GOOSECRUIVES (pl. n. archaic)
A pair of wooden trousers worn by poultry-keepers in the Middle Ages.
GOOSNARGH (n.)
Something left over from preparing or eating a meal, which you store in the fridge despite the fact that you know full well you will never ever use it.
GREAT TOSSON (n.)
A fat book containing four words and six cartoons which cost Ł6.95.
GREAT WAKERING (participial vb.)
Panic which sets in when you badly need to go to the lavatory and cannot make up your mind about what book or magazine to take with you.
GREELEY (n.)
Someone who continually annoys you by continually apologising for annoying you.
GRETNA GREEN (adj.)
A shade of green which cartoon characters dangle over the edge of a cliff.
GRIMMET (n.)
A small bush from which cartoon characters dangle over the edge of a cliff.
GRIMSBY (n.)
A lump of something gristly and foultasting concealed in a mouthful of stew or pie. Grimsbies are sometimes merely the result of careless cookery, but more often they are placed there deliberately by Freemasons. Grimbies can be purchased in bulk from any respectable Masonic butcher on giving him the secret Masonic handbag. One is then placed correct masonic method of dealing with it. If the guest is not a Mason, the host may find it entertaining to watch how he handles the obnoxious object. It may be (a) manfully swallowed, invariably bringing tears to the eyes. (b) chewed with resolution for up to twenty minutes before eventually resorting to method (a) (c) choked on fatally. The Masonic handshake is easily recognised by another Mason incidentally, for by it a used grimsby is passed from hand to hand. The secret Masonic method for dealing with a grimsby is as follows : remove it carefully with the silver tongs provided, using the left hand. Cross the room to your host, hopping on one leg, and ram the grimsby firmly up his nose, shouting, ‘Take that, you smug Masonic bastard.’
GRINSTEAD (n.)
The state of a lady’s clothing after she has been to powder her nose and has hitched up her tights over her skirt at the back, thus exposing her bottom, and has walked out without noticing it.
GUERNSEY (adj.)
Queasy but umbowed. The kind of feeling one gets when discovering a plastic compartment in a fridge in which thing are growing.
GWEEK (n.)
A coat hanger recycled as a car aerial.
HADZOR (n.)
A sharp instrument placed in the washing-up bowl which makes it easier to cut yourself.
HAGNABY (n.)
Someone who looked a lot more attractive in the disco than they do in your bed the next morning.
HALCRO (n.)
An adhesive fibrous cloth used to hold babies’ clothes together. Thousands of tiny pieces of jam ‘hook’ on to thousands of tiny-pieces of dribble, enabling the cloth to become ‘sticky’.
HALIFAX (n.)
The green synthetic astroturf on which greengrocers display their vegetables.
HAMBLEDON (n.)
The sound of a single-engine aircraft flying by, heard whilst lying in a summer field in England, which somehow concentrates the silence and sense of space and timelessness and leaves one with a profound feeling of something or other.
HAPPLE (vb.)
To annoy people by finishing their sentences for them and then telling them what they really meant to say.
HARBLEDOWN (vb.)
To manoeuvre a double mattress down a winding staircase.
HARBOTTLE (n.)
A particular kind of fly which lives inside double glazing.
HARPENDEN (n.)
The coda to a phone conversion, consisting of about eight exchanges, by which people try gracefully to get off the line.
HASELBURY PLUCKNETT (n.)
A mechanical device for cleaning combs invented during the industrial revolution at the same time as Arkwright’s Spinning Jenny, but which didn’t catch on in the same way.
HASSOP (n.)
The pocket down the back of an armchair used for storing two-shilling bits and pieces of Lego.
HASTINGS (pl.n.)
Things said on the spur of the moment to explain to someone who comes into a room unexpectedly precisely what it is you are doing.
HATHERSAGE (n.)
The tiny snippets of beard which coat the inside of a washbasin after shaving in it.
HAUGHAM (n.)
One who loudly informs other diners in a restaurant what kind of man he is by calling for the chef by his christian name from the lobby.