Idioms and sayings

I often use a saying my beloved Nan used to use - 'Doing a job and making a job' - referring to someone who for example has cleared out a cupboard and left it lovely and tidy but having dumped unwanted stuff into another cupboard, thereby making the clearing out of the second cupboard necessary! It is so appropriate in many situations these days.
Sadly we lost my dear Mum three years ago but I have been writing down her sayings to keep in our family history archives!
Classic ones from dear Mum were things like
"I turned around and said..."
"I poked my nose out to see if it was raining..."
and a real classic was when she was in hospital - she was checking with us that we were keeping her bird-feeders topped up and announced to all around that she "had her tits out in the back garden last week"
God bless her she left us so many memories to make us smile!

I remember copletely confusing my son a few years ago by telling him I was down to the last knockings. Having been born in Cornwall it took him years to believe than rhyming slang existed - he thought it was something we made up. I don't think he knows about backslang at all. My mother's favourite expression was In and Out Like A Dog in A Fair, and she frequently had bones in her legs - though not as often as her mother did!

When my mother had some kind of pain or cramp in her leg, she would say, 'I've got a bone in my leg'. I was puzzled about how she would get about without one.

Howden Fair I meant

My grandmother would say when flustered 'I don't know if I'm on this earth or Fuller's' and when the house was a mess 'This place looks like Howder Fair'

My auntie used to refer to applying make-up as "putting a bit of tutty on".

without turning round , mam would say ." i know what you are doing, i,ve got eyes in the back of my head" !

As black as the hobs of hell!
Side the table. (Clear it of pots)

when pulling a face we where told " if the wind changes you,ll stay like that"

Ella I remember hearing that often ,sometimes just 'a man on a galloping horse'
My gran used to say 'as black as an ouzel'. Before pit-top baths were provided miners came home with coal dust still on their faces.it was much later I came across the word ouzel in a Shakespeare play -found it means 'blackbird'.

If there was something slightly wrong with something, my mum would say "A blind man on a galloping horse won't notice!"

...and got a 'walloping'.

isthis - I was brought up on a large council house estate in South Manchester (Mancunians can hazard a guess at which one!) where children 'mithered' their 'mam/mum' all the time if they were 'mard', and had their 'bladder behind their eyes' if they 'skriked' all the time. If there was no food in the cupboard they had 'nowt/bugger all' in for tea and if women were 'all fur coat and no knickers' it was because they were 'no better than they should be'. We 'played out' and then crept 'round the back' through the 'ginnel' when we got back to 'our 'ouse' - and a 'walloping' if we were late. Happy times.......NOT!

I love these too but my very ladylike MIL had the best expression of real, exasperated annoyance of any :
'Damn, damn, double damn, three hells and a bugger'

Absent I'd forgotten that one. Dad always used to say 'it's up in Annie's room behind the clock'
Number
I wonder what sayings our children will be attributing to us in 30 years time?

Up and down like whore's drawers.

In and out like a fiddler's elbow.

I've heard of a dog with two tails. The other version seems very odd given the nature and duration of canine mating.

"In and out like a donkey's dick" - and "like a dog with two dicks" - both phrases a friend of mine uses.

My grandma added to the 'up the wooden hill'. She said, "Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire."

She also used to tell us that the bogey man lived in the cockloft.

If I ever asked my Dad why he was going out he would answer "To see a man about a dog"

"Up the wooden hill" Time for bed.

On returning from a night out with my girlfriends my Nan would always ask "Did you get the glad eye then"

Smoluski Love it!

Do you remember all the fuss and bother when Daley Thompson, after he'd won Gold in the Decathlon in 1984 in Los Angeles, a fantastic performance:

Thompson went on to explain his euphoria to US viewers, saying: I haven't been this happy since my granny caught her tit in a mangle. The Guardian

Fab!

I guess the remark was just so very unexpected especially at that most corporate and unrelaxed of Olympic Games. London 2012 had a much better atmosphere imo.

So am I !

I'll say it again, I'm loving these!

When someone failed to share, say, a box of chocolates. "That's all right, I've got a big box upstairs" and when something was missing, "It's up in Annie's room".

@Notsogran - My grandmother would say 'as black as Newgate's knocker' of anything really dark, not just the sky.

@Isthisallthereis My Liverpudlian father would say "Well, I'll go hopping away..." - a mental picture which baffled but delighted me.

There's an old show-business expression 'So I pissed on me props and said farewell to the profession' - the 'chips' one I only heard once - from the sweet lips of the lovely Madeline Smith, which somehow gave it extra zing!