Do you bark your shin? Had a potato in your sock?Strange family sayings

[julia5]

My DP thinks my family a bit strange for our sayings. What things do you say that are incomprehensible to others?
Btw barking your shin is when you catch the bony part on the front of your lower leg; a potato occurs when your toe pokes through your sock!
Am new to MN (my second post)

barking shins is fairly widespread, isn't it? (I barked mine only yesterday)

potato is good though, I'll use that.

Stop standing there like piffy (the full and unexpurgated version is stop standing there like piffy on a rock bun). Who piffy is/was and why he/she/it stands on a rock bun I have no idea.

I also say that I'm as full as an egg. Gawd knows where I got that from !

And another one of my Mum's is "layers for meddlers and crutches for lame ducks"...don't ask; I have no idea

We have:
"sleep on the edge of a wet Echo" - i.e. so tired I could...
Echo being a local paper.

"Makes my teeth itch" - annoys me

Never barked my shin though.

From my dear father: "You'd laugh to see a pudding crawl"

WTF ?

tokentotty - my FIL says that! I have no clue what he means.

Oh, and (reads back in thread) we say Piffy too. Piffy on a rock bun or Piffy on a stick. It's a northernism I think.

Another one meaning the same thing: 'I was standing there like cheese at fourpence'.

'Better than a slap in the belly with a wet fish'.

" A run round the table and a kick at the cat" (ie not having much in for dinner)

"Killed with the fair force of enjoying meself" (ie it's not a great day out/party)

Lol at your replies !

You are kidding me Botbot!! I have no idea where this is from but he always said it if I was really laughing at something stupid. Is it an area thing perhaps ? He was from London.
Another one was: "Yes, I had one of them but the wheels fell off"

'Better than a poke in the eye with a dead policeman.'
(sure it should be 'by', not 'with', but we always say it that way)

'Santa Maria della Spiaggia!'
(Outburst when all hell is breaking loose. Not sure where I got it from, or whether Italians use it as a general saying - any Italian MNers out there?
btw - it means 'St. Mary of the Beach.')

'Mad as a goose on stilts' (eh??)

He's from Hertfordshire (the bit in the north where it gets a bit rural, towards Cambridge). Will ask around next time I'm up there!

I often quote this but a colleague of mine says, when speaking of someone he doesn't know from Adam,
"She used to chew bread for our ducks". Who knows why? not him.

marthamoo, loving that about piffy. Might start saying that.

Agree re barking shin, that's universal.

Oh definitely ask if you can Botbot. I've often wondered if it was from some television programme (or more likely radio I guess) that only people of a certain age would know.

I worked for someone ages ago who came into reception and announced he was going to get his knob scratched. Not sure how we managed to keep straight faces, it wasn't until he came back we realsied it meant having his hair cut!! i've never heard the expression before or since.

at yours 22Tango !

PMSL
I was reminded that Nob = Head the other day when singing Jack and Jill from a nursery rhyme book with DS. The correct verse (which has strangely been altered in other versions)is:

"Up Jack got and home did trot...etc..
...To old Dame Dob,
Who patched his Nob,
With vinegar and brown paper."

Unless the whole nursery rhyme is a euphemism for something else.

According to Great-Aunt Alice something was definately true if 'they gave it out' in the newspaper

As she used to say to me dad...and if you die in an accident on that motorbike, I'll bloody kill yer...

oh and she would say, with disbelief if someone told her something shocking

'Well, I'll go to sea/ the top of our stairs!'

Forgot about that DrDaddy - as in cribbage then, 'one for his nob' ?

"You could hang a bucket on that lip" (big sulky pout)

"It's six and two threes" instead of six of one and half a dozen of the other

"You look like the wreck of the Hesperus"

ganseys and stockings instead of jumpers and socks