British slang help needed

[Amy Z]

Dumbledad wrote:

>   Portacabin is the only one that I heard lots in England but never 
>   since moving to the USA. They are the small cabins used mainly on 
>   building sites (and some schools, hostpitals, ...). They arrive 
on a 
>   truck and are intendied to be short term office space. (I don't 
know 
>   what a portacabin bed is.) What's a portacabin called in the 
States?

It sounds the same as a trailer.  I assume a portacabin bed is just a 
bed in a portacabin.  The song is about construction workers.

My high school had trailers as "temporary classrooms" (in fact the 
intended expansion of the building took so long that they 
were "temporary" only from the POV of a wizarding lifespan.  It was a 
solid twenty years, probably more, before they got rid of them).

Chocobo wrote:

> I looked up all that slang in an online dictionary and none of it 
was there either. Are you sure that's British slang?

Sorry, I had no idea anyone was hanging on the results of this 
thread, or I'd have passed along the info before now.  David dug up 
this handy source:

http://www.geordiepride.demon.co.uk/dictionary.htm

Some of the stuff from the album, like "ballyhoo girl," might be 
particular to a narrow field of endeavor (in that case, carnival 
midways), or maybe Knopfler coined it.  Ballyhoo does mean 
advertisement, so a ballyhoo girl makes sense as a kind of barker.

Amy
who would have died without ever learning what a knickerbocker glory 
is if not for the bounty of this group