Mind your language

My parents didn't swear when my brother and I were kids. Or if they did, I never heard them do so.

Occasionally, in moments of great frustration, one of them might exclaim 'Hell's bells and buckets of blood' or 'Jesus wept', but that was about the extent of it.

The reason I bring this up is that I swear like the proverbial trooper. So it stands to reason that this is a talent that I picked up outwith the Groanin' Jock childhood homestead.

As far as I can recall, I began cursing when I changed schools in Primary Two. I moved from a class of six-year-olds to a school of only 13 pupils, all of whom sat in the same room.

This mingling with 12-year-olds must have opened my eyes to the wonderful world of obscenities, and I've never looked back.

Nowadays, my speech is liberally peppered with swear words, and none is used more than that age-old favourite - the F-word. (Though I swear too often whilst talking, I still balk at the idea of typing 'bad words' - it must be my journalistic training).

Whether in use as a noun, a verb or an adjective, I do tend to over-use the F-word. When coupled with my fondness for a badly-misused term for an illegitimate child, I have a worryingly gutter-level vocabulary for one so educated.

Which is why, today, I am making a resolution - to cut all cursing from my day-to-day speech. I will still, on occasion, use sweary words to indicate extreme displeasure - such as when battering my bandaged toe off of a door, or when Rangers concede a goal.

So, I can expect to swear at least 300 times in the next 48 hours. The more things change, the more they stay the same.