Sitting here like Piffy on a rock bun....

[Greensleeves]

One of my DC is fascinated by weird and inexplicable English idioms - the one in the title being our current favourite example! Also love "looking like the wreck of the Hesperus". Could anyone indulge me with other bizarre and colourful idioms, regional or otherwise?

A face like a blind cobblers thumb.

“I’ll go to the foot of our stairs” - means you could knock me down with a feather.

I love “you’d laugh to see a pudding crawl” but wtf? Why?

also like “help ma boab” and “shit the bed”

My dad used to say the muck cart wedding one! I loved it. We're from Stoke, I recognise several of these from there.

Not a nice one but 'A slice aint missed from a cut loaf'.

We had “sat there like Piffy on a rock bun.” Also “you left me standing there like Phil Garlic.”

Laugh to see a pudding crawl.

A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind man.

”I am cabbage,” when you have said or done something particularly stupid.

Red hat and no drawers.

”That’s a dirty great doshel you’ve given me there,” if given a huge portion of food.

Pissed as a pudding.

Rough as a butcher’s dog.
It’s “what’s that got to do with the price of eggs?” in our house!
And “enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers” - said my my ex’s mum.

'Gordon Bennet' and 'Blimey O'reily'

but the one i use the most is - 'its better then a poke in the eye with a burnt stock'

One for Ripley - whenever something went missing

Built like a brick shithouse

Haven't got a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of! - that one actually has an interesting back story:

www.thecountiesofireland.com/products/pot-to-piss-in#:~:text=Why%3F,pot%20to%20collect%20their%20urine.

Whenever about to leave the house an ex of mine used to say "they're off like a herd of turtles"

Giv' im a fourp'ny one (in't chops) - to hit someone/thing
(Nobbut) Ninepence in't shilling - not very bright
Put wood in't hole - shut the door
Knocked seven bells out of 'im - beat him up
Gorra monk on/cob on/mardy - upset/sulky
Brass monkeys - cold

From my east midlands/south yorks grandma

None of mine are very PC, so I won't share but enjoying these!
One from my nan our parents were trying to make us eat our dinners:

A man forced his pig and it died.

Can't argue with that!

Fart in a colander.. someone who can’t keep still .
All Kippers and curtains - someone who acts posh .

... and we won't raise tuition fees - means a lying bastard.

They neither kissed my arse nor buggered me.

You’d laugh to see a pudding crawl. Or your Nana’s bum alight!

Answering the question

'What's for dinner'.

'Fried snowballs and ifits'.

My mum used to say ca en fait rien but in a Manchester accent. I used to wonder who Fairy Anne was!

My Grandad used to say: "All in, chucking up" every time we got in the car in the late 70s/80s.

He was from Rochdale.

"Cracking the flags" - so sunny the flag stones are cracking

"Jesus wants me for a sunbeam" - said very sagely to us in answer to almost any question he was asked.

Under my armpit hanging from a skyhook (my name favourite when asked where something was that you couldn't find)

Nans!

Rushing around like a blue-arsed fly

throws his money around like a man with no arms

if wishes were horses beggars would ride

you could ride bare-arsed to London on that knife

up the wooden hill and down sheet lane

@ previous poster - my dad went to see a man about a dog every Saturday afternoon. I was constantly disappointed! And he often had a bone in his leg which meant he couldn’t play with us ….☺️

You tell more lies than Tom Pepper, and he got flung out of hell.

He/she is just two eyes, a nose and a mouth.

It's like shit off a stick.

As sly as a box of monkeys / as mad as a box of frogs.

I’ll show my bottom on the Town Hall steps.

I’ll go to the foot of our stairs.

Patience on a monument is from Winter’s Tale.

What's that mum?
A wimwam for a whopping engine.

I'm from west wales
we call rummaging around - wilmanting