Feeling brassic? Run out of bees? Don't worry, help is at hand. Take your Jimmy Shands out of your Davey, and take a bowl of chalk to one of five cash dispensers in east London where, thanks to a new range of cockney cash machines, you can withdraw some Crosby, Stills and Nash.
Or, for those of you not fluent in David Hockney: Bank Machine, which runs 2,500 ATMs across the country, has set up five cash dispensers in locations from Spittalfields to Barnet that offer customers the option either to request cash in English, or "moolah for ya sky rocket" in cockney.
Ask for cockney and the machine tells you it is "Readin' your bladder of lard" before asking for your "Huckleberry Finn". Then the hard decisions start. Do you want to see your balance on the Charlie Sheen? Or withdraw sausage and mash?
If the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang cash machines are a success, the company hopes to follow them up with Brummie, Geordie, Scouse and Scots ATMs (suggestions for these much welcomed – the British Library's Sounds Familiar website, which tracks accents and dialects, was not a huge amount of help in coming up with the Brummie for cash).
It is not simply about client satisfaction, says the company – and anyway, anyone who claims there are more than a brass band full of pure-bred cockneys in trendy Spitalfields is having a giraffe. Its laudable aim is to keep dialects alive in Britain.
Genius, or a load of Watford Gap? Well, the company gets a bit of publicity, its users a bit of a bubble bath. Surely, everyone's a chicken dinner?
• Those seeking to translate this post can find help at "The biggest dictionary of Cockney Rhyming Slang on the Internet", built by "real" cockneys all over the world.
