Today I learnt that a native of Leeds is called a Leodensian. I can add that to Novocastrian (Newcastle) and Wulfrunian (Wolverhampton) in my list of "places where I know what the natives are called".
But why did I learn this? Let me take you back to 2006...
Westhill Park School, Fareham, was the venue for the first Kick Asthma holiday that I led. In fact, it was the first Kick Asthma holiday that I'd ever been on - up until 2005 they were called PEAK holidays, a term that quite rightly refuses to go away.
In 2005 at Taunton we'd started a tradition of taking a popular tune and rewriting the lyrics to use as the volunteers' entry in the final-day "talent" show. Back then it was a reworking of (Is This The Way To) Amarillo, and because I wasn't leading the holiday I had room in my car boot to fit a keyboard for some live accompaniment.
It was a different story space-wise in 2006 (despite me owning a much larger car by then), and until the second half of the week we hadn't given any thought to a song for the final night. Ross came up with the line, "Watching the kid don't eat dairy..." and from this we decided that a reworking of I Predict A Riot was called for. A collaborative effort, Ross and I would both work on it and then combine the best couplets that we came up with to create the final version. An excellent plan, with only one problem - neither of us knew what the original lyrics were.
Ross had the mp3 on his phone, so I took a copy and spent Friday morning on a playing field in Fareham listening repeatedly to the original whilst the coaches from Portsmouth FC did a footy skills session with the kids. And whilst Ross and I both managed to decipher most of the lyrics, the last couplet of the first verse stumped us both.
That didn't matter as far as our songwriting exploits were concerned, and Will You Lot Be Quiet remains possibly the finest parody we've ever crafted (although our Away In A Manger-based tribute to Mr Robert Carter runs it very close). The full version is below for your perusal.
The fact that I also needed to work out the chord sequences for the song, and how the hell I was going to play a convincing version of it on a baby grand piano, is neither here nor there.
Back to the matter in hand - Leodensian. If you've been humming I Predict A Riot whist reading this, you've probably worked out (if you didn't already know) that Leodensian is the last word of the first verse. In fact, those two troublesome lines are:
Would never have happened to Smeaton
An old Leodensian
"Smeaton" is engineer and physicist John Smeaton, and the last line of his Wikipedia article explains the reference.
An 18th-century Leeds physicist via a kids' asthma holiday just outside Southampton; just another normal day at the office.
Will You Lot Be Quiet (Weake/Gill)
Ohhhh, watching you kids don’t eat dairy
Is not always easy I tell thee
Waking you up is quite scary
And not very sensible either
The moment your head’s off the pillow
You scream and you shout and you bellow
Making loud noise seems your mission
So we all sing out to you
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
La, la, la, la, la, la
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
La, la, la, la, la, la
Will you lot be quiet
Will you lot be quiet
Will you lot be quiet
Will you lot be quiet
Waited all evening for our tea;
The girls took an hour to get ready
They say it’s so they can look pretty;
Won’t work for the boys, more’s the pity
The bedroom floor’s got all their clothes on
You can’t reach the hook their stuff goes on
Out in the tents you got frozen
We still have to ask you all
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
La, la, la, la, la, la
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
La, la, la, la, la, la
Will you lot be quiet
Will you lot be quiet
Will you lot be quiet
Will you lot be quiet
We hope you’ve had a good time here, liked each other and ICE bear...
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