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Post by Geranium on May 23, 2011 14:14:18 GMT
I enjoyed reading this one from Sir Winston Churchill:
"We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats, the old grow sage." ;D
Got any more to share?
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Post by merlin on May 23, 2011 16:47:12 GMT
"You can grow some of the plants some of the time, all of the plants some of the time, some of the plants all of the time, but you can never grow all of the plants all of the time".
Merlin 2011
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Post by seaburn on May 23, 2011 18:38:59 GMT
'That which does not kill you makes you stronger' Neitcher [sorry spelt wrong no doubt]
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Post by Rosie on May 24, 2011 8:12:08 GMT
Well stap me vitals.(Kenneth Williams, Carry on Dick ;D)
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Post by Geranium on May 24, 2011 8:12:51 GMT
;D
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Post by Fractal on May 24, 2011 19:19:17 GMT
No doubt heard before but still good. Winston Churchill staggering out of a car to which a lady replied "Sir, you are drunk!" to which he replied "Indeed, I am drunk and you are ugly, but I shall be sober in the morning"....
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Post by Lou78W on May 24, 2011 19:22:25 GMT
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Post by seaburn on May 24, 2011 19:26:55 GMT
It was said to Lady Astor, They didnt get on. Another one of their spats went along these lines Lady Astor " if you were my husband I would put poison in your tea" Winston " Madam if I were your husband I would willingly drink it"
My dad met him during the war along with Lord Mountbatten with whom he served in the RN.
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Post by sweetpea on May 26, 2011 22:39:52 GMT
It is far better to remain silent and let everyone think you are a fool than to open your mouth and confirm it!
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Post by Cherry on May 27, 2011 4:57:51 GMT
Seaburn used an expression regarding Paypal. She described herself as a 'Luddite'. This was featured as a radio programme and it was a really short movement of only months, yet we still use the term today.
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Post by Cherry on May 27, 2011 5:13:41 GMT
I often use Australian sayings because there is not a proper alternative here.
'More front than Myers' would describe a pushy, bumptious person. Myers in Melbourne is (maybe 'was' now) the largest department store in the southern hemisphere. It is certainly bigger than any I have been in anywhere.
'Buckley's' or 'Buckley's Chance'. Buckley was a transported convict.
'Do you think this is Bush Week'. My children have all grown up with these sayings.
On my middle of the night radio I heard, 'I should coco'. Where does that come from?
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Post by merlin on May 27, 2011 6:44:07 GMT
Dell boy
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Post by steve on May 27, 2011 16:18:03 GMT
From 'Worldwidewords.org site
Q From Dudly: Perhaps you can help Americans with a phrase, I should cocoa, that at least one of us finds rather bewildering.
A Since few Americans know of or use rhyming slang, that isn’t surprising. It originally stood for “I should say so!”, a sarcastic exclamation to express disbelief, derision, scorn or indignant negation. You might also render it as "“You must be joking!” “Not on your life!” or “No way!” And yet, throughout the many years when America was pinging monkeys to the stars never to return ... there is no record of any of these unwitting pioneers throwing a strop, uttering the simian equivalent of the phrase ‘I should cocoa’, turning tail and bolting on the gangway. Daily Mail, 17 Jun. 2009.
It appeared in London in the 1930s but became more widely known in the 1950s through its use on the BBC radio programme The Billy Cotton Band Show. Many people were reminded of it as a result of the Supergrass hit with that title in 1996. It’s an odd example of the type, since it’s a straight rhyme of cocoa with “say so” without the bipartite phrasing usual in terms like apples and pears (for stairs), daisy roots (boots), or plates of meat (feet) that leads to their being abbreviated as — for example — plates, as a further level of in-crowd obfuscation. Though it has been recorded in the longer forms coffee and cocoa and tea and cocoa, these look like afterthoughts, attempts to force an existing saying into the standard mould (if these were genuinely the original forms, one would expect to hear coffee and tea as short forms, but one never does). I remember it from my own London childhood in the late 1940s. Even then it was so far divorced from its origins that you sometimes saw it written as I should coco! or I should co-co! Though coco was centuries ago the spelling of the comestible we now call cocoa, I’m quite sure that wasn’t in people’s minds. I suspect the influence of Coco the clown, well known in the Bertram Mills and Billy Smart Circuses in England at the time. Though it isn’t defunct, these days I should cocoa! usually appears in print as a punning reference by an older writer or as a self-conscious way to evoke a period, place or mood. This is well illustrated by this television review from the Guardian in December 1999: But one might ask how well it will play, this comedy adventure about the conning of pin-striped shits by blimey guv diamond geezers, ’arnessed in service of a sentimental Variety Club plot about finding money for a kiddie’s operation. The author, once director of Barings and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, does the City drawl and the takeover business with more conviction than life east of Canary Wharf. I should cocoa.
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Post by Cherry on May 27, 2011 16:56:23 GMT
Thanks Steve. That was a bit 'wordy' but in short terms it seems it is really Cockney rhyming slang for I should say so, but as it was used it appeared to mean I would not think so or I was not born yesterday so still confusing to me. How do others see it? Is it in general use?
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Post by steve on May 27, 2011 17:33:15 GMT
Didn't Frankie Howard say it regular?
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