The Ketchup In
Worcester
by Dom
Macchiaroli
May God bless
the English people, their leaders, and neighbors.
Anyone who has visited that great country
can’t help but come away with an affinity
for the place. We have visited three times, and
as I told a friend recently, I would go back in
an instant if our currency exchange rate
weren’t so awful. It is a captivating and
wonderful country, aside from the food they serve,
which tastes like shredded cardboard soaked in
dank soap water with a side helping of Winston
Churchill’s dog. And you have to pay for the
ketchup to wash it all down. Nevertheless, we
love the joint.
England has
been hard hit by the world economic recession as
bad as anyone. With an election approaching in
2010, and other attempts at stabilization,
hopefully the nation will get back on its feet so
it can start picking on Scotland and Argentina
again. But not all of what ails England and the
greater British Isles is monetary in character.
The English have absorbed a huge change of
identity in the world, have coped very gracefully
with the loss of empire, and gave the world
Herman’s Hermits, Peter Sellers, and the
absolutely hilarious Christopher Hitchens.
The problem as
I see it with England is an over-abundance of and
national addiction to syllables. The English have
an overwhelming need to fill their words up with
unnecessary and silent letters. This is
particularly true in the case of Prince Charles,
who never makes sense in any language. But it is
a small problem they’ve had since Chaucer
wrote about those pesky and irritating pilgrims
at Canterbury. We have to hope the issue
doesn’t spill over onto America. I fear that
it already has, closer to home.
My wife keeps
a large bottle of Worcestershire sauce in the
refrigerator for those odd moments when I
barbeque or in case she needs something cold and
hard to hit me with on a moment’s notice.
But when she tries to pronounce the word, it
sounds like “War-chested-Ted’s-shore.”
Having heard it said this way many times before,
the children now run screaming from the house
whilst covering their ears when the proper noun
leaves her mouth. I have asked her to please just
call it the, ‘brown sauce we cook with’,
and leave it at that. But it is a hard word to
say, and we only speak English after all.
Incidentally the correct way to say
Worcestershire is “worst-sitter-for-sure.”
Another
problem name is “Leicestershire” which
should properly be pronounced “Lester-sure”
but instead sounds like “Lee-and-Chester-stir-the-fire.”
There are many other examples, but I have to go
earn a living now.
England will
get its act together soon. They need to fix their
economy and fix their words. Then maybe their
currency will devalue a little against the dollar
and we will be able to go back and visit. And
maybe the ketchup will be free in Worcester.
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