"When angry, count four; when very angry, swear." -- Mark Twain

Language I've never considered myself as being a great swearer. I can be profain, but there are just certain words which sound wrong coming from my lips -- my accent isn't strong enough in one direction probably, which means that sometimes when I do [expletive deleted] I do it in a put on accent, often Yorkshire or Mancunian (my scouse accent is too bizarre even though I'm from here).

Last night, when I came in from work, absolutely banjexed, I could smell dinner being made. My Dad asked me to make the mint sauce. So I duly went into the kitchen, put a few spoonfuls of the Colman's concentrated into a bowl, added too much vinegar so slowly mixed in some sugar to flatten it out a bit. It was a work of art worthy for the dinner table. Even though we were having roast chicken. He was joking and in fact I'd actually been looking at the chicken on the side whilst I was make the usual tasty accompaniment to lamb.

That was a fairly swear worthy moment. And I did. A bit.

The work place is different though and in fact, I've thoroughly cultivated the use of the word 'Twunk' for momentary mental lapses there. But some researchers in East Anglia have found that actually, real swearing at work can be a useful therapy:
"...In many cases, taboo language serves the needs of people for developing and maintaining solidarity, and as a mechanism to cope with stress. Allowing an official 'no swearing' policy to be informally ignored in some contexts may be a sensible outcome," the researchers say."
I've chosen to link that article because it reveals something I didn't know -- that in Jamaica swearing or as they call them 'bad words' are illegal. Far be it from me to pass judgment on the laws of another society, but how do you regulate a percentage of people's self expression? But then again, I've seen enough of those late night fly-on-the-wall shows which follow the police during kicking out time on a Friday night in a town centre to know that even over here if you swear at a police officer who's been on shift for twelve hours you'll be spending the night in a cell. It's not big or clever, especially after eight pints.

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