What's in a word?
Anyone know what a slippy curry is?
I was talking to Sally Ann Matthews who is appearing in the excellent thriller The Business of Murder at Lichfield Garrick along with Todd Carty (just thought I would drop a few names in there). Like me she hails from Oldham, so it was a matter of talking over old times and old haunts.
I just happened to mention slippy currys and she knew immediately what I meant and I remembered a conversation I had had some time ago with a Birmingham headmaster who also came from Oldham. We all reckon it is purely an Oldham word. As to its origin I have no idea.
A slippy curry is an ice-slide. As kids we used to make them by compacting snow on the pavement and sliding along it until we produced a narrow sheet of ice where you could get up a fair old speed if you could keep your balance. Sledging, that is riding a toboggan rather than slagging off an incoming batsman, would also produce useful sheets of ice which could be turned into slippy currys.
Some would last as long as the snow while others had their life shortened by a sprinkling of Cerebos table salt by some home-permed harridan threatening to call the local bobby because we were trying to break her leg when she went to the shops.
The question is though has anyone not from Oldham heard of a slippy curry? And what do the rest of the country call ice-slides?
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Roger Clarke - Birmingham’s very own Grumpy Old Man on what gets right up his nose.
i was just talking to my mate in the army about slippy curry's with the weather being sooo bad at the moment...he knew what i meant as he is from manchester..but everyone else just looked on at us weird.
hadnt used the word since i was at school....i wonder if its still used today?
proud yonner (oldhamer)
If anyone managed to build a slippy curry without being marched off by 'elf 'n' safety security patrols then these days it would be surrounded by lawyers ready for a no win no fee payday waiting to pounce on anyone who slipped over.
As for sledging the whole way down the cobbles of Samson Street in Higginshaw - the Cresta Run of Oldham - those days a long gone. Too much like fun and too much danger for modern, namby pamby Britain.
It was a very common phrase when I was at school many years ago. I think it was when I was at junior school (Alexandra Park Juniors) in Oldham (about 36 years ago!) it was reported in the Oldham Chron that some university types had done an investigation into the phrase "Slippy Curry" as they had discovered Oldham was the only place it was used.
As an aside, coincedentally enough, one of my teachers was Sally Ann Matthews mum! I used to play with her two brothers John and Tim, anyway, i digress.
The university types finally decided that the only theory they could off was that it was a combination and twisting of the words 'slide' and 'scurry'.