Readycunk

My mother has always been a fan of words. On regular occasions throughout my life she has furnished me with little titbits of etymology that have stuck in my brain. When I was a child, she had a particular penchant for pointing out words of Indian origin (pyjama, gymkhana, bungalow), and she periodically still loves to throw in a completely new gem. My brother and I were bemused, years ago, when she casually mentioned that something had given her an enormous fillip, and I can recall even now the looks we siblings gave each other, as we thought she’d gone mad and made the word up.

Mum liked pronouncing words, enunciating them clearly to the point of ridiculum. GaTwick had a capital T in the middle of it in our house, and we were not haitch people. I am not sure quite why words were so important to Mum, but they still are, and have remained so to both my brother and I today. Finding just the right word for a certain scenario is both satisfying and efficient. Vocabulary gives power!

That said, there were also plenty of unofficial words in our house too – a tradition we have continued. Language purists may feel that this is something of a paradox, but if Roald Dahl can do it, then I think there must be merit to it. We often put things in the washershingween, which I like to shorten to shingween, and at some point, the phrase “uppy topes” became the command to get the dog on the sofa. The telephone is often a blower, and as for a bottom – bumbellini arsus seems apt. I know we are not alone in this. Childhood gibberish can give way to a colloquial family patois so unique that it can leave outsiders baffled.

Even so, I didn’t expect a new word to pop up now that I myself am well and truly an adult, and none of my children are babies any more, who spout curious versions of everyday phrases. Those days are gone. But the other day, my mother may just have invented a new word – borne of the TV going wrong, and her attempts to fix it

Last week, Mum declared that her telly wasn’t working. She didn’t seem unduly perturbed – it just came up in conversation. It wasn’t turning on, she said. And when she pointed the remote at it, it came up with a message. What, she asked, does “Readycunk” mean?

Ready cunk?

Little Seymour Number Two and I had to ask her to repeat the question. Ready what? Cunk? It was all sounding a little bizarre. Mum was adamant she’d seen something along those lines, and so we attempted to investigate. The TV was indeed unresponsive, and armed with only the reported ready cunk clue, we started at the beginning.

I allowed Number Two to take the lead on this. After all, these youngsters are so much better with tech than I! And before long she had discovered that Mum’s TV was not connected to something. A wire was unplugged, I believe. (That would do it.) But the question still remains – if the power was off, how on earth did a message show on the screen, ready cunk or not?

On further investigation, it transpired that one of the batteries was the wrong way round in the remote – Mum’s attempt to fix the issue at large. But I am still baffled as to how any message at all was able to display itself on a TV devoid of power. That I will never understand. Mum is usually very good at problem solving but nobody in our family is any good at connecting TVs up. Not even Big Seymour. It’s an area of expertise that we do not possess, for it is all hocus pocus. Or, henceforth and herewith, it is all just readycunk.

Readycunk is too good a word to forget. It smacks of something spunky yet awry. A potent force on the cusp of success – but not quite there yet. It could sound a little gross if one is not careful, but I will eat my hat if I ever see the word (or words – for it has not yet been decided if it’s one or two) bandied across a TV screen. I suspect a combination of frustration, missing glasses and surprise meant that mum’s decoding was a bit off on that occasion. But for the life of me, after spending years deciphering children’s handwriting and school kids’ scrawl, I cannot fathom what message could be similar enough to readycunk to make sense. What weird words might adorn a TV screen? Reddifusion? Too outdated. Bang and Olufsen? Too expensive. Smeg? I think they only do fridges, but cunk…smeg.. there’s definitely a vibe.

Frustratingly, I will probably never know. Mum’s not bothered.The TV is plugged back in, the remote batteries are the right way round and all is well.

But rather like the day when a friend’s daughter squealed in delight at the blarencunt cake adorning my kitchen worktop, we now have a new word to enjoy, and human language has taken another chance step in its evolution. And in my opinion, readycunk – whatever it means – makes more sense than the current fashion of using the phrase “low-key” when you mean very much the opposite.

Amen.