Words: twirly, n.

SERENA MACKESY'S hoot of a first novel The Temp has acute antennae for contemporary idiom, such as twirly - neither a dance move nor a key but "old ladies. They all call them that on the buses." These stiff-jointed seniors are not mentioned by the OED, Jonathon Green or Tony Thorne.

"You know how they all wake up at six in the morning and spend the next three and a half hours pacing up and down until it's time to go off to the supermarket to get cat food the moment the old girls' cards come into action? Well, Rodney says that at 9.28 every morning, they're all there at every bus stop, all the old ladies, with their shopping bags, all the old ladies, with their shopping bags on wheels, waving their old girls' cards and going, `Am I twirly?' "