We were given disposable copies of the Autumn menu. Shirley said, "Where's Heresy?" I think she was imagining a fishing village on the coast of Northumberland or Suffolk. I was somewhat puzzled until I read the text for the second "main meal" on the menu; "Heresy battered cod with golden handcooked chips and mushy peas". The mistake made me laugh out loud. What the pub's chef had meant to write was "Heritage battered cod", not "Heresy" which of course principally means "belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious doctrine".
I thought there might be some one-horse town in America called Heresy but apparently there isn't. Heresy, South Carolina or Idaho would make a good setting for a scary film with ghouls, zombies and suchlike. And of course the residents would all enjoy battered cod.
Another menu item was - Vegetarian burger with bhaji and paneer etc.. Making a silly joke, I asked the ginger bearded barman/waiter if it was an "argy-bargy"? I got absolutely no response from him and it turned out that he had never heard of the expression "argy-bargy" - sometimes spelt "argie-bargie". It means a kind of ruckus, argument or noisy dispute . Oh, and if you didn't know, that word "bhaji" is from the Indian subcontinent and it means "a small flat cake or ball of vegetables, fried in batter."
The expression "argy-bargy" has been around in Great Britain for more than a hundred years and all four of us at the table were astonished that the young man had not encountered it. When it comes to language, it's so easy to make wrong assumptions like that. I am sure that the young man habitually uses some words or expressions that I have never heard of. No doubt he was muttering them behind his spotted coronavirus mask when we walked out.
We left him a £5 tip. After all, we were in the pub for three hours and in case you imagined otherwise, I only drank one pint of beer, called curiously "Daily Bread" by the Abbeydale Brewery from this fair northern city.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/3id6qIp
