The Bouquet residence, the geezer of the house speaking

A nomadic manner of speaking

Some time ago¹ I was talking to the excellent

Andy Carter

(if you’re not following him already, rectify that oversight immediately) in his comments section. We were discussing adapting how you speak depending on who you’re talking to. You know, like when you’re down the tip or you’ve got a stranger in your home handling work that you yourself cannot do². It was the sort of nice exchange that makes Substack such a great place to be, and it got me thinking about how’ve been speaking for all these years.

There’s your nightmares sorted for a while.

My parents had very different upbringings. My mother is the daughter of an immigrant; her father was a German PoW brought over here after World War II³. Mum’s childhood was spent firstly in a caravan and then a council house. My dad didn’t come from money or anything⁴, but his grandmother owned several properties around West London and lived in a Victorian townhouse in Chiswick. If this was The Breakfast Club, my mum would be Judd Nelson and the old boy would be Molly Ringwald.

I can’t recall the story of how they met, but in adulthood they flip reversed on their formative years. By the sixties, Dad was a shaggy haired jack the lad knocking around Eel Pie Island, while Mum was a refined grammar school graduate, working as a hairdresser and primping rarified clientele in the leafiest corners of Surrey.

They stayed more or less in these lanes once they were married; by the time my siblings and I were growing up, the dynamics were set in stone. I remember a few grammatical duels when I was very young.

“Where’s the last hobnob gone?”

“I’ve et it.”

“Eaten.”

“That’s a posh school in Windsor. What’s for dinner?”

While I don’t recall Dad taking a keen interest in how we spoke (his family were all Londoners, there was really only one way to speak), Mum was white hot on the subject. The old cliche about German precision is very true in the case of my family. My granddad learned English to the letter and pronounced every syllable. This meant that he, in turn, raised some very well spoken kids.

Let's be clear here: my mother is not a godawful social climber like Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances⁵. Hyacinth is really only here for the juxtaposition. It remains true, though, that when we were kids, Mum was a big fan of crisp, clean pronunciation.

Not one T was dropped, and a missin’ G would draw a disapprovin’⁶ look. The sacred ritual of Answering the Landline (kids, ask your parents) was always delivered with a crisp, Downton-esque, “461435”. That penultimate number was three. Never, ever free.

Until I hit my teens.

While my secondary school wasn’t Dangerous Minds or anything, it wasn’t exactly Hogwarts either. The catchment area was broad and we had some rough kids knocking about; if you spoke too proper like, you stood out like an oboe player at a Slipknot gig. So the Ts and Gs started to slip here and there. Well they did for me, at least.

Between the three of us, my siblings and I cover the full range from mum to dad in adulthood. My brother sounds like the old man, with those London roots coming to the fore. My sister, meanwhile did our mum proud with cut glass pronunciation that would put Kate Winslet to shame. And I wander somewhere in an dialect desert between the two extremes, peddling a mongrel form of English that veers wildly between Hugh Grant and Danny Dyer depending on who I’m speaking to.

Being a lingo chameleon has served me well. Working in retail, I could go all the way up or all the way down depending on the customer. That makes me sound judgmental but it’s really not. Mirroring builds empathy and understanding. I might’ve only been hawking CDs, but I was offering a bespoke shopping experience every time I matched my cadence to the customer. I learned to do this the hard way.

I once served a famous British sitcom actor. He was after a very specific piece of classical music - had to be the exact composer, orchestra and year. Our computer database used to shit itself whenever we got into the weeds of classical music, and we’d have to resort to The Catalogue. A titanic tome, I think The Catalogue held every piece of classical music ever recorded. After about 15 minutes I still could not find that cursed concerto, causing the famous actor to call me an incompetent fool and flounce off.

Throughout our interaction, I had made very little effort. I was probably channelling the sort of slacker Kevin Smith vibe that got me through most days dealing with the great British public in the late 90s. Whatever the reason, I was dropping letters from the end of my words like Elon Musk drops his kids. I made no effort to match the well spoken gentleman opposite me. If I’d put a bit of Home Counties on it, I wouldn’t have lost him.

At the grubbier end of proceedings, on the occasions I collared some shoplifting scrote nicking Ministry of Sound compilations, do you think he would’ve responded to “I say sir, I suggest you replace those wares forthwith!”? Of course not, I would’ve been eating broken CDs in seconds. No my friends, when disrupting a crime I’d go with the unfiltered simplicity of “You thievin’ wanker!” Put the right amount of bass on it and they’d scarper out the door, convinced that I was a legit hardman.

It was the same working behind a bar. I had a knack for reading people perfectly; I would know from the first interaction how to pitch the patter. And should their night take a turn for the worst, that initial patter shaped how they were cut off. More often than not, all it took was a simple “No more for tonight, gents.” Occasionally I’d have to reach for the more impactful: “Nah, you’re done.” That one was always dropped rougher, harsher - way more Essex than Hampshire. (I’ve never even been to Essex.) On one particularly memorable occasion, I pointed out a ne’er do well like I was putting the hex on him and announced to the entire pub ”Oi! We ain’t pouring shit for anyone until that prick leaves!” Rugby crowds always presented unique opportunities for confrontation.

I’ve never been a hardman. Had one proper fistfight in my entire adult life. It is a great irony that only now, when I’m old and fat and complacent, do I look like I’d swipe your head off in one clean blow. Before the skinhead and the tattoos and all the barely suppressed anger, I looked like a light breeze would’ve knocked me over, and yet I worked in environments where clashes were inevitable. That vicious bark was a wonderful magic trick.

Photo by Khashayar Kouchpeydeh on Unsplash

Conversely, if there was ever a situation that needed some softer skills, the more refined voice came out. It might sound incredible considering all that John McClane-esque maverick behaviour, but I was actually in several positions of responsibility early on in my working life.

“Lewis, someone wants the manager.”

And away I would go on my mission, strapping down all the hanging consonants so they couldn’t flutter away.

The words I reached for when I was up in the well spoken end of things used to amaze me. Not the usual patter you’d get from a wage slave in the early aughts. One time I actually said “Gosh!” as though I was in the Famous fucking Five or something. In my head it felt insincere, a total pantomime, yet the irate customer softened and thanked me for my help.

I’m not talking about mimicry. I’m not a bad mimic; I once went through a phase of doing an old lady voice when I answered the phone. I had tremendous fun reeling in scammers, dangling them for a while before scaring the shit out of them by reverting to my usual dulcet tones. The greatest achievement during this period was convincing The Muse that she’d phoned a wrong number and got a septuagenarian called Betty.

I can never sustain mimicry for any length of time, though - it is no good for real conversation. Mirroring, on the other hand, goes on for much longer and inevitably builds rapport. And with rapport you can achieve so much more. Well, most of the time.

There’s another old job which fascinates the new and improved, enlightened me. For a brief period I worked in a call centre for a big name insurance company. This was outbound calling but it wasn’t cold - everyone had responded to some form of advert. We were constantly told how lucky we were to be ‘warm’ calling.

Never mind the temperature, I was fucking rubbish at it (they moved me off the phones and into data after only a few months). I had absolutely no rapport whatsoever; all the call coaching on earth couldn’t get me to adopt a neutral tone. Face to face I’m a fucking riot, stick a telephone in the way and most of this decayed island hated me.

Except.

On those rare days when the stars would align and I’d be handed the right set of leads. The South East. My patch. I would dance the phone lines from Walthamstow to Windsor with aplomb; a doyen of dialect, the patois prince. Numbers up across the board, the crowd goes wild.

Since hitting 40 I’ve lost the knack a little. I’ve settled into a groove that’s comfortable and unchallenging. At some point in the next 12 months though, I’ve got to get back out there. I’ve got to job hunt. I’ve got to interview. Which voice gets trotted out? Or will a new one emerge?

Perhaps the two diametrically opposed forces, dad’s swagger and mum’s precision, will finally, truly unify: the perfect confluence of my two biggest influences. A cadence chimera, everything fused into a final, all conquering form. If I pull it off I’ll probably get that coveted Attenborough gig.

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Thanks for reading. Show my fragile ego some love before you go. Bang that like button, leave a lovely little comment, or buy me a beer if you’re feeling flush. Cheers.

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1. Okay, it was fucking ages ago. This one has been a long time coming.

2. I mean, I could totally do it. I’m not allowed to do it because results in the past have always been fucking atrocious. But it would be done.

3. My overactive imagination has my grandparents meeting like that scene in Cool Hand Luke where the girl is washing her car while Newman and pals look on agog. I’m sure it was more prosaic than that.

4. Although he actually did become a Lord at the grand old age of 80. Because I bought him the title as a birthday present.

5. Keeping Up Appearances ran on the BBC from 1990 to 1995. Hyacinth used to insist that Bucket was pronounced ‘Bouquet.’ I have bastardised her standard telephone greeting in the title of this piece.

6. Those were just for you, Mother.