A COCK AND BALLS STORY by VALERIE LAWS (ooer missus!)

Someone snapped my book on a flight from Ibiza! Too thrilled not to post this. Now to lower the tone...

‘Mr Grant, really quite glad of an excuse to dismount, offered his cock to Lydia, who immediately flung a leg over it, explaining that she had put on a frock with pleats on purpose, as she always felt sick if she rode sideways.’

Round the Horne: Sandy claims as a pianist, Jules is '"a miracle of dexterity at the cottage upright'

          Some people have a juvenile sense of humour which takes delight in smutty double entendre and low forms of comedy. I’m one of them. I blame Julian and Sandy, whose utterly filthy sketches in Round the Horne I laughed at as a child even though I had no idea what the jokes were about as they were mostly in Polari, bringing underground gay slang into living rooms all over Britain. Anyway you have been warned, so if you like a rude joke, I’ll give you one (ooh missus!) Up Pompeii, the Carry On films, they were all family viewing on TV and nobody complained. If you understood, you must have a dirty mind. If you didn’t, no harm done. Nowadays Two Broke Girls has popularised this form of very English comedy in the US.


Frankie he say, Titter ye not!

          Reading old books, many of which are free or very cheap in new Kindle versions, provides many moments of unintended fnarr, fnarr fun. Or was it always unintended? The opening quote is from The Brandons, by Angela Thirkell who wrote very proper English novels of the 1930s upper crust. There’s more.


Lydia's cock waiting for her to fling her leg over it.

     ‘I know that once Lydia is on her cock, nothing will get her off. Last year... she had thirteen rides.’ The minx! Of course it’s about a fairground roundabout, we still had one at the famous Spanish City in Whitley Bay when I was a bairn, with horses, cockerels, swans to ride as you swirled round. The man in charge had a truly magnificent organ (stop it!) which he shared with all the riders at full power. But is Thirkell either extremely innocent, or cheekily pushing the boundaries here? The strapping jolly hockey sticks Lydia, who is fifteen, each year when the fair came to her village, ‘spent most of her money and time...and usually descended from her mount in a state of exaltation which lasted until after dinner and sometimes made her rather remote and disagreeable.’ Hmm. I reckon she’s getting more than her money’s worth out of that cock. Puts that whole Mary Poppins carousel scene into a whole new light.

No wonder people did so much ejaculating back in the day. They were always at it (come on!). ‘Robert ejaculates, and puts his foot on the accelerator’ (Diary of a Provincial Lady, EM Delafield). In Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Catherine her heroine is described thus: ‘At fifteen, she began to curl her hair and long for balls; her complexion improved...’ Ah yes I remember it well.

Don't try this at home.

     Titles too can seem mirthful to a modern mind: Baden Powell’s high-minded attempt to improve youthful morale, ‘Scouting for Boys.’ There was a fun recipe book for kiddies, ‘Cooking with Pooh,’ but beware, there’s also ‘Pooh Gets Stuck,’ so make sure to include lots of fibre. If you have any faves, do share them in the comments.

Seriously though folks, the thing about ebooks is you can change stuff, at any time: should we or shouldn’t we? The other thing that strikes a reader of older books is the use of language which is now considered inappropriate or offensive. I recently downloaded Monica Dickens’ 'One Pair of Feet,' her wartime nursing experience. She has various flirtations at dances with RAF officers including one whose nickname is the N word (he has dark curly hair.) No-one thought anything of it at the time, but now it’s such a loaded term that Stephen Fry changed the name of WWII air ace Guy Gibson’s dog to ‘Digger’ for the film of his life. The dog’s name was used as a codeword during the famous Dam Busters Operation. Some might argue that this is changing history, yet arguably the form of the dog’s name isn’t really important compared with the offence to and alienation of people new to Gibson and the Dambusters’ story. Gibson might have called his dog anything. Whereas, for example, to credit someone else (like, say, Mel Gibson) with the operation would indeed be wrong.

Mel Gibson invents the Bouncing Bomb for WWII's Ghostbusters Operation

          It’s an ongoing debate, to change or not to change, what to change, whether to have various versions (as they do with films after all), all are possible now: but it would indeed be a shame to change inadvertent rudery in old books to prevent new generations from giggling. Long may intercourse, ejaculation and cocks pop up on our Kindles! (Sorry, Matron!)

Visit my website www.valerielaws.com

Follow me on Twitter @ValerieLaws

Find me on Facebook

Find THE OPERATOR on Amazon Kindle  (paperbacks available too!) UK US

Or ALL THAT LIVES (CSI:POETRY of sex, death and pathology)  UK US

or LYDIA BENNET'S BLOG my Jane Austen comedy UK US