The "anymore" is a construction my East Texas (now San Diego) grandmother uses, btw.

It's what I grew up with, but there are a few regionalism that tend to be very regional. Deb's suggestion will probably be more recognizable to more people. Sometimes, I think I start to channel my Grandmother (who was from North Dakota and grew up calling electricity "the electric"), which can be interesting, but not always completely understandable to the masses.

If you're interested in very arcane lifestyles that don't exist anymore, look up a book called "The Last of the Sod Houses." It's about my grandmother's and some other families that grew up in North Dakota at the turn of the century. It was self-published, so it's not easy to find. I don't even know if I have my copy anymore, with all the moves I've done.

I wouldn't say "I used to cry. Now I laugh, anymore."

That's pretty much how my grandmother would say it, though. Not that the edit to Sail's piece didn't make it more clear to more people, but that the original was not wrong, just regional.

Jesse, yup, I get the regional - more than twenty years of being back in the States hasn't leeched all the London slang out of me, and I get the occasional blank "huh?" look from non-travelling American friends who have no clue what "parky" or "his Hampton" might mean.

It really is just a question of what the majority of readers are likely to recognise.

Okay, deb, those are two I've never come across and I thought I had a good familitarity with most Britishisms. Now, you're going to have to explain to all of us what "parky" and "his Hampton" mean.

The nice folks at Poetic Diversity had interesting things to say about my last chapbook, "Warhold Days."

Both reviews, even the effectively "con," make me extremely hapy.

Sail, parky is chilly, cold. It can be used to talk about the weather ("Grab a coat, it's gone parky out there") or about a change in the atmosphere ("I really put my foot in it, I mentioned her ex-boyfriend and she went parky on me").

"Hampton" is a slightly obscure (I think it's obscure) bit of Cockney rhyming slang. Hampton Wick = prick or dick.

As in the more commonly known "pour me a shot of the gay and frisky" (whiskey) or "Ooooh, nice photo! Can I take a butcher's?" (butcher's hook = look).

I figured "his Hampton" was probably something along the way of an American male referring to "his Johnson" (and please don't ask me where it came from, because while I think I know, I'm not completely sure--possibly a surf board allusion) but with a twist. That Cockney rhyming slang can be wicked evil to try and disentangle; it's something one just has to grow up with to really understand.

Crap, I hate double posts.

Nice, Victor! Good for you (And for them, and the rest of us, too).

I think "anymore" as a synonym for "now" or "nowadays" is going national. I think I first heard it from a rural Pennsylvanian college friend circa 1990, but since then I've heard it in a variety of places. Never England, of course, but also never in Alabama or Georgia. Oklahoma, maybe, which would make sense if it's around in East Texas.