Re: Occupation: Nickey Maker


"Graham P Davis" <newsboy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:64hs8bF2ccvu6U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
..

Of course, another cheap meal used to be rabbit - usually supplied
by one of
my dad's mates - which I loved, apart from when I'd bite on a piece
of lead
shot.

Strewth, mate, yer lo' mustve bin rich - and legit. . The noiseless
way for the poor of getting a good crop of rabbits requires a nicked
or recovered old sack, a heavy stick four 'tent pegs', any old paper,
vinegar and a match. Find a warren, peg sack over highest entrance,
stuff all the other holes with paper except for the bottom hole. Use
more paper to light a fitrer in that hole and then put on it more
paper soaked in vinegar. Rabbits hate the odour of vinegar and will
run away. The only exit is the sack. As they run in, one bop with the
big stick Clear paper out of the other holes and put in sack with dead
rabbits. Depart as silently as you came. No noise. No gamekeepers. No
trace. And the few rabbits who were away foraging will soon repopulate
the 'larder'. And your kids get fed meat.

The upright citizenry will scream about breaking the law. Well in a
forced choice between being upright and letting your kids starve, or
being a criminal and feeding your kids, a responsible parent has no
choice. The law gets broken. But you don't go around talking about it
in words the posh understand. You invent an argot, possibly very loc,
which all the poor know. And hence the steady dribble of questions on
this newsgroup about what terms mean. I suspect the majority of such
questions are asked by people who have not been poor enough for long
enough; and who haven't really thought about the behaviour patterns
that necessarily calls forth.

Perhaps the diagnostic question for the questioners is 'Have you eaten
thistles?' If you have you understand poor and starving. There's not a
lot to eat in a thistle and getting it is hazardous to the hands, but
there is a trick involving a hankie. You get a lump perhaps the size
of a small roasted chestnut from each head. If that is all you can
find to eat then you truly do know about being poor. And it leaves an
indelible behaviour pattern regardless of whatever airs, graces and
riches are acquired later. I've seen multimillionaires eating and
eating at a posh buffet even though they have already had plenty to
eat and objectively have no fear of being short of food, But they'll
eat until every last scrap is gone. They simply can't walk away from
food which is ready to eat. Deep down they are still the poor kid who
was cold hungry and didn't know when - if ever - there was going to be
food.The same behaviour pattern occurs in concentration camp
survivors. If you can walk away from a buffet, you've never been
that poor.

I'm not suggesting that everybody should have that sort of early
existence just to teach them the lesson of not being wasteful,. What I
am saying is that you won't get far with understanding what your poor
ancestors did and said until you have a 'feel' for real poverty, and
the inevitable behaviour patterns which flow from that constraint.

Don


.

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