�Gone to Pot�
Valentina,
No doubt, many of the Contestants of �Daze of the
Fray�, will be racking their brains for some idiomatic connections to this
phrase.
But it is not an idiom! It is a straightforward statement of fact.
�Gone to Pot!� means precisely that
--- �Gone
to P. O. T.�
Those of you who are experts on Geography, and have perused,
�Darby-and-Joan
Clubs of the UK�, by Olde Peeple Soames, will have discovered some
strange place-names.
You will have read of �Greater Pigswill on the Ooze�;
�Much Kavorting in the Forrest�; and �Lesser Blabbering on the Fone�.
On the banks of the River Tyne, there is a suburb
named �Pelaw�, pronounced "Pee-law".
Pelaw is extremely well-known, because it was the
manufacturing centre for the largest Co-operative Society in the UK. Its most famous product was furniture
polish. There is a massive chimney with
the slogan on it: PELAW POLISH. The Government
in London is baffled, because Pelaw has a huge immigrant population. All of them are from Poland!
The local Mayor, Geordie Seet, was a bit of a liar. He always claimed that he was in the 1920
film, �The Hatchback of Notre Dame�, playing the part of Quasi Motor.
All his life he had worked constant night-shift in
the windy Tyne Tunnel, so the Queen awarded him a Night-Hood. Afterwards, at tea, she asked: �Would
you like a cup of tea, or a meringue?�
Geordie replied, �Nah, ya not wrang, ah would liake a cuppa
tea, ya Majistee�.
Much research has gone into the origins of the name �Pelaw�. Some say that it originated in the Law governing
the use of the local Public Toilet.
Others say that that the name was taken from a rice-growing
district in India. This raises the
question:
�If ye kin git Pelah rice in Newcastle, why
can ye not git Newcastle rice in Pelah?�
The reality is that the name arose because of the local
mediaeval chip-shop, �The Chipmonks�, run by the Monastery,
under its head, the Fryer.
They sold the waste potato peel to the local Italian
Kwikserve Take-Away, �Fasta Pasta�, who served the Potato
Peel to their customers as a supreme delicacy.
Unfortunately, a dispute arose, because the chip-shop made the chips
from King Edward potatoes, and the Italians insisted that they be made from Julius
Caesar potatoes.
Eventually, the Food, Agriculture, Rural Trade
section of the European Parliament made a decision, (which is unusual). They invented the European Standard Legal
Potato, (the ESLP), which must
be grown in Peru, the birth-place of the potato. The decision was described by the Parliament as
�educational�. The Fryer of the Chipmonks
agreed, saying: �That�s taught me a lesson that I�ll not forget!�
This decree became known as the �Peel Law�, and thus, the
name of the Town, �Pelaw�.
So, what does �Gone to Pot� mean?
Pelaw stands on the south bank of the River Tyne,
so its official name is: �Pelaw-on-Tyne�. Yes! �P.
O. T�.
�Gone to Pot�, means, �Gone
to Pelaw-on-Tyne�.
�My wife�s gone to a gambling Casino in the
Himalayas.�
�Tibet?�
�Of course, that�s why she went!
And she also wants to see the mountains!�
Les
Don �t you see I �m gone to pot!
.
