Stock Phrase

Today

This morning on Facebook someone posted a list of things that their mother used to say. Some of them are pretty funny and ring a bell with me as I remembered how my mother used a range of stock expressions.

In My Day

So what were the stock expressions my mother used? When table manners were under discussion Mamma's strongest term of condemnation was that we were behaving "like lorry drivers", I don't know what her experience was of lorry drivers; whatever it was, the expression conveyed a deep horror of vulgarity.

Another deeply irritating remark related to minor injuries, "Never mind, it'll be better by the time you're married." I wanted sympathy and time off school, if at all possible, and anyway, what if I never got married?

"She" was certainly the cat's mother, occasionally grandmother, not that we had a cat. And living in a barn obviously had no merits.

Many of the expressions on this list I first heard parroted by schoolmates. The most scary was the one about the wind changing while you were making a funny face. What if it were true? Maybe that explained my squint and face that only managed to rustle up "handsome" as a description.

The worst one was in response to our asking "why" to an instruction - "because I said so". This always made me grit my teeth and I swore that I wouldn't say that to my children. And, what's more, I didn't, which resulted in my giving long and detailed explanations that made their eyes glaze over. I expect they gave in just to shut me up.