This post was inspired by a comment on my Facebook status on Friday.

Hoping the cleaning, washing, folding and (if it’s not too much to ask) ironing fairies are busy at my house while I’m at work …

Among the responses my lovely friend Marky B wrote I just saw them in a little wine bar, lazy strumpets!

Strumpets. I love me some of that word. In fact, I love me all of that word, particularly when prefaced by lazy. It’s really such a nasty word, but sounds like so much fun. It is a word which needs to get back into my vocabulary and used frequently.

It’s been that kind of week.

Puberty Blues is a book written in the late 1970s in Australia by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey about “‘top chicks’ and ‘surfie spunks’ and the kids who don’t quite make the cut: it recreates with fascinating honesty a world where only the gang and the surf count”. It was made into a film in 1981 and has been re-made into a 6-part television series, the first episode of which aired this week in Australia.

There are some uniquely Australian (and maybe to this particular 1970s beach culture) phrases we were all reminded of this week while watching. Twitter feeds, Facebook status updates and text messages flew between friends who were old enough to remember the original, or almost old enough but read the book and saw the movie 10 years later.

So this week, back into my vocabulary came some distinctly Australian sayings, some ace, some a little less ladylike and correct, but fun if delivered tongue planted firmly in cheek – my favourite being rack off moll. Terminology for kissing has leapt back 30 years. French kissing or its lesser cousin macking will – for now at least – be referred to as pashing, or if requesting a kiss, pash me off.

The dads were all wearing replicas of my dad’s wardrobe, essential items such as short brown shorts and pale blue toweling shirts. My sister noted that the character’s school skirts were longer than mine had been (ahem, not sure I totally agree with that particular observation), the music fabulously tragic – depending on your point of view.

Over the next six weeks you may see some of this vocabulary sneak into my posts. If for no other reason than it’s fun to say. Although being a mumma I will try to set a good example.

Of course, strumpets in the late 1970s would have been straight up sluts. Not that I would have referred to them as such, being a goodie two shoes and all …

Dead set.