Friendliness outlawed by modern Pharisees
A FEW weeks ago I was coming through the checkout in our local supermarket and made a point, as I always do, of asking the check-out woman how she was.
She was surprised and delighted as, apparently, this sort of concern is not often expressed to any of them who, lest we forget, remained “at their posts” for our benefit through the darkest days of the lockdown last year, inevitably putting themselves at some risk on our behalf.
Did we even notice? Do we really care? As I finished packing my shopping and said “cheerio” to her, the young lady said to me, “cheerio, darling, have a good day”.
A few days later I learned that these so-called terms of endearment are now to be actively discouraged in case they might be misinterpreted as politically incorrect, or even abusive.
This nonsense is becoming increasingly peddled to us by people sitting behind desks somewhere occupying their 9-5 day with making life as difficult as possible for the rest of us.
I arrived in England in 1956, aged five, and we lived in Loughborough. It was not long before I was asking my mother who the ducks were and where were they? I was too young to understand this endearing greeting of East Midlands people – “ey up me duck, how are you doing today?”
The exception to the friendly interpretation of this greeting I was to find many years later at Mansfield Rugby Club, where they were wont to use it before smacking you on the nose in the scrum!
In various parts of our country, different terms are used to impart the same friendly and caring message, even to strangers.
It is heartening and warm, not one bit like the politically correct meaning that some out-of-touch people tend to attach to it. You can be called pet in the North East, love, chum, mate, honey, lovely and many other things.
I find myself using it imperceptibly to many different people several times each day. Such greetings are not patronising or offensive, as is now being claimed, but pleasant and courteous. For some people they make your day a better one.
The problem lies in not what you say but how you say it and this can love, mostly be detected in the tone of another person’s voice. There is no doubt that, used in certain ways, some of these expressions can be sexist, hurtful or offensive (especially in the scrum at Mansfield Rugby Club!) and that is something always to avoid. But to try to insist that these terms of endearment should no longer be part of our language is absurd.
In The Bible, our Lord Jesus used to refer to his Father as Abba, which, along with being the acronym for a hugely successful pop group (now “virtually” reforming) was, a long time beforehand, a very familiar name for a father from his child – literally “daddy”.
For a person in first century Palestine, to refer to the God of the Jewish people, whose name they would not even speak in such an endearing and familiar manner for fear of recrimination, was deeply offensive and presumptuous to the politicallycorrect Pharisees. No wonder they took such a dislike to him and wanted him out of the way.
Father Frank Daly, St Peter’s RC Church, Hinckley
Such greetings as honey or pet are not patronising or offensive, as is being claimed, but pleasant and courteous
A FoRMER Mercury photographer’s aerial images have been unearthed and offer a fascinating glimpse of a changing city.
The treasure trove of aerial photos from across Leicester and Leicestershire has been uncovered with the help of Mercury chief photographer Andy Baker.
The shots show the area in the 1970s and 1980s in the era before drones were commonplace and you could grab satellite photos of anywhere you like using Google Earth. Back then, the Mercury would charter an aircraft for a day to get these shots.
Andy says: “I received an email
A treasure trove of 1970s and 80s aerial photos from across Leicester and Leicestershire has been uncovered by Leicester Mercury chief photographer Andy Baker. Using the work of former Mercury photographer Peter Elliott, we have placed each one alongside a ‘today’ view from Google Earth as a comparison, making for what we think is a fascinating series from the daughter of a former Leicester Mercury photographer Peter Elliott. She said that her mum had been sorting through some files and come across a large collection of aerial pictures take by her husband during and before his time with the paper and would I be interested in seeing them?
“’Yes please!’ I said without a second’s hesitation. I duly popped over to see them and have been given the opportunity to share them in the paper.
“We thought it might be a nice idea to show the pictures and put along a ‘today’ view from Google Earth as a comparison.”
Today we feature East Midlands Airport which, unlike many of the other photographs we have contrasted so far in the series, does not seem to have changed all that much since the 1970s - at least not from the air anyway, which is understandable, given the subject matter.