Steve’s Own Enigma Code
Chris has been trying to decipher his recent text messages…
Since moving away from High Wycombe, I’ve been receiving a lot of text messages from people named Steve. Regular readers may remember that nearly all my Wycombe neighbours were Steves of one sort or another, and they all still message me, which is strange considering the relief they must surely have felt when I left.
This has been interesting though – while two Steves speak only in comedy pictures of Boris Johnson and cats, Next-door-but-one-Steve surprised me. I had no idea he was a complete idiot. I realised that we’d previously only talked and he was the only Steve who’d never texted me, so I’ve only now discovered he makes absolutely no sense at all. After receiving a few weeks’ worth of barely intelligible messages, I decided to broach the subject in a tactful, gentle, sensitive way… What the hell’ s the matter with you Next-door-but-one-Steve? Your messages are all nonsense!
Steve responded well to this with his first readable message, though the only repeatable words were shutup and off. He then followed up with another message, in perfectly written English, explaining he’d been using “text speak” and that I was obviously too ancient to understand it.
OK, firstly, nobody uses text speak nowadays, not since phones got proper keyboards, and secondly, what Steve was sending was nothing like text speak and more like some kind of secret code developed at Bletchley Park.
It seems that what Steve did was start every word but then only finish the odd one and turn others into slang. Armed with a clue (rather than an Enigma Machine) as to what he’d been attempting to do, I scrolled back through a few of his messages…
Ho is L or. S ti go a col oral ok no? I now think this translates to Howis Lorraine, still got a cold oral lo know?
I’m sure that’s correct because Lorraine had a cold, though quite how she caught it when we were all in masks and sanitising everything that moved I don’t know.
Another message reads, I see Porc rap a ga, los 4-1 North. While that sounds like he might have given me the secret coordinates of a U-boat, I’d already realised this one was mocking my football team, mainly because he sent it the day Portsmouth, on a typically shocking run, got thrashed 4-1 by Northampton Town. Elementary my dear
Watson, or as Next-door-butone-Steve might say, Elemmy de Wat.
However, all this still beats the efforts of Young Steve (he’s about 70) who keeps forgetting I don’t live in his road any more. Twice now he’s asked if it’d be convenient to nip round to borrow things, and twice I’ve replied Only if you get the ferry. I also know he tried to return my rake (which I didn’t know he had) to the new occupants of my old house. I know this because upon finding nobody home, he gave it to Next-door-but-one-Steve and asked if he’d pop it in to me. I expect the reply was No don b s ill, he no liv her.
His texts read like the secret coordinates of a U-boat