"How eccentric are your people?"

[JanH]

\link{http://www.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,1794085,00.html\Love these quotes}

The pea-ness one made me LOL ("In the three-minute silence that followed, my dad shook so hard that he slid under the table." )

I like the one about not home cooked meals "you must give me the recipe for this"
lol

They're fab Janh - thank you! Sure MNers have some of their own to add...

Oh I hope they will, JN

(In fact we used to have ravishing but it has lapsed - must resurrect it!)

Ummm, Ruth Morgan wouldn't be our own, much belov'd, Spidermama...?

Would she, snafu? Did they? How funny!

my brothers and I used to know all the Young Ones episodes off by heart (much to the shame and annoyance of our dad)and always used to quote them at every opportunity. Our favourite was if anyone said "the bathroom's free" one or all of us would reply "Unlike the country under the Thatcherite Junta" (quote from Rik, of course ) I still think of it now if anyone says the bathroom's free - out poor Dad - used to drive him mad

Brilliant, LOL.
My ds used to "fizzle" for pins and needles too.

I'm crying with laughter over pea-ness, Brigadier and the recipe. That's absolutely fantastic. I've never laughed so hard over anything on MN.

I keep re-reading pea-ness and do a Muttley every time

so what are your families eccentricities?

when we are on holiday and we hear ciccada's 'chirping' we always say 'oh listen to the enchilladas'

My sisters' way of teasing my brother when they were kids was to call him "frog-eyes" (he has green eyes, frogs are green.....). They still regularly send him birthday cards with pictures of a frog on them. He lives abroad now and is not good at keeping in touch so my mum was really excited when my sister forwarded her an email saying it had some recent photos of db attached - she was really cross to find it was a photo of, you guessed it, a tree frog! (siblings are all in their 30s btw!)

When my sister first had olives, aged about 5 I'd guess, she didn't like them, and my grandma said that they were 'an acquired taste'. She misheard this as 'a quiet taste' and that's what they've been in our family ever since. Also when she was my bridesmaid, the hairdresser did her hair in a really tight plait at the back, and she hated it. Everyone told her that 'it looked lovely from behind', and that's another one that's stuck, whenever anyone complains about their hair.

JanH, i am sitting in bed with \link{http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/greenwood/679/ohss.htm\OHSS} and laughing is very painful right now!
Please stop bumping this thread and reminding me about the pea-ness.

I liked the "you must give me the recipe for this". Am planning on trying this at MILs next time we're there, although I'm sure she won't get it.

My family used to say "dishwisher", after a mispronounciation of mine.

oh blimey I can't read any more of these in the office, she says silently weeping onto her keyboard

I read these yesterday at home, and am now in the office, so I daren't open the link again, as I'll be doing the same as you, Dinosaure.

Pruni you poor thing - hope you are okay.

JanH - love this thread!

One of my DBs asked my mum for fluffy eggs when he was about 3 - he wanted scrambled eggs. The name has stuck ever since.

My other brother (poor child!) was led to believe that he could lay eggs (sicko parents!) and mum and dad would carry around bags of little foil covered chocolate eggs which they would put in their hands and then get my brother to cluck until he hay laid them It was a great trick at family gatherings He really belived it though!

NQC, we put dirty crockery in the wishdosher, or sometimes the washdisher, and laundry in the mashing machine.

And my mum, when she'd put the duster down somewhere and couldn't find it, used to call for it in the hope that it'd come out. For reasons unknown all dusters were called Billy.

My DH is dyslexic and misreads things regularly. Some of his mistakes have continued to be used. The immersion heater is always referred to as The Emotional Heater for example and DD is called 'our little grill.

That's hilarious, love the article and the thread
we have a recent mispronouciation in our house due to me forgetting how you pronounce Brunel in English and calling him 'Brunnall'
dh and dd constantly take the mickey out of me (and it comes up often considering we live in Bristol...)
I also can't pronounce 'catalogue' properly, always sound like some demented uber posh woman, dh loves it.....

Dh always says that I'm 'stubborn as a goat', after I said it once. The Sacre Coeur in Paris is now renamed the 'Sacre Bleu' after he famously said to me (on a dirty weekend) in all innocence 'Oh look Dior, there's the Sacre Bleu!'

He also told me to 'stop pruning' once when I was preening in front of the mirror, so that one has stuck too.

Dior, we do pruning / preening too!

Mrs B!

My grandad had a fabulous good luck charm too. It was called 'The Curse of the Cod's Head'! He also used to refer to going 'round Will's mum's' whenever any journey was a bit convoluted. I guess Will's mum lived in an odd place to get to!

We also have loads of weird phrases that originate from him, including:

The valley on the hill
That wine called vino

and loads of others. I'm sure they'll come to me.

When I was a wee thing ( back in the mists of time!) we often used to go out en famille for dinner at a very nice restaurant ... now remember this is before drink driving was the big no no it is now .... after dinner mum and dad would always have Irish coffee's .... fondly re-christened by me as " Wobbly coffee's" as i was sure that was what made them a bit giggly and wobbly when it was time to go home ( obviously the beer, G and T's, wine etc drunk whilst seated had nothing to do with it !!)
So for ever we have always raised the cry of ... "anyone for a wobbly" ..