Sitting there like a bag of nutty slack...

My mother used to send me to the gas works to fetch coke in an old pram when she couldn't afford coal. I was always afraid that someone from school would see me pushing that pram home.

If I tied a belt too tight my mother used to say I looked like a tick(tic?) tied in the middle. No idea where it came from.

My Dad used the phrase ‘sitting up like a piece of fried bread’. No idea where that came from

I like the expression (used when you have delivered bad news) - sorry to piss on your chips!

Lamb and lettuce, cheese and fourpence, some of these must have been just made up.
I've not heard the fried bread one, either.

A friend says “she is so mean she would split a raisin.”

That's mean.

If wit was s++t, you’d be constipated.
My Grandma used to say “he/she has money to pelt dogs with”

We still say ‘if you had a brain you’d be dangerous’ when somebody does something silly.

If someone had a wrinkly forehead.

He could screw his hat on.

When someone looked cheesed off my old dad would say ‘he’s had his egg and chips’.
Not sure why cos I have never looked cheesed off after having egg and chips.

Especially with a slice of bread to make a chip sarnie

I grew up with coal fires. Mum would buy anthracite when we were a bit better off and coke to bank up in leaner times. For some reason going to the coal merchants was Mum's job in our old Morris van. I remember in the winter of 63 we got stuck in a terrible snow drift on the way to buy coal. I think we abandoned the van and walked home. I was six at the time.

Coke was the original “smokeless fuel” coal which was processed so it gave heat but little smoke when burned. It was acceptable to burn it in “smokeless zones” where burning coal, which generates a lot of smoke, was prohibited.
You’ve heard what nutty slack was- there was also “gassy slack” poor quality broken coal that smoked and smelled (at least it was called that in my area, which has lots of mines)
My granny used to say “Venus on a rock bun”
She would also express surprise with “yee gods and little fishes”
“All my eye and Fanny Martin” was her way of saying someone was “spinning a yarn” ie making things up based on very little truth,
“sixpence short of a shilling” for someone foolish, lacking common sense (there were twelve pennies in a shilling in old money)
And “bent as a ninebob note” (a shilling was a “bob” in pre decimal currency. In the old-money half a £, ie 50p was a ten shilling note, there wasn’t a nine shilling note)

Allira and gulligranny
I think it's the quiet "longing but giving" sort of perfect patience that Viola was describing here. I wonder how it became so "commonplace" as to be used for daydreaming?

Standing there like a streak of wet weather.

Dizzyribs. There are two similar expressions that meant "spinning a yarn". One was "my eye and Fanny Adams" and the other was "my eye and Betty Martin". My mother always used the former, but I have heard of the latter.

Fanny Adams was murdered at the age of 8 in 1867 and her body dismembered. The story is too convoluted to explain how this horrific event gave rise to the expression "my eye and Fanny Adams" and why it means fibbing, but it is very interesting.

Betty Martin did not exist at all. The expression is attributed to British sailors docked in Italy during the 19th century who heard either a song or a Latin church service. They were sure some of the words involved were "my eye and Betty Martin". It became quite a joke which naturally spread to the populous and eventually morphed into meaning something false, daft or exaggerated.

NotSpaghetti

Allira and gulligranny
I think it's the quiet "longing but giving" sort of perfect patience that Viola was describing here. I wonder how it became so "commonplace" as to be used for daydreaming?

Viola is lovelorn; she cannot declare her love because she is masquerading as a man.

“Sitting there like a herring on a griddle” . My husband, who’s from Yorkshire says! Never heard it anywhere else.

Expressions often heard past and present.

If you had brains you would be dangerous.
You /he/she has a face like a smacked arse.

Spoken with a Scouse accent sounds more authentic.

Sitting there like a lump of lard

Yes, of course, Allira but I was just wondering how did the type of ever patient and quietly controlled hopeful waiting such as Viola's love for Orsino morph into just "daydreaming"?

Sitting there like:

*Patience on a monument
*a boiled owl
*King Tut

I like the live police expression about "seeing your arse" (getting angry)

What the hell...
The Liverpool expression, i meant!