Celtic Roots Craic!: 27 - 'Now we're suckin' diesel!'

Monday, 1 August 2011

27 - 'Now we're suckin' diesel!'

Rally car airborne over a 'yump' during the Circuit of Ireland Rally

January 21, 2011

We've bin havin' some very un-Irish weather recently - a lot of snow and record temperatures going down to -20C! And last Sunday we again had a couple of inches of snow in some places - unfortunately, just where I happened to be drivin'! Off the main roads in Ireland we tend to have a lot of little lanes - in Irish they're called 'boreens' - and last week I found myself driving up and down a few of these.

In normal conditions they are narrow, bumpy wee roads, with plenty of bends and what we call 'yumps' - that's where yer car will take off if yer drivin' too hard. And hence the usual advice to 'keep her between the hedges'. The other expression we use is to 'keep 'er lit', in other words, keep up the momentum, which also applies when yer tryin' to get up an icy hill.

Well, on 2" of compacted snow, no matter how careful ye are, things can go wrong - and the first thing I knew the car was sliding sideways downhill towards a steep bank, with a ditch on the other side. Before we went over it, thankfully, the wheel caught and propelled the car on down the slope towards the junction with another of these boreens. We slid on helplessly straight across the other road and slammed into the stone parapet of the bridge on the other side.

I managed to reverse the car out of the middle of the road - before anyone hit us - and inspect the damage, which could have been worse. No broken glass or damaged panels, but the front bumper pushed in an inch or two - which I'll have to get repaired soon. Thankfully we were able to drive on unharmed.

We have quite a few expressions here which refer to mothorin' - or should I say, "Motoring?" Once you manage to extricate yourself from these wee side roads and get onto a fairly straight highway, ye might hear the expression, 'Now we're suckin' diesel' - which can also be applied to other situations, apart from drivin'. Basically, that means, "Now we're gettin' somewhere!" Ye can afford to, "Sink the guttie" - in other words, "Put yer fut down" - and accelerate a bit.

If a car comes round the corner a bit too fast, some'dy is likely to comment, 'Go on, ye bye ye!' in a sarcastic manner - often meaning that they hope he crashes it. It could equally well be, 'Go on, ye girl ye!' Or we might be heard to comment that, "He was fairly mothorin' on," or even, "hammerin' on," or maybe "he come down the road flyin' altogether, so he did!"

If ye do happen to have an accident, ye might well have to admit that ye'd, "cowped the mothor," "bent the car a wee bit", or at least, "give her a bit of a dunt."

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