"Rosie lee," "trouble and strife"-paired words pop out across East Bank as Michael Landy brings Cockney rhyming slang back to London.
In rhyming slang, a common word is replaced with a phrase of two or three words, with the last word rhyming with the original. "Apple and pears," for example, means "stairs," and "Hampstead Heath" means "teeth." It became very popular in the 1950s and 70s, and Landey, who was born in London, has lived with the slang all his life. "My friend used it a lot so I think that's where I picked it up."
It has fallen out of favor, however, with most Londoners "baffled" by rhyming slang. "The ones [that have heard of it]," said Landey, "said it would be an awful shame if it died out completely because it's part of east London's identity."
"What I like about cockney slang is how humorous and funny it is, it has a rhyming element which gives it a certain charm. Whereas a lot of contemporary slang is evolved from things like drill [music], so it's a bit harsher."
To bring more attention to rhyming slang, he put up signs depicting Cockney rhyming phrases along Stratford Waterfront in an installation appropriately named Lemon Meringue. The phrases include older ones, like "S Club Seven" (heaven), "April showers" (flowers), and "dog and bone" (phone), as well as a peppering of new ones, such as "chicken jalfrezi" (crazy). There were some, such as "merchant banker," that did not make it on the display.
Landy's signs themselves are nostalgic, mimicking shop notices from the 1980s, and using a font similar to tabloid headlines. Landy said: "I've used the visual language of bargain basement sale signage in fluorescent star shapes that you would commonly see on market stalls and shops closing down-things that I am familiar with growing up in the East End in the 1970s and 1980s, and seeing the recession in the early 1990s." He adds: "I wanted it to be disruptive."
Lemon Meringue has inspired the Voices of East Bank project-a digital bank of 50 oral histories recorded from residents of the four boroughs around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
