Oct 03 2007
Cup of Tea in Mosul
Today I had a proper cup of tea for my arvos. Shorty popped into the office this afternoon and asked if we had any milk that he could use. Shorty is a Pom from London or thereabouts. He runs the operations for one of my personal security detachments. You may remember a picture of Dylan in a previous post. Dylan is the guy that has biceps as big as Mikey’s. Anyway, Dylan left last week, and Shorty was promoted to replace him.
For some reason, as soon as he asked the question about milk, I thought he must be making tea. So I asked Shorty if he was going to be making a proper cup of tea this afternoon. He replied that he was and offered me a cup.
Here’s a picture of Shorty with his tea pot.
Poms are the only ones who can make a decent cup of tea. Mikey has needed years of training to get it right most of the time. Go Shorty!!
What exactly is a Pom?
There are two main schools on the etymology of the word Pom.
The first involves the Aussie fascination with rhyming slang. The British are immigrants in Australia. Immigrant rhymes (almost) with pomegranate. Pom is short for pomegranate. And Brits kind of turn red like pomegranates when left in the sun for too long!
The other theory is that it comes from the convict background of the original inhabitants. These first European settlers were “Prisoners of Her Majesty” or POHMs. So they became affectionately known as Poms.
Check out Wikipedia for a more detailed discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_words_for_British
To answer your question more simply, Pom is the term Australians use to refer to someone from England. In Australia, Pom can be both an insult and a term of endearment. Australians have a great knack for making insults into terms of endearment and terms of endearment into insults.
And to answer it in another way, I was always told it goes way, way back to the first fleet and started out as POME (Prisoner Of Mother England).
But in true Aussie fashion … who really knows, and who really cares! Never let the truth get in the way of a good storey.
Or then again, if i had just read Dales wiki link before i commented i could have us all some time.
Like my mother always said … “Michael, if only you would think before you spoke”. Guess that includes adding comments to blog sites.
and while i’m on a roll of commenting too quick … that was supposed to read “i could have saved us all some time”.
Maybe i should just give up now?
I think we’ve identified another one of those Blog Comments Spammers!
Mikey, You saved me some time.I didn’t read Dales wiki link. Mothers can’t be held responsible for “saying things ” to children as evidenced by the shower curtain post.