Things our parents used to say


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If anywhere, especially the house, was untidy, my Mum would say. it: 'Looked like Jackie Pownall's' (I believe Pownalls scrap yard was down by the old Vic baths?) Another variation was .'Looks like

My old mum, now passed, grew up in old St Anne's and knew hard times from being little until she met and married dad, one of her regular sayings was "If you can't afford it wi real money, you can

Tomlinson, In answer to your question #1387, I used to have some really good Tide Marks on my neck and running up my arms. The back of our house on Hardy's Drive, Gedling was a shared yard, I can'

Although I was born in Hyson Green my Mum was from the East End and my Dad's from North Wales, so the local lingo was quite a mystery when I started school...however "taters" for low temperatures is familiar. There may well be other connections to other Midlands sayings, but dahn sahf "p'tater mould" is rhyming slang for "cold" and is generally used abbreviated.

I also remember "suckers" and "tooffies" for what I knew as ice lollies and sweets, "tabs" for ears, and playing Dobby at break-times, long before Harry Potter was thought of. I was introduced to Kali (pronounced kay-lye) which my Mum called lemonade powder, and I don't know whether it was a local term or a brand name but it was weighed out in two-ounce or quarter-pound batches from a big jar in the corner shop. [Note for those educated in the metric system: roughly 55 or 115 grammes]. I've also come across "spice" as a generic term for sweets but only in writing, and I don't recall having heard it as a child.

The learning curve wasn't all one way, however! Pity the poor teacher who asked us in September to write the classic "What I did on my holidays" and was faced with a request to spell Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch....as our neighbour used to say, "Yer don't get many o' them fer a shillin'".

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And welcome from me too LocalBornFurriner.

Reciting that long Welsh village name (can't be bothered to write it all out) was my party piece when I was little. Went there for the very first time when heading for a ferry to Dublin a couple of years ago.

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I read a piece about that long Welsh name where an American couple went into a café there and asked the waitress if she`d say the name of where they were really slowly so they could get the pronunciation and she said, 'B-u-u-r-r-g e-r-r- K-I-I-I-ng.'

Was it on here?

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When I was very young and my mum bought me a new item of clothing I would always try it on to show my grandfather. In his broad West Yorkshire accent he would always say "ay lass that's right grand but a ye gotten it big enough?". Clothes had to last! This saying has been passed down the generations with reference to various items. Our son quoted this when I bought my husband a 36cm wok! These gems are part of our heritage.

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For 'it's neither one thing or another', say 'it's neither arsehole nor breakfast time'.

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When my dad was confused, which was quite frequent with my mum nagging and pestering him, he would come out with this classic.

" I don't know whether I want a 5hit, shave or a haircut" . It always made me chuckle.

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Yer daft me duck ya foller balloons.

Yer daft me duck ya foller balloons ya wear your mothers pantaloons. :laughing:

And one my old grandad used to say: "is he as he was or is he woss?"

"I'll take my hand off your face!!" As Billy Connolly said: "It's not the bit about taking the hand off it's the bit where it connects first"

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My wife's granddad used to say, concerning "the younger generation" - bearing in mind this was probably 60 years ago, so he meant the likes of us(!) - "They'll do owt sooner than wo'k!" (It wasn't true, by the way!)

It was in some cases

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