New edition of Focus book

A new (third) edition of the book on Focus by Australian Peet Johnson arrived through my door the other day - Hocus Pocus: the strife and times of rock's Dutch masters. (See details here) Peet must know more about Focus than any man on earth and this new edition brings you right up to date with facts such as the version of Focus 3 done by Outkast and that by Guo Yue of House of the King (both in 1996). It's a bit expensive but hardcore Focus fans will go for it.

Unusual Words 16 Skerrick

Somewhere in the three hundred and odd pages of the new book on Focus by Australian Peet Johnson, he uses the delightful skerrick (as in not making a skerrick of a difference).

 

It is apparently a word used in USA, Australia and New Zealand to refer to a small fragment or amount (esp in the phrase not a skerrick). It is suggested that it is a northern English word though I saw it mentioned in a book on Essex dialect. The sk beginning suggests Viking influence.

 

Somewhere in Peter Carey's History of the Kelly Gang we find the sentence

Hard days followed the butter money were all taken and not a skerrick of income generated by the alleged 60 bolts of cloth

 

Also in Helen Garner's Cosmo Cosmolino we read the line

Oh, perhaps a skerrick, the merest shred of curled rind, to check that it was cooked: otherwise, no.