Our Dick's at Wigan

There are several sayings and phrases that I grew up using which appear to be unique to our family. In fact I think my mother must have made them up.

I didn't realise this until I started using them as an adult. A very good example is 'you left me standing there like cheese at fourpence'. I screamed this at someone once and all the impact was lost because he fell about laughing at me and I ended up laughing too. I don't even know whether cheese at fourpence is really expensive, and therefore gets left because nobody will pay that much, or is really cheap and gets left because it's going mouldy.

Another is used when you are reeling off a long list and want to say 'and lots more like that obviously', or if you just run out of steam half way through something. So you might say 'and then she told me about her fabulous new baby and her fabulous new car and her fabulous new hairdresser and blurbedy blurbedy fishcakes'.

Or I did, until people started snorting coffee out of their noses.

But there is one which really does deserve wider use. Let's say I was having this conversation with my family. How are you? they would ask.

Not great really. I have to write these performance objectives for work and they're doing my head in, I just can't get them right, and I had a really stressful phone conference yesterday with the project officers and I wonder if we're making any progress at all, and I've got this horrible blister rash on my arm which I got in the garden on Sunday it really hurts, and the bum lady's cancelled my next appointment after I'd arranged to work at home and the computer's blown up anyway so I don't know what to do, and I just can't get it together to cycle to work, and we've got this mortgage thing to sort out and...

And they would chorus: 'And our Dick's at Wigan, and t'threshing machine's in t'yard and it's raining.'

It means 'you're boring us now, but we do recognise that life is shit sometimes'.

joella