“Lifting the drain” ……. and other overused expressions ….. with a backward look at what we once said

Now “lifting the drain” was an expression I heard for the first time during the 2021 Olympics, which was said in the context of  Team GB’s efforts to achieve medals.

And not for the first time it made me think of other equally odd sayings which bounce into common usage and then get dropped.

One of the most irritating of these was “Wake up and smell the coffee”, often used by a Brexit supporting Tory MP, and occasionally by others who also wanted me to believe that that their particular line on things was the reality.

Happily it appears to have faded from media speak, as has that MP, and good riddance.  It was silly then and remains so.

But it has prompted me to revisit those sayings of my youth which I took for granted, very rarely pondered on their origins or how they have survived from childhood and been passed on to my sons.

Most pop up without any effort and roll off the tongue to fit the occasion.

There will be many that I grew up with, but a few are still regularly in use.  They include “piffy on a rock bun”, “the wreck of the Hesperus”, “black as Newgate’s knocker”, and “like the back of a tram smash”, all of which will be instantly recognized by anyone who was born in the first half of the last century.

They are what they ar

e, i

nstant comments on a situation, instantly used and then forgotten, but yesterday in a family conversation, it became apparent that our Polly had never heard the expression and was fascinated and amused when Joshua used it.

They were leaving to drive back to Leicester, I was on the doorstep watching, and Josh muttered “why is dad standing there ‘like piffy on a rock bun’?”.

Apparently, Polly had never heard Josh use the expression, but like his dad it will be rooted deep in his upbringing.

And that got me thinking about the shed loads of ones that are embedded deep in me.

Some are easier to track than others, and so “like the back of a tram smash” must come from mother and father, while others like Newgate’s knocker are much older.

Along the way there are a few more which I absorbed and can track specifically to a time and place.  Of these “like Reggie Page” is fixed in the years I was with Kay who grew up in the north east in Seaham Harbour and went to school with Reggie Page, who could never quite dress himself.

So, his socks were always at half mast, his shirt buttons wrongly fixed and on a very bad day, he managed to get his jumper on back to front.

And so, the saying was born, which stuck with me and still on occasion tumbles out to fit the moment.

What fascinates me, is that as some of these fade through time and pass out of common usage, others will surface.

In the same way some have a specific place of origin.  “Black as Newgate’s knocker", refers to the door handle of the old Newgate prison in London and will be one I heard from friends and their family, while “like piffy on a rock bun”, is apparently from the northwest, although mum who was from the Midlands and Dad from Gateshead both used it all the time.

Most I never questioned, and so it has been a surprise to me that “like a lemon” is the southern equivalent of “piffy on a rock bun”.

I suppose for generations many will have stayed local, but the advent of television and soaps like Coronation Street will have taken them in the front rooms of the entire country.

Of course, they sit with many more sayings which derive directly from popular shows on the radio and TV, which were either coined by the scriptwriters or made popular by a celebrity or comedian.

At which point I won’t show my age, or my preoccupation with the wireless over the television by quoting from ITMA, the Goons, or Take It From Here, and instead wonder just how many today will use the expression “the wreck of the Hesperus”, or know that it may originate from a poem by the US poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which was  in his collection Ballads and Other Poems, from 1841.

To which someone will mutter “well I’ll go to the foot of our stairs”.

To which Steve has updated the piece with "Great piece Andrew! While not about household phrases, during the 1990s I worked for one of the big professional services firms, where “management speak” was rife. I had a colleague who seemed able to speak in little else. He was for ever getting the drains up, smelling coffee and running things up flag poles. At one meeting, with the prior knowledge of the other participants, I just made up a new one “Why don’t we take that idea and drop it in the piranha tank, to see if it does doggy paddle”. Without missing a beat this guy agreed that this was a fantastic idea, as if the phrase had been in common use for years. He also continued to use it!

Later, I was on assignment with a large chemicals producer and in their plant control room they had what I still believe is the largest whiteboard I’ve ever seen - to communicate plant issues etc, but down the side the shift teams had crafted, in the style of the top 20 pop chart, with “this week’s position” and last week’s, the top 20 of management BS. I was horrified how many of the phrases

I used routinely. Yes, “normal people” do not “move goal posts”, or “get back to you on that”

Location; all over

Pictures, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, circa 1970s -1990s