Bushta in bean aisle
Sometimes when I think, as I do often, about words and what they mean and where they came from and where they’re going, I meditate on the idea of how words came to mean the thing they mean. In other words, how many people had to call a door a door before everybody called it a door? And how did that happen? Did one person start calling it a door, and then another and the idea of a door being a door started to make sense? So far, so good. Part of me wishes that I was the person who first came up with the word “door” to mean the thing I’d just come through. I’d be famous. Or, more likely, forgotten.
I’ve got one thing to add to that, though, and the thing is a word and the word is bushta! Or even, because it’s often shouted or at least spoken with emphasis, BUSHTA! Now, if you look Bushta up, you’ll find that it’s a first or second name of Arabic origin, and if you alter the spelling a little to booshta, you’ll find that it’s an Irish word meaning an idiot. On the map there’s a Loch of Bushta in the north of Scotland, not far from Thurso, but if you live in South Yorkshire, then I’m convinced that word has a very different and very specific meaning which has nothing to do with a loch.
Let me explain: I was on the X19 bus the other day going from Darfield to Barnsley and two older men on the seats in front were describing an altercation they’d once seen in a pub car park and one of the men said: “Well the first bloke gave him a reyt crack, bushta! And he went darn like a tree.” They laughed and then, just for the joy of it, the other man said “bushta!” and mimicked giving somebody a reyt crack. And the funny thing was, I knew what they meant; bushta is a very descriptive word for an explosion of, often comedic, violence. It’s the kind of word you might see in a cartoon, I guess.
Then, as often happens, because I’d heard the word once I started to hear it a lot. Somebody said it in a shop about a big pile of tins of beans that had once collapsed to the floor, and someone else said it about a goal that their team had scored: it had hit the goalkeeper so hard that, bushta! He fell back into the net and dropped the ball.
Now, I have to admit I’ve never heard bushta anywhere else but in my particular corner of South Yorkshire. I’ve heard it around Barnsley and a little bit in the Doncaster area but nowhere else.
So I wonder if the word is on its way or on its way up? Years ago, did a lot of people all over the place say bushta and, like a rare bird it’s gradually started to dwindle? Or, and perhaps more excitingly, it’s just at the start of its linguistic journey like door once was and soon everybody will be saying it.
Well, I hope so.
Bushta!
admirable wife, Jane, seems to have accepted his commitment to Free Love. His two long-lasting affairs were with younger women, Amber Reeves and West, less than half his age. Though one photograph of him as a student shows him to have been a pretty boy, his physical attractions in middle life are not immediately apparent. One mistress – I think it was the remarkable Russian Moura Budberg – said his body smelled of honey.
His enthusiastic free-ranging sex-life provoked criticism in his time. Fortunately, Tomalin is more tolerant, and matches criticism with understanding. She has sympathy and admiration for Jane Wells, while making it clear that Reeves and
West were as keen to get into bed with Wells as he was to have them there. If there was seduction, who was the seducer, who the seduced? Even so, she recognises that Wells, though a delightful and heroic figure, was indeed “a bad husband and an unreliable lover”.
This is a fine and very enjoyable biography of an extraordinary man and his times. It is particularly good on his background and self-education, much of this acquired in the many months when ill-health confined him to a country house where his mother served as housekeeper and the young HG had access, sometimes surreptitious access, to a well-stocked library. Best of all, it catches the spirit of a time when a better world seemed possible. Wells had “a central passion for social equality and government dedicated to making a better life for all its citizens”. We are still waiting. Wells is still relevant, still matters. It’s good that Tomalin reminds us of how remarkable he was.