Yo’m ’avin’ a loff

IN the years either side of the Second World War journalist T.H Gough kept Black Country folk amused with his regular column in the Dudley Herald of a wry and amusing stories, often about typical Black Country characters, our dialect and humour.

These tales were collected into several volumes, published by the Birmingham book-sellers Hudsons and were so popular that they are often to be found in secondhand bookshop or charity shops some 80 years later.

These are some typical examples of T.H. Gough’s wares:

A Black Country ironworker accompanied a friend on a day trip to Blackpool. The friend had been under the dentist, and had the whole of the teeth in the upper jaw extracted, and for the first time was wearing a plate.

Complaining that it was uncomfortable, and spoiling his day’s outing, he was induced to let his companion look into his mouth and see if he could locate the trouble.

‘Of course it ay comfortable, yer fule, why you’n got the plaete wrong side up.”

*

‘Faether, my egg’s a bad ’un!’

‘It tay a bad ’un, they’n all fresh laid.’

‘I’m sure it’s a bad ’un, faether.’

‘I tell thee it tay. Get it down thee.’

‘Faether, ’ave I got t’ate the bake and legs as well?’

*

‘’E’s always a-grumblin,’ said one workman to his mate, complaining of the foreman.

‘Why doe yer cuss ’im, loike I doo,’ said his mate. Meeting again at the dinner hour, the man who had complained of the foreman’s treatment of him, reported that following his friend’s advice ‘’e’d given the foreman a d_____ good cussin’, but ’e ’ad got a week’s notice as the result.’

‘Why was it?’ he asked, ‘yo’ dey get the sack.’

‘Yo’ waernt’t such a fule as to cuss ’im so as ’e cud ’ear, wun yer? Yo’ shouldn’t a-done that; I ony cussed ’im wen ’e wor theer.’