Ok ok ok… this is just bizarre. Any of you who know us will have heard us utter the phrase ‘Chechens’ now and again. Before I go any further, let me give you a brief history of how this phrase came about and what it means.

A long long time ago I was sitting in a bar (how many stories start with this sentence?!) with Ali and his mate Dave from college amongst others. I noticed that Dave would regularly say “chat to you” whenever he was saying goodbye to somebody. However he didn’t pronounce it quite that eloquently. He kind of said it so fast that is came out as “chacha”. I thought this was hilarious and I took it on myself, saying chacha to people as a farewell.

Fast forward several years to gaffbhala where the phrase ‘chacha’ was adopted by Ali, Dan and Wig too. Its use was even expanded and the word chacha began to be uttered as an exclamation. For example, if Dan were to mess up a really easy section on Guitar Hero, I might say “Oh! Chacha!”. So anyway, as with most slang, the more we said the phrase, the more it morphed into other phrases. Some of the changes it went through were Chechnya, Chechnyan Jazz, Chechnens and finally ended up at simply ‘Chechens’.

So imagine my surprised last night when I was around at Emsy and her mum’s house and I noticed an article lying on the kitchen table about Chechens! I could hardly believe my eyes! So of course I took a quick snap with my phone and here it is. For everybody to enjoy in all its glory. Whatever next?!