This is getting silly. Regular readers of this blog will know that the previous two entries were based on sayings and expressions used regularly by my mother.
And for the third time – but I promise this will be the last time for now – I am going to write about that subject. You see, the problem is, I keep remembering more and more of my late mother’s choice words.
In the previous two blogs I wrote about seven phrases she regularly used:
Hot as hen muck;
Queen Anne’s dead;
Pride rises above pain;
All round Dogsthorpe to get to Peterborough;
You don’t want to start from here at all;
A here-you-are-for-where-you-want-to-be;
It’s as much waste to eat it if you don’t want it as it is to throw it away.
If you want to know more about these choice words, and how to use them, please refer back to my previous two blogs, Your mother should know and More wise words from the family.
But the memories keep coming back. I might be washing-up, or watching TV, just some everyday activity, and another memory surfaces. So here are four more of my mother’s sayings that have sprung to mind.
Do one job and make two more
“Do one job and make two more” was an expression my mother used if, for example, I had been asked to help in the kitchen. In the course of ‘helping’ I might well make a mess and create further work. Given that I started writing one blog on the subject of my mother’s wise words and I have finished by writing three this still seems an apposite phrase to apply to myself.
It wouldn’t be a show without Punch
I was reminded of the expression “It wouldn’t be a show without Punch” the other day when watching a TV documentary about former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. I am not sure what my mother’s political views would have been – nor do I want to speculate – but she would use this phrase when someone popped up on TV regularly, whatever the news, whatever the programme. I think I am right in remembering that she used it about Margaret Thatcher though I also remember mother describing the then PM as “Tilly”.
Punch, I imagine, refers to Mr Punch, a character who appears in the traditional Punch and Judy puppet shows, often seen at British seaside resorts.
I am sure you can think of someone who regularly appears on your TV who fits the phrase.
It would do a blind man’s eye good to see it
I suppose “It would do a blind man’s eye good to see it” is not politically correct now. And it was a phrase I never understood. I remember saying to my mother, “But surely it would do a blind man’s eye good to see anything?” I never got a sensible answer.
The phrase is used to describe something so small that it is hardly worth worrying about – a small mark on a bargain item of clothing, for example.
We shall see what we shall see.. and them that lives the longest will see the most
I’ve often heard the first part of this phrase repeated – in fact my wife Kathie Touin used it the other day – but I’ve never heard anyone other than my mother use the second part of “We shall see what we shall see.. and them that lives the longest will see the most” – which says it all really.
Graham Brown
Orkney
To find out more
More photographs by B (failing_angel) on Flickr.
And not strictly relevant but I never miss an opportunity to plug my talented wife’s music: Kathie Touin.
Graham Brown Orkney 
I’ve remembered another saying, but this time one of my grandfather’s: “It’s like giving a donkey strawberries.” To be used to describe something extravagant.
My mom sometimes would say “Oh my stars and garters.” When I asked her what that meant, she shrugged her shoulders and said: ‘Who knows. It’s something my mother used to say.”
Thanks to the internet, now I know the origin….
https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sta5.htm
Hi Mary – that’s a new one for me, thank you for sharing. I will try to use it!