Different parts of the world have different reactions and beliefs to swearing. I'm still surprised at the use of swear words on TV here in the UK. It only happens after 9pm ... but I find it refreshing. It's just a shame the English can't swear properly. Well, not compared with the Irish anyway.
Contrast:
1 - My wife was visiting a friend in Ireland this weekend. At breakfast on Sunday morning her friend's daughter announced that her mum's favourite word was "Bollocks".
2 - Back here in Scotland ... when my eldest daughter was 2 she struggled saying words starting with the letter "J" and we got taken aside by her nursery one day and told that she had said the word "damn" ... which turned out to be "jam". The nursery workers were horrified. We were bemused. Now, three years later we are amused.
I'm really worried now though, because our youngest, currently 2, struggles to say words with "L" in them (she'd say "bite" instead of "blight", if her vocabulary was that large) and I have a watch which glows green in the dark. A dangerous combination. Each night when I put her to bed the watch glows in the darkened room, she spots it and she says, in utter amazement, "Daddy. You've got a green clock" which doesn't come out quite like that, but I can translate by putting the L back into Clock. I'm not looking forward to the next chat with her nursery. They already look at me funny.
Back in Ireland again, I find this quote from Ryan Air's Michaol O'Leary when discussing the possibility of Ryan Air doing transatlantic flights, just fantastically funny and witty: "In economy no frills; in business class it'll all be free - including the blowj**s". Others no doubt will find it a bit rude and think I have a potty mind. You've gotta smile though, don't you, when you think of the adverts.
Back in Scotland, I still smile at the memory of when I first saw the sign in front of a BJ's Fruit and Veg shop in Stirling (home of Braveheart) which read "BJs - Fresh Daily". I suspect I'm the only one who saw that sign and smiled.
I still haven't figured out whether I'll remove the word "fuck" from my book. I'm almost definitely relocating it back in either Scotland, Northern England or Ireland ... if I go with Ireland then I could also substitute "feck" which isn't quite the same, but it does flow easily in natural conversation. Or, so I find.
