Time goes by so slowly for those who wait

[venta]

For the best part of a fortnight I've been intermittently coughing and hacking and spluttering and generally sounding like dying sealion. But without the ability to balance a ball on my nose (I tried).

In among the many apologies to my colleagues for the godawful noises, I mentioned the likelihood of gold watches.

Everyone looked at me funny. Again.

[Poll #1566412]

It never was a gold watch, by the way.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

Damn, I can spell linguistic and everything, but you can't edit polls :(

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

From the wonderful world that was my grandad:
For headaches, we'll chop off your head and replace it with a red cabbage.
For general illness, we'll put you in a sack and shake you up.

[venta.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of what my nextdoor neighbour used to say: we'll fill you full of toffees and raffle you.

That was more for being generally exasperating or mischievous, though, not illness-related.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

"Cut off your head and sew on a cabbage" was my Nana's answer to everything from migraine to grumpiness. I wonder if it came from a radio show or something, given that I've heard it from other people's grandparents too. Or perhaps they were just really strange in the first half of last century. :)

"Cough it up, it might be worth something" was what we got, so I assume it has a similar origin to the gold watch version.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

'Choke up, chicken', in my family, passed down from my maternal grandmother.

[chrisvenus]

The closest I've come to that is "cough up a lung" but that (to me at least) makes sense. You northerners are crazy... ;-)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Or sometimes, 'it might be a shilling'.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Phew... one other yes!

A sufficient variety of people said it to me that I'd assumed it was widespread and was getting a bit freaked out by no one else having ever heard it :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I do wonder how often these early radio comedies are to blame for things which sound like they ought to be regional oddities but appear bizarrely spread out. My parents were avid listeners, and still are in fact (thank you BBC 7).

They're also relatively old to be my parents, meaning that most of my contemporaries have younger parents who didn't grow up with ITMA, so it would be a good explanation of a lot of the odd things I say.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I've always been fond of some of my grandma's sayings, which mostly seemed to be concerned with the tidiness of one's appearance and particularly hair:

"You look like the wreck of the Hesperus"
"Your hair looks like a hen's arse on a windy day"
"You look like you've been dragged through a hedge backwards"

and the bizarre compliment to a well-scrubbed cheek or item of silverware: "shining like shit on a barnhouse door".

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Ohh yes, dragged through a hedge backwards sounds familiar. My brother got told he looked like a walking jumble sale once. I don't think anybody would try and sell clothes with that much snot on.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I first came across "wreck of the Hesperus" in the George Harrison song title, but my mum told me it was quite a common expression in her day. It refers to the Longfellow poem of the same name, but that's much earlier. I wonder if this was also a meme started by someone on the radio.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ooh yes, wreck of the Hesperus is something I'm familiar with hearing. I think I'd expect it to be applied to someone who looked, say, hungover or something. I think of the hedge-backwards one as being very common, but then I've been wrong about that kind of thing before :)

I've never heard the hen's arse one, but I like it.

[failmaster.livejournal.com]

My mum always used to say "Cough it up, it might be a piano"

...which has to be even less likely than the gold watch theory.

[venta.livejournal.com]

OK, I officially don't feel like I'm being the weird one any more :)

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I don't think so, but the line feels somewhat familiar.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's why you are always on time, because you haven't coughed up the gold watch yet.

[venta.livejournal.com]

You mean I might be ticking the whole time, like the crocodile in Peter Pan ? Aargh!

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Cough it up, if it's only a bucketful it'll do you good (your Grandad). Black over Bill's Mother's caused long debate in Gadfly's column (Northern Echo)a year or so ago and was thought to relate to Shildon cricket ground or somewhere equally improbable.
Fill you full of toffees - not next door, they got it from your Dad.