.)

     A  strain of perfectly healthy rodent which  develops cancer the moment
it enter a laboratory.

<B>WARLEGGAN</B> (n.archaic)

     One who does not approve of araglins (q.v.)

<B>WATH</B> (n.)

     The rage of Roy Jenkins.

<B>WEEM</B> (n.)

     The tools with which a dentist can inflict the greatest pain. Formerly,
which  tool this  was was  dependent upon the  imagination  and skill of the
individual dentist, though  now, with  technological advances, weems  can be
bought specially.

<B>WEMBLEY</B> (n.)

     The hideous moment of confirmation that the diaster presaged in the ely
(q.v.) has actually struck.

<B>WENDENS AMBO</B> (n.)

     (Veterinary term.) The operation to trace an object swallowed by  a cow
through all its seven stomachs. Hence, also (1)  en  expedition to  discover
where the  exits  are in the Barican  Centre, and  (2) a search  through the
complete works of Chaucer for all the rude bits.

<B>WEST WITTERING</B> (participial vb.)

     The uncontrollable twitching which breaks out when you're trying to get
away from the most borig person at a party.

<B>WETWANG</B> (n.)

     A moist penis.

<B>WHAPLODE DROVE</B> (n.)

     A homicidal golf stroke.

<B>WHASSET</B> (n.)

     A  business  card in you wallet belonging  to someone whom you  have no
recollection of meeting.


<B>WHISSENDINE</B> (n.)

     The nose which occurs (often by night) in a strange house, which is too
short and too irregular for you ever  to be able to find out what it  is and
where it comes from.

<B>WIDDICOMBE</B> (n.)

     The sort of person who impresonates trimphones.

<B>WIGAN</B> (n.)

     If, when talking to someone you know has only one leg, you're trying to
treat  then perfectly casually  and normally, but find to  your  horror that
your conversion  is  liberally  studded with  references to  (a)  Long  John
Silver, (b) Hopalong Cassidy, (c) The Hockey  Cokey, (d) 'putting your  foot
in it', (e) 'the last  leg of the UEFA  competition', you are  said to  have
commited a wigan.
     The  word  is  derived from the fact that  sub-editors  at  ITN used to
manage  to mention the name of either the town Wigan, or Lord Wigg, in every
fourth script that Reginald Bosanquet was given to read.

<B>WIKE</B> (vb.)

     To rip a piece of sticky  plaster off your skin as fast as possible  in
the hope that it will (a) show how brave you are, and (b) not hurt.

<B>WILLIMANTIC</B> (adj.)

     Of a person  whose  hearth  is in the  wrong place (i.e.  between their
legs).

<B>WIMBLEDON</B> (n.)

     That last drop which, no matter how much you shake it, always goes down
your trouser leg.

<B>WINKLEY</B> (n.)

     A  lost  object which turns up  immediately  you've gone and  bought  a
replacement for it.

<B>WINSTON-SALEM</B> (n.)

     A  person in  a  resturant  who  suggest to their companions  that they
should split  the  cost of the meal equally, and then orders  two packets of
cigarettes on the bill.

<B>WIVENHOE</B> (n.)

     The cry of alacrity with which a  sprightly eighty-year-old breaks  the
ice on the lake when going for a swim on Christmas Eve.

<B>WOKING</B> (participial vb.)

     Standing in the kitchen wondering what you came in here for.

<B>WOOLFARDISHWORTHY</B> (n.)

     A mumbled, mispronounced or misshears  word  in a song, speech or play.
Derived from the well-known mumbles passage in Hamlet :

     '...and the spurns,
     That patient merit of the unworthy
     takes
     When he himself might his quietus
     make
     With a bare bodkin? Who
     woolfardisworthy
     To grunt and sweat under a weary
     life?'

<B>WORGRET</B> (n.)

     A kind  of poltergeist which specialises  in stealing new copies of the
A-Z from your car.

<B>WORKSOP</B> (n.)

     A person  who never actually gets  round to  doing  anything because he
spends all his time writing out lists headed 'Things to Do (Urgent)'.

<B>WORMELOW TUMP</B> (n.)

     Any seventeen-year-old who doesn't know about  anything  at  all in the
world other than bicycle gears.

<B>WRABNESS</B> (n.)

     The feeling after having tried to dry oneself with a damp towel.

<B>WRITTLE</B> (vb.)

     Of a steel ball, to settle into a hole.

<B>WROOT</B> (n.)

     A short little  berk  who thinks that by pulling on his pipe and gazing
shrewdly at you he will give the impression that he is infinitely wise and 5
ft 11 in.

<B>WYOMING</B> (participial vb.)

     Moving in  hurried  desperation from one cubicle to another in a public
lavatory trying to find one which has a lock on the door, a seat on the bowl
and no brown steaks on the seat.

<B>YADDLETHORPE</B> (vb.)

     (Of offended pooves.) To exit huffily from a boutique.

<B>YARMOUTH</B> (vb.)

     To  shout at foreigners  in  the  belief that the louder you speak, the
better they'll understand you.

<B>YATE</B> (n.)

     Dishearteningly white  piece  of  bread which  sits  limply in a pop-up
toaster during a protracked throcking (q.v.) session.

<B>YEPPOON</B> (n.)

     One of  the hat-hanging corks which  Australians wear for making Qantas
commercials.

<B>YESNABY</B> (n.)

     A 'yes, maybe' which means 'no'.

<B>YONDER BOGINE</B> (n.)

     The  kind  of resturant  advertised as 'just  three minutes  from  this
cinema'  which  clearly nobody  ever  goes to  and,  evn  if  they  had ever
contemplated it, have certainly changed their minde since seeing the advert.

<B>YONKERS</B> (n.)

     (Rare.)  The combind thrill of pain  and  shame  when being  caught  in
public plucking your nostril-hairs and stuffing them into your side-pocket.

<B>YORK</B> (vb.)

     To shift the position of the shoulder straps on a heavy bag or rucksack
in a vain attempt to make it seem lighter.
     Hence :  to laugt falsely and heartily at an  unfunny remark.  'Jasmine
yorked politely, loathing him to the depths of her being' - Virginia Woolf.

<B>ZEAL MONACHORUM</B> (n.)

     (Skiing term.) To ski with 'zeal monchorum'  is to decend the top three
quaters of the  mountain in a  quivering blue funk,  but on arriving  at the
gentle  bit just in  front  of the  resturant  to whizz  to a  stop  like  a
victerious slalom-champion.


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