Things my parents said ...

Don't sit with your back to the fire, you'll melt the marrow in your back bone, said my Mum,

When I was little. we were threatened with the 'copper stick' if we misbehaved. This was a thick stick about 18 inches long, that my mother used to push down the whites that were boiling away on the stove. As we got older, we used to mercilessly mock her with the words ' I'll get the copper stick!' and in later years, when my children were young, if they were playing me up, I remember my mother saying to me 'I'll bring the copper stick over!' This made such a lasting impression and has recently become a revisited shared joke with my DD1 as her son is just entering terrible twos territory.

My mum would say "Your head will never save your legs". I was mystified for years but I get it now. I come down or go up stairs without something and have to make I return journey for the forgotten thing. If my head had worked it would have saved my legs :-) Happy memory

Whenever I laughed as a child my Grandmother would always say "if you laugh today, you'll cry tomorrow"! What an awful think to instil in a child. I still say it to myself now.

As we waved good bye from the car my dad used to shout"keep your head in people will think its a cattle truck"

My GS's reply when I quoted "If ifs and an's were pots and pans there'd be no work for tinkers"- What's a tinker?" Says it all really!

Oh yes. I heard 'bread and pullet' when I asked what was for tea, 'what time do you call this?' if I was late home and 'like the wreck if the Hesperus' if I wasn't tidy. So many more, many that somehow have been absorbed by our children and now are repeated to our grandchildren.

My mum used to say that too!

Dad's reply to,"It isn't fair"-"Dark girls never are"

When he was trying to teach me how to solve "Problems" in the 11+ exam, he would adopt their silly use of language to make me laugh-"If it takes a week to walk a fortnight, how many apples on a bunch of grapes??"

Mum despaired of my untidy appearance and would say, "You look like you've been pulled through a hedge backwards" or "Like the Wreck of the Hesperus"

When wearing or doing something that wasn't up to standard my mum would say "a blind man would be pleased to see it"

Air pie and windy pudding when asked what's for dinner.

I was told eating my crusts would make my hair curl, eating carrots helped me see in the dark!
What was it about how we looked? "Do I look alright?"- "you'll pass with a push (and a strong man behind you)

I must have heard all of those. The most illogical one (and I have found myself saying it) when searching for something that Mum could see and I could not, "It would bite you if it had a tongue."!

Youth is wasted on the young my late Mom used to say: I used to roll my eyes and think she was "mad"

Ofcourse now I am older I now understand what she meant. It is an only to be understood as we grow older saying. So I now use it too? yup ofcourse

A thin person looked like "a galloping hat pin". - mum
"A blind man on a galloping horse"... wouldn't notice something.

annrogers georgette was a material for making dresses a long time ago.A long, long time ago.?

Eat your carrots, they will make your hair curl.?

"Its like wookie hole in here!" When the house was a mess.

Always treat people the way you want to be treated, was my mums saying.

When I moaned about what I was wearing 'Who's going to stop a galloping horse to look at you'
When I asked what I should wear 'Your heavy georgette'
'You look like you've been pulled through a hedge backwards'

" do you want a smack" ooh yes please!
It was dry bread and pullet in our house.
" will you frame " when I was not doing something properly.
" have you got clean knickers on " in case you get knocked down by a bus.

My Mum said, "you can fool everyone but yourself" - wise words.
And my grandmother said, "you are no better than anyone, and no worse". Both sayings made a great impression on me.

No matter how bad it gets, there's always someone, somewhere, who is worse off than you.

"I'll bang your heads together, you two!"

My father also use to say "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well" and "A job begun is half done".

This latter I occasionally quote to my mother as she now just sits all day and keeps saying she could tidy her paperwork or take up her tapestry again. We have a little laugh about it.

It certainly is true, starting is always the biggest hurdle.

Should be 'of my mother's'.

Icyalittle My sister and I thought about as much as my mother's. She used to say 'there's no such word as can't' and we used to say 'no, it's two words'.