I was getting the girls dressed, narrating along the way, and when I put their vests on I was overwhelmed to tell them that I was:
“Putting a shimmy on to keep you warm.”
It’s been a good twenty plus years since I heard or even thought of a ‘shimmy’ but there I was on my knees chasing my two spirited Cylonettes around the bedroom jabbering about shimmies.
My maternal granny was from Yorkshire, and shimmy is Yorkshire speak for vest. Even though she lived the majority of her adult life in the Scottish borders she still referred to a vest as a shimmy* and not a semmit*.
It made me feel so happy that I can pass on this slang to the girls. Will it stick, and will they keep the shimmy alive? A little piece of my Granny Moth that can live on three thousand odd miles away from the land of the white roses.
* Both come from the French ‘chemise’.
