Political hack Kevin Maguire steps away from the day job at Parliament and reveals another side to him as Granda Kev. This week the Tyneside grandie realises he and his London born and bred granddaughter are divided by a common language
OUT of the mouth of a grandkid came a lesson on how a Tyneside warm greeting may backfire. Canny C is only two years old but very much her own person.
Over with older brother, Little L, and mam and dad for Sunday lunch, she was having a whale of a time. The two grandkids took the top of the red Little Tikes Cozy Coupe to create a convertible repeatedly driven into the settee.
Every grandie knows a house can only take so much mayhem before it resembles the trashed flat lived in by The Young Ones. The park was to be my saviour, as swings and slides are built of sterner stuff.
As I lifted London born and bred Canny C to put on her welly boots, I realised we were divided by a common language.
Granda wasn’t aware he’d uttered the cheery p-word, pet: “Here we go, pet”, until she spoke an undeniable truth. “I’m not a pet,” she replied.
I didn’t say she is a dog, cat, rabbit or hamster. Pet in North East England is a term of endearment, like love, flower or duck. There’s been a fuss at Newcastle University asking – not banning – staff to stop using pet, to steer them away from “patronising and gendered” terms.
Culture warriors screamed the world was going mad, the usual guff, while the uni politely asserted language constantly evolves and what one person finds acceptable, another may now judge inappropriate in certain contexts. None of the possibly thousands of women and men who have addressed me as pet over my lifetime intended to be condescending or sexist, I’d wager.
Canny C didn’t think her favourite grandparent was discriminating against her. Hers was a brutal takedown of my failure to communicate clearly and educate her in my home dialect.
Until she’s old enough to understand and consent to being called pet, the address shall henceforth never pass my lips in her presence. Unless I forget and go native. The cunning plan is instead to call her hinny, another Geordie embrace.
