What's New
A short, easy-to-keep-up page for bulletins.
Any questions or comments? Please e-mail them to: Travellers' Rest
A bit of particular vehicular humor:
An old man decides to get "with it" and buys a cellular phone for his pick-up. He gets it installed and asks his wife to call him in half an hour, then takes off on the freeway, all excited, so he'll get to a "tailgate party" with some old friends, just in time for the call.
Even though he's speeding, he makes very poor time on account of the traffic. As a result, he's only halfway down the road toward the party, when he gets the call.
Wife: Is that you, dear?
Old Man: Who else?
W: Where are you?
OM: Trying to get through all this damn traffic on the freeway.
W: Well, be careful, for Heaven's sake. The radio says there's a vehicle been driving the wrong way north of here.
OM: One vehicle? They don't know nothing! I've seen hundreds of them.
(:>D)
Reflections:
A new link has been added to the Traveller page, called "Reflections." It is a series of short reminiscences, mostly about the Travellers 50 years ago. Try it out.
The Cant:
There is a new page linked to the Traveller/Shelta page, a pronunciation and phonetic spelling guide to be used in the creation of my forthcoming list of Shelta words.
Progress on this lexicon can be tracked by selecting "Travellers" and then "Shelta" to get to the right page; or just click on the following: Shelta
(The lexicon is now completed, ready for editing, on 1/6/99.)
I find, contrary to my intentions stated on the Shelta page, that I have accepted words for that collection that might be Gammon or even Romany, as long as they might have been reasonably expected to be in our ancestors' vocabularies. It's just too tempting to do so rather than remain a purist. Ah well! Lots of other human endeavors proceed to that same result; so why not this? In this case: What was good enough for my great-grandfather. . . .
Incidentally: "Grandfather" was gaater tom and "grandmother" was nadjram tom (or sometimes karb) in Shelta. I suppose that gaater tom tom would have sounded a bit odd to the American ear, to say "great-grandfather."
Inquiry:
The inquiry that I mentioned last week turned out to be a Dallas Fraud cop who calls himself "Musker Mike." (He's been hanging around the English Travellers.) We're still in the middle of an e-mail debate about the ethics or lack of them involved in the Travelling Life. Now I'm not bad at debating, especially in writing. But I'm not altogether sure you all want anybody at all, much less me, defending the Travellers publicly since I've never had to feed a family on the road. But if anybody's interested in a re-play on these pages, let me know. If you think it would be presumptuous, tell me that too. And don't worry; I don't know anything compromising so I can't get anybody in trouble, much less myself with you.
Coming Attractions:
A few more Shelta words from Old Times in the Old Country, of course.
There will be a new joke, if a good one comes my way.
By the way, any poetry on these pages that is not attributed to another person was written by myself and is copyrighted as such.
Any questions or comments? Please e-mail them to: Travellers' Rest
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