Your grans classics

Not my gran, but my mum, who would have been 100 this year. I sat down on the hearth rug as a child to read my comic and sat with my back to the open fire. She said: "Never sit with your back to the fire - it will melt the marrow in your spine"

And if anything was really dark coloured: "It was as black as the Earl of Hell's waistcoat."

Warning me of how men will say/promise anything to get you to go to bed with them "When the balls are full, the head is empty."

@Babybearsporij was your grand from the north east? They are all sayings that I grew up with.

Mine never let me wash my hair if I had a period and also used to tell me off for smoking in the street.

But my all time favorite was 'flavored condoms? Why? It's not like you have got tastebuds down there.'

My gran would always “whisper” loudly at plays/during concerts her opinion about certain people on the stage - “he’s not a very good actor, is he?!” Or “that pianist has a very strange hair cut!” 😳 I used to die of embarrassment as a child!

My nan complaining when she was in hospital that they'd put her in an old people's ward. She was 83 at the time.

My gran had nine children, all by C-section. They had no money and lived in a tiny house. She's still around, aged 87. I was finding two children hard going so I asked her how she managed with 9 and she said 'the first half dozen are the worst'

She also knows everything about everybody who lives with in a five mile radius of her and tells me all of it in great detail. She should really have been a spy.

Oh and she loves crime novels, the gorier the better.

Little pickers wear big knickers. After I went to the fridge for a yoghurt.
It’s hard to tell if you are still pretty with all that fat round your face. 😂
Thanks nan.

Irish granny to my mum smoking, "the devil take it out of your mouth".

If my brother or me ever said 'It's not fair!" (which was a fair amount..she was pretty strict) she'd reply, 'Well nor is a black man's bum so shut up''.
She lived to 95 and outlived her husband by over 30 years. In all that time, her favourite saying was 'Just put me against a wall and shoot me'. Or,, 'I'm not going to be here this time next year'. I heard this for over 3 decades. She'd give her knick knacks away as she 'knew' she wouldn't be here ...so we all got 30 yrs or more of ornaments .
The classic was her disgust at hearing a band on breakfast tv. ''I've never heard the like.. wailing and shouting, if this is what they call modern music, I don't want it.. I've never heard such a Godawful racket'...she went on and on, me wracking my brains.. who would be on breakfast tv... surely not Iron Maiden or the like??? She remembered...it was Wet Wet Wet singing Love Is All Around!

and to think I left Shepton Mallet for this . Can quite understand why it's gone down in your family lore.

I held a 50th wedding anniversary party for my nana and grandad - both sadly passed away now, we asked her to make a speech and she stood up and announced " I only married him cos he was going to war ! It was more respectable to be a widow that a spinster back then !! And blow me the bastard came home !!!!!!" It was at that point I hid the gin

My nan referred to me as a "woman of the world" - is this old fashioned for slag? 😂 (I'm not a slag by the way, my mum choked laughing when my nan said this)

My MIL (so the DCs granny) swears blind she saw the Pyramids when she visited Lourdes in the south of France.

Did she mean the Pyrenees, by any chance?

My gran ( from belfast) used to tell me if I looked scruffy that I looked like a Catholic. Dreadful.

My Catholic gran was distraught when my DF married my atheist DM and blamed her for turning him against the church. When she first saw little BabyLakie, she said "She's a plain little thing, but what can you expect, she's a heathen child".

She was smitten with 70's PM Edward Heath, a notorious misogynist and gay or asexual (depending on which biography you read). Whenever he appeared on tv, she would go all wistful and say "Such a handsome man. I just don't understand why he never married".

My favourite saying came from my great-gran, who I never met. She moved from Somerset to Herts to be with GGF, and always found it a bitter disappointment. Any time GGF annoyed her, she would say, with a sigh, "And to think I left Shepton Mallet for this."

This saying is now in its 4th generation: repeated by my GPs, my DParents and now by DP and I.

And imagine my disappointment when I visited Shepton Mallet for the first and last time, and discovered it was not some romantic, exciting, spectacular place (in my head I think I was expecting England's answer to Versailles) but a perfectly ordinary and rather dull English market town.

"wish in one hand and shit in the other, see which gets filled the quickest"

That's priceless! Crude, but priceless.

"Hurry back" when we'd be leaving to go home.

Two I can think of ~ "the more you cry the less you'll piddle" and "wish in one hand and shit in the other, see which gets filled the quickest". In spite of the toilet obsession she was lovely and loving, and gave a home to my mum and me when my father turned violent. I wish I had been more grateful when she was alive. For the home, not the sayings!

vdbfamily I loved your Gran's comment

Every Sunday morning I'd visit my Grandma for an hour. And every Sunday she'd say "mind how you cross the horse road" when I left.

When I first went to Italy for a year to learn the language and went to say goodbye to her it was "I don't know why you want to go to that Italy place for, Shades. Your mum's made you a lovely home!"

I loved my Grandma

My mother disappeared from the living room once when granny was visiting and went outside (hot flush).
When she came back granny said ‘what’s wrong with you”?
Mum replied “menopause”
Granny sniffed “I was far to busy to get one of those”

My Nan, who very reluctantly looked after us after raising 11 kids of her own,

“I’ll tan your arse so hard, your ears will still be stinging next Tuesday”.

It was always Tuesday, no matter what day the threat was issued. One day, must have been a Monday, My Brother said, “Is that tomorrow or the Tuesday after?” She wacked him with the mop.

My Dad's mum, my lovely Nana was watching the men's 100M sprint on Tv. "Ooh all that lycra, he's got a lively figure!!" My other Nan told me no one would ever marry me because I put a milk bottle on the table!

Said to teenage me: " If you can't be good be careful, if you can't be careful, buy a pram."

Not my nan but dd1s nan on her dad's side , referring to having kids " you're desperate for them to walk and talk and when they do they never sit down or shut up "

DH's nan before we went off on holidays/trips - "don't fall down any dark holes".

'Good god a me!' (her go to exclamation of surprise)

'Put your bra on, you'll get ye death o pneumonia!' (If any woman wasn't wearing a bra).

My cousin named her firstborn Adam and our gran said ' where did you come up with a newfangled name like that?'