"The Gearbox!"

[unixronin]

My family has a traditional toast, that is ours and ours alone.  The toast is this:

"The gearbox!"

How, you wonder, did this come about?

Well, you see, years ago, my elder sister Peri went on a field trip to Wales with the Polytechnic of Central London, where she was studying for her degree in ecology.  While they were there, the college's van broke down, and a mechanic was summoned from the nearby village to diagnose and repair the problem.

Now, there's a traditional Welsh toast that sounds like "Yakky da" or "Yakki da", but no-one in my family had the least idea of what it actually meant (or, fr that matter, how it was actually properly spelled in Welsh.)  It occurred to Peri that with a Welsh mechanic outside working on the van, she had an excellent opportunity to find out what "Yakky da" actually meant.  So she went outside, walked over to the mechanic, who was lying mostly under the van working on it, and asked him,

"Excuse me, what does Yakky-da mean?"

However, the mechanic, being mostly under the van and concentrating on his work, didn't really hear her clearly.  But as it happened, he had just at that moment found the problem, and reasonably enough assumed that she was asking what was wrong with the van.  So he yelled back,

"Oh, it's the gearbox!"

Thus are family traditions born.

Now, through the magic of the Internet and Google, it can be revealed that "Yakky da" is properly spelled lechyd da (and armed with that, I now know how to properly pronounce it), and that it means the simple and prosaic "Good health!"  But "The gearbox!" is much more fun, and we'll be keeping it.

Comments

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

hehe

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

I love family traditions!