The Language Of...???

As a fortysomething who sometimes feels his best years are setting like the sun on the horizon with the darkness of old age about to take their place, I occasionally feel my grandad status more acutely.

A younger colleague of mine in the office was chatting excitedly yesterday about going on holiday with her young family. 'So,' I casually remarked, 'You'll be feeling demob happy?' She looked at me with vacant eyes. 'What's that then?' she asked with an expression which suggested the old man's off on one again.

I tried to explain the term demob harks back to the second world war and the decade immediately after when young men and women served their country during conflict and in the post-war years did their national service in the armed forces. Having done their duty, they were demobbed back into 'civvy street', hence were demob happy.

Of course even I am too young to have been subjected to this - my fellow blogger and Jambo Adullamite will probably be able to tell you more, having served his country in both world wars - but the term was still widely used when I first began working thirty years ago. Many of my colleagues 'on the buses' in the late 1970s - pre First Bus when the company actually ran services to published timetables - were approaching retirement age and had served their time in the army. They often referred to going on holiday as being demob happy.

I really ought to make more of an effort to modernise my use of language but I find it increasingly difficult in this age of internet and mobile phone technology and the cursed 'text' speak. Daughter Michaela sent me a text message the other night saying she would give me a lift home - 'Al be over in fifteen minutes'. Quite who Al is I'm not sure but I can confirm my younger daughter has not acquired the services of chauffeur and indeed turned up on her Jack Jones (sorry, younger readers - on her own)

A minor source of irritation in a life I find increasingly irritating is the use of 'lol' not only in text speak but on internet messageboards. I know it stands for 'laugh out loud' but I always liken it to a stand up comic who is about as funny as a trip to the dentist and laughs at his own gags. I struggle with the whole concept. Another fellow Jambo sent me a text recently which seemed to allude to the fact he would see me on the motorway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. But what he actually meant by 'c u ltr M8' was that he would renew his acquaintance with me at a future date.

My elder daughter, the shy and retiring Laura, communicates with her father not so much by phone but through the pages of 'Bebo', the social - or you might say anti-social web site. She occasionally 'sends the love' although this is spelt 'luv' presumably because the energy she saves by typing three letters instead of four can be put to much better use...

I manfully try and accept all this on the premise of if you can't beat them, join them - lol. So until the next incoherent rant, I'll say TTFN.