Ya a’right

Ever since I have moved here, I keep hearing this term “Ya A’right??”. It is the first thing that comes out of everyone’s mouth when they see me. Initially, I thought that I looked sick or tired and hence the question. But they weren’t bothered to wait for my answer anyway. So why question me something like that and not wait for what I want to say if I had anything to say at all…I wondered.

In my school, there is this class teacher who helped me out when I joined and I consider her a friend (I say this because I am not sure if she considers me as one yet, but that’s a’right to me 😉 ) She is one of the very few with whom I can be myself  (i.e. not necessarily be polite for every small thing that they do or say 😀 ) She says that word with a very North England accent and that kind of fascinates me. Yesterday, when she said that as a greeting, I asked her if that question was rhetoric or if she really wanted to know if I was a’right. She stood and looked at me for some time and then laughed and then proceeded to explain how it is a polite way of saying hi over here and that it was kind of rhetoric (at least that is what I inferred from her explanation). I asked her why people complicated things like that when they can just say a word with two letters and instead go to all that rhetoric questions and leave people like me confused. She looked at me, shook her head and laughed and went to her class. We left that discussion at that. I came home told Mr M the incident and he said that I was troubling that poor teacher.

Today when she came in, she said ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ and I burst out laughing. I was totally expecting her “a’right” and was ready with an answer but she did a one up on me and changed her greeting. She was like ‘you happy? is that to your satisfaction madam? are you feeling good?’ I couldn’t stop laughing and was in tears. I am quite a’right now 😉