Chuggers, Chavs and Buzzwords

You blink and the world has a habit of passing you by. Or at least that was how I felt this week as I idly gazed at the newspaper on another sun-packed, fun-packed journey on the London Underground into work. The reason for my meandering reflections on quite where I had been most of my life, was that the paper bouncily announced that 'Chav' had been named the buzzword of the year. Now, seeing as I had never heard of a 'Chav' I figured that on balance I must be spending most of my time with my head stuck firmly up my arse.

It turns out that 'Chav's' are the 'young louts who wear cheap gold jewellery and baseball caps and hang around in shopping centres all over Britain.' I am sure if you are in America or elsewhere you have your own version. Now of course as soon as I heard the description I was familiar with the breed. I have also noticed (when I have my anthropological hat on) that they tend to wear tracksuits, walk with a pronounced stroll that encourages their gait and shoulders to 'roll' in a drug-dealeresque fashion, and that they are apt to say 'bitch' rather more then the average student of advanced biology (even though many of them are women). They may or may not be intelligent. It is hard to tell. But they are clearly disaffected with their lot in life, and positively heave under the weight of the burdens (such as manners, respect and relative calm around others) that society has the temerity to try to enforce upon them. In short my head may be stuck up my arse, but they most certainly are a pain in the arse.

The extoller of yearly literary virtues was Susie Dent who has written a book called 'Larpers and Shroomers: The Language Report', in which she wanders back through the 20th Century to give a buzzword for each year. Not very scientific then. One woman's personal take on the world, but an interesting idea nevertheless. One word for each year of the Century. So 100 individual words to describe a 100 years of human history. For example 'teddy bear' for 1906, 'punk' for 1974, '9/11' for 2001. The book is due for release in mid November, so you can check out the full list and reasoning behind it then.

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The one buzz word that you simply cannot escape if you work in London is 'Chuggers'. A 'Chugger' is short for 'Charity Mugger', or that nefarious breed of n'er do wells and pickpocketers for truth, justice and making you feel guilty, who hang around in packs with fellow Chuggers to part you from your cash for 'good causes'. The pitch starts off something like this

"Hi, Can you spare a few minutes for the hungry children?"