OT: sayings of my father

When I left doors open in my uncles house in leeds a shout of put wood int hole was always heard... Brian

Well the only observance I can make is that it might be like the sting of corporal punishment with a belt. Is this what you mean? I remember the Cilla Song Liverpool Lullaby. Brian

My father in law had a saying when my wife and siblings as children presented cut fingers or minor grazes to which he would reply " Don't worry a man on horseback would not see it" . Unfortunately he took the explanation to the grave to much frustration.

Richard

Slight variation on that for a somewhat shoddy job. "its good enough that a blind man on a galloping horse wont notice"

In our hose usually preceded or followed by "were you born in a barn"

Or in the US: "It's good enough for government work."

My Granny's version was 'a blind man running for his life wouldn't notice'.

My dad still says "A blind man'd be glad to see it" or mine is "close enough for government work"

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A true craftsman carpenter I knew - now long since dead - said 'good enough for a country job' Never did quite understand that one.

I think that must be the origin. Chambers gives "to thrash with a belt", without the electrical association.

Not any more:

Oh, and I remember hearing a Bowdlerised version of the Drunken Sailor sung by children at a local library, possibly this one:

I think Bill, that as we get older we all look back at our time with our parents and wish we had done things differently, perhaps took more notice of what they were all about.

In message , Bill Wright writes

Dad (currently in his early 80s) often complains about "ancient Britons" impeding his progress, usually around the shops.

Adrian

I certainly regret one incident.

Father was watching me repair a cattle fence with a scrap of galvanised wire and chose to be critical. I said "it'll see you out" and sure enough it did.

Yes, I have some deep regrets.

Bill

Lots of questions you never thought to ask when they were alive??!!

First woodwork lesson at school was making a cross-halving join. I started by cutting the two pieces of wood in half, and then had to go and ask for two new bits. "Wood doesn't grow on trees you know" was the teacher's response...

After that rather unfortunate start, I was actually very good at woodwork at school (still have some of the things I made), but sadly I had to give it up as it clashed with Latin which I was told I had to do because I was good at science, and was a complete and utter waste of time. My dad was also good at workwork, and all the tables in my parents' house are made by him.

I was able to continue with Technical Drawing (also taught by a woodwork teacher) right through to O-level, and that's something I've found invaluable many times since (e.g. when writing up experiments at university - a brilliant technical drawing could mask an otherwise not very satifactory experimental result). It was also how I found out how things like gate valves, oil pumps, and many other similar things worked, as a result of having to draw them accurately.

No idea if it still exists as a school subject, but even back when I was at university with my age peers, almost no one else had learned Technical Drawing at school.

A year or so back, I was explaining to someone in the office how a drill bit cut, and not actually having a drill bit in the office, I drew one freehand much to the amazement of a few people around who saw it.

Reminds me of Tony Tibble, the woodwork teacher at my school, who used to regale people with his tales of exploits "with Monty" in the desert during the war and who waved a length of wooden fence post and smacked it down on the desk to "encourage" people to pay attention. He was a great one for sayings like "wood doesn't grow on trees".

For some reason, I had to do art rather than woodwork, apart from a few "taster" lessons in my first year.

My school was rather the same with inflexible clashes of subjects. There were two forms in each year, the supposedly cleverer A form and the supposedly less clever B form. The A form did Latin and German, the B form did biology and ancient history - no choice. I'd have liked to do German and biology, but that was not on offer. Latin was the only subject that I found exceptionally difficult and exceptionally boring. If it had been taught as "how Latin words are used in English" or "applications of Latin in British life (eg family history records, legal records)" that would have been fine, but to learn Latin grammar is painful. I had a complete mental block with Latin and I think it's because there's no redundancy and no auxiliary words - in other languages you can use cues like a pronoun (he, she) indicates that the next word is a verb; an article (the, a) indicates that the next word is a noun; adjectives always come just before or after the noun. But Latin encodes everything into word endings. The word order is no clue: indeed the Latin teacher got very excited every time he spotted a "chi-rhoic" sentence in which the writer had deliberately mixed up the words so "the red cat saw the blue dog" would be written as (in Latin) "the blue cat saw the red dog" and the agreement of word endings supposedly allowed you to disentangle the meaning of the sentence.

Biology would have been interesting, even if I loathed the teacher, a certain Mr Walker who was my form teacher. It was rumoured that he kept a crocodile in the school pond as part of his biology research.

By the time I left that school and went to another one, everything was decided: it was too late to switch to biology even though it was an option for people if they started it early enough in their school life.

lets have more anecdotal regrets please Bill,

Back when I was a child Before life removed all the innocence My father would lift me high And dance with my mother and me And then spin me around 'til I fell asleep Then up the stairs he would carry me And I knew for sure I was loved If I could get another chance Another walk, another dance with him I'd play a song that would never ever end How I'd love, love, love To dance with my father again

When I and my mother will disagree To get my way I would run from her to him He'd make me laugh just to comfort me, yeah, yeah Then finally make me do just what my mama says Later that night when I was asleep He left a dollar under my sheet Never dreamed that he would be gone from me If I could steal one final glance One final step, one final dance with him I'd play a song that will never, never end 'Cause I'd love, I'd love to dance with my father again

Sometimes I'd listen outside her door And I'd hear how my mama cried for him I pray for her even more than me I pray for her even more than me

I know I'm praying for much too much But could you send back the only man she loved I know you don't do it usually But dear Lord, she's dying To dance with my father again Every night I fall asleep And this is all I ever dream

Songwriters: LUTHER VANDROSS, RICHARD MARX © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC For non-commercial use only. Data From: LyricFind

The odd thing is that even though he's been gone 18 months now, every day I seem to remember for the first time things he said.

Bill