Alan Ashworth has an entertaining TCW piece on family sayings.
That Reminds Me – what would Mum say?
I HAVE recently re-read Blake Morrison’s award-winning 1993 memoir And When Did You Last See Your Father? and am reminded once again of our parallel lives...
What really resonates with me about the book is the family expressions. When Arthur Morrison had over-indulged at the pub, he would describe himself, as would my own father, as ‘a bit fresh’. No one ever farted, they trumped. And ‘too true’ was a phrase often used.
My wife Margaret, who adored my mum, has urged me for years to write down some of her sayings before they are forgotten for ever, so here goes.
If someone was in an angry mood, he would be ‘crammed as a wasp’.
And he would have ‘a face like a bad ham’.
If she was hungry she could ‘eat a scabby donkey’ and complained: ‘Me belly feels like me throat’s been cut.’
Well worth reading as a delve into past times and a reminder that we still need such idiosyncratic but pithy expressions. For example, one I recall from a source I've forgotten used in relation to gender politics - what would Genghis Khan do?
7 comments:
I remember with pleasure the occasional accidentally revealing remark. For instance, my father brought us up never to indulge in the lazy and unpleasant Scottish habit of making uninformed dismissive remarks about Roman Catholics (who, in Scotland, are almost all Irish).
Then once, apropos something in the news, he delivered himself of "You have to remember that on the Continent many educated and intelligent people are Roman Catholics". "Oooooh, Dad!"
dearieme - I didn't realise it was so significant in Scotland, although there have always been glimpses of it via the Rangers and Celtic rivalry.
The regions and even tiny corners of regions have their patois. Often unexplainable if any thought is given. Two examples come to mind.
If a statement made by someone is doubtful the response might be "Aye, your arse on parsley." No, I cannot explain.
If the gentleman of the house should arrive home late after a few libations and enquire of his beloved what he can have for dinner, the response might be "A free jump at the cupboard door."
The "scabby donkey" is modified for less affluent folk as "I am fair famished. Ah could eat a scabby dug."
An expression that sticks in my mind, and also shows my age is "Ah've got a thirst that ah wouldn'y sell for half a crown."
How many of you know what oxter guff is?
Long may the local dialects and expressions live on and thwart the advance of Disney, Mockney, Rap, and other abominations.
Doonhamer - Mrs H has a version of "A free jump at the cupboard door" which is "Three jumps at the cupboard door." I'd never heard it when we first met, but we grew up only about twelve miles apart.
Maybe "Aye, your arse on parsley" is a corruption of something, but I can't guess what.
"If a statement made by someone is doubtful the response might be ..."
In our house either "Very like a whale" - which is Shakespeare - or "My left foot" which comes whence I know not.
Oh yes, and two American ones Dad had picked up in The War: "I'm from Missoura", "Tell it to the marines", declaimed in an American accent when a newspaper had said something obviously false.
And, come to think of it, you could assess the truth or virtue of what had just been said as being "a curate's egg". Which is from Punch.
My parents had a saying whenever the clouds thickened ready for a heavy downpour. "It looks black over Bill's mothers".
dearieme - we don't have many family responses to doubtful assertions apart from looking up into the sky and making some comment about airborne pigs. I sometimes describe a dubious claim as "all my eye and Betty Martin" but that's because my old school maths teacher used it.
John - I still say "It looks black over Bill's mothers", but only because I like to perpetuate it. My father did the same.
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