Memories of an ex-Launton boy

This month the ex-Launton boy’s memory is triggered by the report in last month’s issue of the the Jay Lapper fundraising event. He recalls some members of the Lapper family he remembers, then moves to memories of the language of the cattle market auctioneers. Then he sets out some of the newer language uses he deplores, and tries to describe the roots of his own dialect.

I’ve just read online about the Jay Lapper Memorial Trust, wondering what it is all about. Having been away for so many years and despite my regular copies of Launton Lines, there is obviously much that has passed me by during the interim.

Now the Lappers with whom my memory is served are Rae and Bill Lapper and their daughters Jennifer and Jane. Then of course there was (is) Dennis (Denner) Lapper, his brother Ron Lapper and from the distant past, I believe an even older brother who went by the nickname, Whip Lapper, but for the life of me, I am not familiar with Jay Lapper, and probably more is the pity.

That said, I was intrigued by the event that is coming up in support of Jay’s Memorial Trust, although unfortunately I will be unable to attend. This is quite disappointing for me on a second front also, being that of your auctioneer for the day being Charlie Ross.

Both me and my wife, Julie are keen watchers of Bargain Hunt, Flog It and The Antiques Road Show and one of our favourite celebrity presenters / dealers / auctioneers is without doubt, Charlie Ross.I would so much like to meet him and have a chat, as I am sure he must be most interesting.

And talking of auctions has taken me back to when I was a young school boy living in Launton and being schooled in Bicester and how, up at the back of Victoria Road in Bicester there used to be a substantial and well-supported cattle market. How anyone could understand a single word of what those auctioneers were uttering like overworked machine gun fire completely baffles me.

Language is so very important, especially in the way in which it is used. I’ve always said, “It’s not what you say so much as how you say it.” Similarly, when questioning someone, “It’s not what you ask so much as the way you ask.” A classic example of that these days can be seen and heard in shops, cafes, restaurants, in fact almost everywhere where people are employed to engage with people, the public. Mind you, to be fair, it is a two-way street. “What do you want?” instead of, “What would you like?”or “I’ll have / I want” instead of “May I have / I would like.” Simple things, but they are to some of us quite important. I was always taught that good manners and politeness cost nothing. In far too many places these days we are witness to how standards have fallen over the past five decades, and in so many different walks of life. How many times have you seen an obvious ‘couple’ in a restaurant sitting opposite each other at a table, each with their faces stuck fast into their respective mobile phones, hardly exchanging two words with one another? I ask myself, “What is the point?”’

Youngsters these days seem unable to communicate with each other unless it is through the likes of snap-chat or whatever it is. There are people working together in the same office at the same time where they have the ability to speak to each other verbally, but who choose instead to send e-mails or text messages to each other.

And then it really does get to me when people resort to the Americanisation of our beautiful English language with made-up words such as ‘gotten’! Whatever happened to ‘got’? And the one that really does rub me up the wrong way, which is nothing to do with the Americans but clearly very poorly taught English in our own schools; I refer of course to terms such as, “He could of”, “They could of”, for goodness sake, whatever happened to the word, HAVE? Would’vedoes not translate into “would of”. For “would of” makes no grammatical sense whatsoever. The word is simply an abbreviation of “would have” by simply dropping the h and a. Am I getting a bit, you know, about all this. Well what if I am, someone has to stand up for our beautiful English language, especially if you come from Oxfordshire.

I remember as a child and young teenager, unlike my brother younger Cliff, I had no accent at all, which is not to say that I spoke as if I had a plum in my mouth, I simply had no accent. But when I went into the army, particularly when serving in BAOR West Germany during the Cold War, I used to get my leg pulled by some of my army mates who thought that everyone from Oxfordshire spoke ‘awfully well’ and as such thought I should have been a commissioned officer. And so I decided to adopt my native dialect, but never having spoken it previously and by then, being surrounded with guys from the length and breadth of our British Isles, I ended up with a sort of Heinz57 Varieties. This has since, over many years, evolved into something between Oxfordshire and Wiltshire where I lived for nine years before moving to Kent in 1984.

I often have a bit of fun trying to determine what part of the country people come from originally by listening to their dialects. When people ask me what a genuine Oxfordshire dialect sounds like, I recall listening to the village workmen of Launton greeting each other in the morning with, “Marnin, ow be you?” “Aw, oi be awroit, owbe you?”’, “Carnt grumble!”

Still, when it comes to listening to auctioneers, you should have no problems with the very eloquent Charlie Ross.I hope you all have a tremendously successful day.

Keep healthy and stay SAFE!

TonyJeacock, MInstRE | The ex-Launton Boy | September 2025