PTSD

Bugger!

Bugger it. Was working on my talk for the seminar yesterday. The computer totally buggered it up and after I went and talked to my supervisor he told me to write it again. He could barely talk since he had toothache and his mouth had swollen up. The poor bugger! Apparently he couldn’t get an appointment at the dentist’s till next week, which is a bit of a bugger. Now, I have to write all that stuff again though I just want to say bugger it and run off to the beach. But this is what my colleague did last week and he ended up stuck there since it was Sunday and public transport wasn’t working. The silly bugger. Turns out that I have done bugger all today anyway and, if this goes on, my discussant will feel entitled to say he’s totally buggered after having to read a 20-page paper at the last minute.

Okay, this is not an attempt to show off my limited (and rather old fashioned) swearing skills but to point out how difficult it is to explain how bugger is used to a group of people whose first language is not English. As I had to try to do yesterday. And, yes, the irony of me, with English as a third language, trying to explain bugger does not escape me. Reckon it all went downhill from when I tried to explain the meaning of the word does not affect its use today since, after hearing the meaning, they were rather unconvinced about the rest of the explanation.

(All this came about because I had a T-shirt on with Common Road Signs written on it and one of them depicted a car in the midst of a flock of sheep with “bugger” written below. Draw your own conclusions)

posted by Priya @ 1:09 PM