Chinny reckon...

[Caramellattelady]

I have seen that phrase on MN several times since I started lurking around on here, despite never having heard it in real life. But from context and similarity, I guess it means the same as "itchy chin" which we used to say as kids to mean "yeah, right". I'd be willing to bet the accompanying hand gesture was the same too!

It got me thinking cos I'm a loser about other (possibly regional?) differences in sayings or games. One example I always remember cropping up when we were kids is the hide & seek game known either as 40-40 or 50-50 (obviously the 50-50-ers were just wrong..)

I find this kind of thing fascinating and would therefore like to open the MN floor to other examples....anyone?

In Hants in the 70s we had either chinny or reck - on.

We played a lot of the games mentioned here. What's the time Mr Wolf; In and Out the Dusty (sic) bluebells; orange balls; the big ship sails on the alley alley-o.

If you wanted to give up you crossed your fingers and shouted Creams, or creamos.

We also sung about Georgie Best but ours was "wears frilly knickers and a playtex bra". Our Susie as a teenager said "oo ah, I've lost my bra, I don't know where my knickers are". All the girls would link arms and stomp around the playground singing send the boys to vietnam, alleluia , which is dreadful looking back, but we had no idea what it meant.

My 9 yo has started singing this term "my boyfriend gave me an apple, my boyfriend gave me a pear, my boyfriend gave me a kiss on the cheeks and he threw me down the stairs. I gave him back his apple I gave him back his pear I gave him back his kiss on the cheek and....", and the one about drinking pepsi and the girls go woo.

What did you call
A) getting a lift on the back of a friend's push-bike 2-ups
B) The slip on gym shoes used for PE at school? plimmies
C) A bread roll? a roll

East Anglia- the elastics were called French skipping! We also said chinny reckon with a nodding head and chin stroking gesture lol! Oh and we used to play the breaking an egg on your head game( not a real egg but it was a sensory thing iykwim!)

Oh and we said 'you're it' not tag.
A/ Backie
B/plimsolls
c/Roll

We called Hopscotch Itchy Dabbers
I've never heard of the chin thing at all.
I grew up in the North East and am now 72.

mouse I'm 45 and I'm wondering if the the chin thing is from my era.

I'm 46 the chin thing is definitely my era. I think it's to do with Jimmy Hill's impressive chin.

Honeypickle we sang that too.

Does anyone remember the song about the baby brother accidentally drowned by a sibling, "I put him in the bathtub to teach him how to swim"? That was horrible, looking back, but it was just something sung in South London in the late 70s. My mother says the "lady with the alligator purse" was a social worker.

Also remember a nasty version of Postman Pat running over his cat. My kids are growing up in the Cotswolds and my son doesn't come out with any of the stuff I remember - he's having a much more innocent, Swallows and Amazons type start in life to me. I'm glad, tbh. Some things young kids really should not be exposed to (not these songs, but other stuff that happened to us and kids we knew).

Honeypickle, I think that's an era thing, not a location thing- I grew up in the Cotswolds and believe me, we heard and saw and said and did all sorts!

Oh and re the other questions;

A backie
Plimsoles
A roll

I hadn't even heard of a cob until very recently. Is it a northern thing?

Oops that first comment was for sleeponeday

It was 'Beard on John' said with a very Devonian accent when I was little.

Honestly honey it may just be him - he's indescribably naive, and misses a lot!

Though you must be from a different part of the Cotswolds if you said plimsolls - EVERYONE around here calls them daps. I had to ask what that meant when DS started school, because even the schools call them that and I had no idea.

I'm 50 and did the itchy chin, or egg on your chin to someone who was lying.
Then it became "Edna" and we stuck our chin between our bottom lip and bottom teeth.

I never did the chinny thing (too old probably - child of the 60's)

What did people say to call a truce in a game of tag or similar (I.e. if you wanted to stop for a moment but be safe from capture)?
We used to stick our arms out sideways cross our fingers and shout 'failies'

I grew up in the south west.

We called the skipping ring made out of elastic bands chinese skipping

I wrote a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it. Somebody must have picked it up and put it in their pocket. Thief thief drop it drop it! And then there was running round

I went to the Chinese chip shop
To buy a loaf of bread
He wrapped it up in last night's news
And this is what he said
How is your father?
Alright
Died in the fish shop
Last night
What was he eating?
Raw fish
How did he die?
Liiiiiikkkkeeee....... this!
(You then turned around and did exaggerated choking death-throes)

Dashing on to say you can buy the elastic at Tiger now for French Skipping!!

I've waited years to find someone who remembered I sent a letter to my love. Also remember oranges and lemons, French skipping, Susie and her bra, winning the war in 1944 and many others. Does anyone else remember the clapping game Under the bramble bushes?

What about skipping games: I like coffee, I like tea, I like Lucy in with me?

Some on this thread I've been trying to remember the words to for years (thanks tot he posters of "Yellowbelly Custard" and "CeCe my playmate"). We didn't have chinny reckon, though - I wish we had, it would have been useful.

What we did have was when someone tried to crush you by responding to a statement you'd made with "So?", you'd retort, "Get me a needle and cotton and I will" and they were utterly destroyed by your rapier wit.

I knew some startlingly rude songs which looked so dreadful typed out that I can't imagine singing them in my pure, innocent childish voice. On a jollier note, though:

Little birdy in the sky
Dropped something into my eye
Smells like chocolate
Tastes like glue
Oh my god, it's birdy poo!

We called the elastic skipping thing 'jingle jangle' and stuck in the mud was called 'sticky in the mud'.

Ip dip sky blue
Who's it? Not you!
Not because you're dirty,
Not because you're clean.
My mother says you're the fairy queen.
O-U-T spells out you go
If the king and queen say so.
O-U-T out!

For years I misheard Debbie Harry's 'French Kissing in the USA' as French Skipping.

Pumps, never heard of daps.

Great memories. We used to do loads of these. (Welsh borders in the 80s).

One rhyme I can remember - for deciding who is "it" was:
"The little green car went up the hill
How many miles did it go?"
(Person says a number, and then you count around the circle and the one it lands on is it)

And did anyone do cat's cradle?

I remember a fad of lo-lo balls too.

And my mum standing at the hob with the French skipping elastic around her ankles and the other end around a chair!

My daughter is 7 and she knows a few clapping rhymes and "up high, down low, too slow!". They don't do skipping in the playground, but they do hula hooping.

Anyone play 'Egg, Butter, Sugar, Tea'? It was kind of like a clapping game. We all sat in a line along the wall with our hands held out. Another person (always an older girl) went along saying "egg, butter, sugar, tea. Fairy cake of bumble bee. Which one would you like for your tea?", as she slapped our hands.

If you were the person she stopped at when the rhyme was finished, you put one hand behind your back. If you end up with both hands behind your back, you're out. Winner was the last person with their hand(s) still out.