The River Forth

The River Forth is the major river of Eastern Central Scotland. It flows from its headwaters on the eastern slopes of Ben Lomond, joined at Stirling by the Allan and Teith rivers, to its estuary at Edinburgh, the Firth of Forth.


I worked for several years at hospitals on both sides of the Forth, crossing the Forth Road Bridge twice each day. 
The bridge, opened in 1964, was surfaced with steel plates, their taketa, taketa providing background rhythm to the crossing, and a shimmy shake for the car when the traffic came to a standstill. 

To my colonial ears, it seemed that the citizens of Edinburgh spoke with a south-of-border accent, more English than Scots, as distinct from the guttural Scots accent as French is from English.

As it was throughout the NHS, the daily onslaught of fellow humans seeking to be freed from disease or pain or disability, when often the only option was palliation, was relentless.
It is unsurprising that a type of gallows humour was used to cope.

"FLK" is a universally recognised acronym for dysmorphic infants who cannot be categorised according to a recognised syndrome, such as Down Syndrome. 
It stands for funny looking kid.

My Edinburgh colleagues had refined this acronym to "NFF"- normal for Fife, the county to the north of the Forth River.

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I wonder if the Forth Estuary was named the "Firth of Forth" as another  Edinburgh in-joke, a faux speech-defect distortion of "First of the Fourth", an April Fool prank reflecting the fact that the river excludes the unsophisticated masses to the north.