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?

CC my playmate,
Come out and play with me
And bring your dollies three
Climb down the drainpipe
And through the cellar door
And we shall play forever, ever, ever
More, more, more, more more!

Anyone remember that? Got a variation?

Delores rainbow elastic??!

I would have been queen of the tree with such an item. So sad to hear that your dds friends are idiots

Weasels definitely went pop.

They do also have toes though, as does tigger.

I've absolutely no idea where it came from, definitely not from home!

We said nicker. I thought it was a kind of newt. No idea why, glad i didn't know what it was meant to say.

More skipping:

'What's the time? Half past nine. Hang your knickers on the line. If a copper comes along , hurry up and put them on!'

Im beginning to think that children's rhymes don't make any sense whatsoever

Itchy chin here
40/40 in and Pom Pom in
Elastics - I was actually good at that

Clapping song was

I went to a Chinese restaurant
To buy a loaf of bread
He wrapped it up in a five pound note
And this is what he said
My name is oo laa chichesta
Chichesta oo laa
Om Pom poodle
Chinese noodle
o u t spells out

No wonder I'm a bit odd

There was another one
'There's a party on the hill will you come?
Will you bring a cup of tea and a bun?
X will be there with her knickers in the air
O U T spells out!

Great memories - sardines, bulldog, mr wolf etc. Was never allowed to play elastic a by the other girls as I always fell over. I now know I am dysparxic which explains a lot!

Itchy chin here .... My thought was it ca,e from 'not by the hair of my chinny chin chin' and evolved to Jimmy Hill when he used to ponder and stroke his beard

We had loads of these. Dorset, early '80s.

• chinny reck-onnnn/Jimmy/Jimmy Hill/bee-yuuuurrrddd (beard) (all with the stroking of the chin down to a point)
• Joey Deacon/Joey (as with Jimmy Hill, I never knew who this was, as we didn't have a TV at home)
• a thing were you push out your bottom lip with your tongue to indicate someone's stupidity or otherwise unwanted
• ace, skill, brill, skilliant (note the clever merging of words there...)
• It's all done in the best posssible taste (like Kenny Everett - again, no TV, so didn't really get it)

• Ip dip bird shit
• Eeny meeny minie mo (I was quite surprised to discover in later life that it wasn't nipper, like a small child.)
• One potato, two potato.
• We were always "on it", not just "it"

• In and out the dusty windows
• the big ship sailed on the alley alley oh
• a sailor went to sea sea sea (clapping) (I had an earworm of it a couple weeks back, most annoying)
• I'm Shirley Temple, the girl with curly hair (skipping)

• elastics, or less commonly, French skipping - England, Ireland, Scotland, Wale, inside, outside, flyover (pick one side up with your toes as you jump and cross over to the opposite outside), back, inside, outside, inside, out.
• tennis ball thing against the wall
• thunder and lightning, very very frightening, (handstand with kicking/wobbly legs) GO! (Can't remember any besides jellywobble)
• A dash and a dot, a dot and a dash, a great bug question mark! Dagger in your back, blood rushes up, blood rushes down, which finger did THAT? (Jab them in the back)
• marbles (still have my collection)
• cats cradle
• Rubik's cube
• rich friend had Pacman, but I have a feeling as it got banned because of its expense and the risk of damage or theft
• fortune tellers (snapdragons are flowers!)
• polo (the categories one - horses werea common choice, and there was some sort of reflection of your social ranking as who got palomino)

Those were mostly all summer games on the field, while the boys played football between jumpers for goals (being the summer term, the actual goals were replaced by the athletics track). Winter was mixed, on the hard netball courts:

• stuck in the mud
• kiss chase
• semi semi (between the netball court ends. If we were lucky, we could get a double court, end to end)
• touch (just it/tag/whatever your regionsl variation was)
• bulldog (which I don't remember being banned, and only remember as being like semi semi, except you joined arms with the rest of your side)

Then we went to secondary school and it was single sex and we mostly just chatted at breaktime.

We played a skipping one that had "I saw you sitting on the loo kissing... then it'd be name of boy at school... is it true or is it not...yes, no, yes.." etc until you didn't make a jump. If it landed on yes it carried onot with other questions. We also sang "I went to California to see a fancy fair, I saw a senorita with flowers in her hair" and there was a dance to go with it. These were both at middle school, at first school it was just role play games. I've never heard the itchy chin thing??

Chinny reckon or Jimmy Hill, followed by imaginary beard stroking (I also remember Chinny reckon being used by Newman and Baddiel in their 90's standup).

We had French skipping which I loved. Also,

1-2-3 Block Home

What's the time Mr Wolf

Grandmother's footsteps

Peep behind the curtain

Stuck in the mud (if you were caught you had to stand still with arms wide and legs open. To be freed someone had to crawl between your legs)

A hand clapping game;
Song - I went to a Chinese restaurant to buy a loaf of bread, bread, bread,
They wrapped it up in a £5 note and this is what they said, said, said,
My name is... (I forget the rest)

Another hand clapping game;
Song - A sailor went to sea, sea, sea,
To see what he could see, see, see,
But all that he could see, see, see,
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea

Oranges and Lemons, where a big group of us stood in a circle, held hands with arms raised in the air and people bent through each arch as we sang
Song - Oranges and Lemons said the bells of St Clement's.
You owe me five farthings said the bells of St Martin's,
When will you pay me said the bells of Old Bailey,
When I grow rich said the bells of Shoreditch,
When will that beeeee, said the bells of Stepney, (sang as Step..neeee)
I'm sure I don't know said the great bell of Bow
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head
(Moving arms in chopping motion)
Chip, chop, chip, chop, the last man's dead

Fast - we sang 'Susie was' too, I never would have remembered on my own, but got it straight away when you posted.

I was in London when we did these games, and it was around 1983/4

IknowI'mComing was it "Chichester" rather than Chichesta As in the town?

Clapping songs - miss Mary mack mack mack, all dressed in black black black.... And high low jack-a-low, jack-a-low high low (then swap so it was low high....)

Stuck in the mud - tag where you froze when tagged and someone had to free you

Cat and mouse, all stand in lines arm width apart, cat tries to catch the mouse and the mouse shouts turn and you move so the lines go the other way

British bull dog

Fortune tellers

We stroked our chin and said "EUGH JEFFREY!!" I have no clue why but it was when we thought someone was lying

What's the time Mr Wolf

Kiss chase

The farmers in his den (farmer wants a wife, wife wants a child...)

Elastic, we had England Ireland Scotland Wales, inside outside inside scales

My niece came home talking about miss Mary mack and was impressed I knew it! She went in to school the next day knowing it all. I have also taught her what's the time Mr Wolf and some others

Lurgy

Not RTWT as an in bed about to go to sleep but...

Lurgy was hide and seek but the seeker just had to see the hider, when they shouted that they had seen you then it was a race between the hider and seeker to a prearranged point (usually a tree), and when you got there you shouted "LURGY 1 2 3!". It came down to whoever got the words out quickest.

And it was "Tic/Tick" around here even though if you were "On" then you were "It". Am in the Midlands so that might explain the mash up :o

We had stick in the mud, what's the time Mr Wolf, and our version of tig/tag was called "tuggy". There was a variant called "tuggy on high" which involved having to stand on something so your feet weren't on the ground. If you wanted to be immune from being caught or needed a quick time out it was "skingies" (soft 'g').

We also did the shoe touching "eeny meeny" but I remember the rhymes getting ever longer and more complex until they were games in their own right.

Bouncing two balls against the wall was called, with stunning originality, "two ballie". I remember the favourite two ballie game being a long (if you were good at it) sequence as thus: plainsie, over, upsie, dropsy, stottsie, under leg, round the world. You did each different throw seven times, chanting the name of the stage you were on with each throw, and the final "round" - if you ever got that far - was one throw of each of the seven preceding techniques in quick succession. If you dropped a ball it was the next person's turn and on your next go you went back to the beginning with "plainsie" again. I loved that game and played it for hours by myself in the school holidays while staying at my gran's - she had an end terrace with a lovely big blank end wall and a bit of a side garden; perfect for two ballie!

Knocking on someone's door and running away was "knicky knocky nine doors". Not that we ever did that

Chinny reckon was a well used phrase down south at least 42 years ago, of course you had to 'stroke' the chin at the same time.
After a couple of years it was shortened to chinny (+ chin stroke) or reckon (+ chin stroke) then it was shortened to just an emphatic chin stroke.

French skipping was also big around here about 45 years ago. As I remember it there were about 12 different sequences all done with the elastic at different heights, ankle, mid calf, knee, mid thigh, hip and waist high

Variations of what's the time Mr wolf, British bulldog, tag etc.

We also had a game which I think we called 10 and out for which you needed a minimum of 11 kids, where 1 child was 'it' (kind of like hide and seek but no hiding) everyone else had between 10 and 60 seconds to run, ,'it' then had to run up to someone, tap them and both had to run back to base, if 'it' reached base first then the other was either out of the game altogether or had to join 'it' by becoming catchers and trying to stop the next person from reaching base depending on which version we were playing, once half of the players had either been caught or made it back to base the rest were free to try and get back to base without being tapped first, at this point there was an exclusion zone around the base which the catchers couldn't enter but 'it' could, the last person to be caught then became 'it'.

I've just worked out that 40/40 is what we called Acky 1-2-3. I think the last person back to the acky post without being caught could 'Acky 1-2-3 save all' and the poor sod who was it was it all over again.

Broadening out from Jimmy Hill/Chinny reckon:

What did you call

A) getting a lift on the back of a friend's push-bike

B) The slip on gym shoes used for PE at school?

C) A bread roll.

a) not sure
b) plimsolls
c) roll, or cob

Loads of things mentioned here, with variations. I remember 'chinny' and beard-stroking but no idea exactly what we said.

Our Susie did 'goo, ga, ga ga goo' as a baby. As a schoolgirl she went 'Miss, Miss, I can't do this, I don't know where my pencil is' and as a teenager 'ooh, ah, I've lost my bra, I left it in my boyfriend's car'

French elastics was England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, in (both legs in) out (both legs out) twist (turn 90° so the elastic was twisted round your legs) and shout (hop out).

Orange peel - we'd dance in a circle singing 'Orange peel, orange peel, here we go again, hey' x2 - on each 'hey' was a kick/jump in the air, on the second one we all had to sit down on the floor and the last one down was dragged into the middle and we danced round them singing 'xxxxx (name of another kid) is your girl/boyfriend, tra la la la la la'

We had the Billy rhyme - it went 'My friend (?cousin) Billy had a ten-foot willy and he showed it to the girl next door/She thought it was a snake and hit it with a rake and now it's only six foot four'

Then there was this - maybe someone can complete?

I had a magic fever, I had it very bad, bad, bad
They wrapped me in a blanket and put me in a van, van, van
The van was very bumpy (bump up and down), it made me feel quite ill, ill, ill
[line I can't remember here]

Here comes Doctor Alastair, sliding down the banister
'Are you better? (throw your arms out) Are you worse? (cuddle yourself with your arms) Oh God blimey, here comes Nurse!' (said in manner than indicated he was very scared of Nurse)

This thread is glorious

fast I reckon you and I must have been in a similar area as most of what you're saying is v familiar!

I'd totally forgotten about Susie and her lost bra. What a harlot.

We had a terrible version of ip dip as well;

Ip dip
Dog shit
Fucking bastard
Silly git
You. Are. Not. It.

Dreadful. But still better than the "original eenie meenie" at least.

British bulldog was my favorite game ever, closely followed by stuck in the mud (people who called it STICK in the mud clearly didn't have a clue...). I think bulldog got banned everywhere some time in the late 90s as it was "too dangerous". Wimps.

I'd also TOTALLY forgotten about the Chinese laundry song. Seriously wtf??

I'm pregnant with my first at the moment and I hope one day he'll be interested if I teach him some of this stuff probably not ip dip though

And to the original point of the thread- looks like there are 3 camps; the Chinny reckons, the jimmy hills and the much smaller itchy chin camp. My 65 year old father still says itchy chin, he thinks it's hilarious. And thinks he's hilarious when he does so.

I had "ip.dip sky blue it is not you!" at school. Id forgotten the all putting shoes in to decide and then prodding them!

Most of my memories are infant school but elastics was junior.

My daughter has learnt "ip dip sky blue, nanny sitting on the loo. What colour is her poo." Then some someone says a colour and they spell it out P.I.N.K to get to the last person!!

Clapping games
A sailor went to sea sea sea
To see what he could see see see
But all that he could see see see
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea

Miss Mary Mack
I think we called elastics Scooby Doo. Lots of skipping games.
I'm a little bumper car number 48, I went round the corner and pulled on my brakes. Ball in a socket against the wall. Also two balls against the wall to different songs.
We also played Port and Starboard. Can't remember the rules but there was a "captain" and they used to shout instructions and you had to do the right moves to them.

Good times!

*Sock not socket. Never heard ofrom chinky reckon til I met dh who's from South London. I'm from Hackney. Same with 40/40.

Omg! chinny reckon Don't know where that other word came from!

A) getting a lift on the back of a friend's push-bike - no idea!

B) The slip on gym shoes used for PE at school? - plimsoles

C) A bread roll. - a cob or a roll

I've a feeling that Ackee 123 was a Midlands name. Seen the same game called

40/40
Home 45
45 Bonkers
Tip the Can
Pom Pom

Bet there's loads of other names