As my granny used to say.....

my dad's from up that way, and the remaining bits of his family are still there; my mum grew up there; one of my best friends is from turriff; and i went out with a girl from [1] keith for two years. yet there's still the odd moment when i can't understand a fucking word the crazy fuckers are saying.

last time i was up that way i found myself in a wee living room with my mum, my dad, my aunt, my uncle and my uncle's bidie-in. i was the tallest there by at least half a head. those who know me IRL will appreciate just how implausible such a situation could be.

[1] or was it "called"?

"nesh" or "naish" = weedy, feels the cold when it isn't cold, like a soft southerner (ie me or my dad)

"very feeding" - "very tiresome"

"in a paddy" = "in a temper"

shropshire:
"i doubt that so-and-so" = "i believe that so-and-so"

snigs = small wriggly things in tapwater when the reservoir gets infested

when we pointed her towards conventional usage, she said her version made more sense and ours made none, and just carried on

my other gran (the one who WASN'T scottish) had two of these AND a china statue of william wallace, which made me wonder if
i. this trio wz common (they seemed to be part of a set) (in memory i mean -- it's 30 years since i last saw them)
ii. in which case "wally" = transferred epiphet THUS: william wallace and his dogs (in china) = wally's dogs (in china) = china wally's dogs = wally dogs

or maybe my gran = only person ever to have these three items together on a shelf

She also gambles a lot and gets angry at the slot machines when she loses, often striking them with her fist and saying "Damn you machine! Damn you!"

Ooh, Hogmanany is also fast approaching, full of great old traditions - first footing with lumps of coal,uttering preposterous phrases like "lang may yer lum reek", that sort of thing.

STAPPED. As in "He had it stapped in so tight I could barely get it out"

Anyone???

(Not strapped, stapped!)

Heart this thread, revive because the phrase 'yer arse in parsley' just popped into my head.

My mother was ill before Xmas and she tells me that ever since she's "been feelin' like a hauf-shut knife".

a face like a well-skelped arse

these are still well in use, well they were when I last resided in the dear green place :(

my grandfather had a strange catalogue of well-worn phrases that tbh ive never heard anyone say so either very archaic and just a bit pish patter so didn't endure (quite likely) or just some idiosyncratic phrases he liked to hit out wi':

half the lies are never true
when youre right rich you can shop in Buchanan street
tony galenti (rhyming slang for plenty)
toffs are careless
that was rotten (invariably said immediately after finishing a particularly good meal)

My sister has just mentioned this one, I don't remember it but then I'm the wrong gender:

Granny Grey Hips - someone behaving older than they are.

Squeegee (sp?) - crooked, awry

e.g., "Ye'll huv tae hing that paintin' up again, it's aw' squeegee".

Also, I noticed when I was up last week, when my mum was trying to get an electrician and I had to talk to them on the phone because she's pretty corned beef these days, that people in Scotland still pronounce the letter J as jy.

My Dad used to tell my sister and I to 'stop your greeting' if we were moaning and/or crying. I think this is a Scots thing.

Was probably fed up with having to deal with pair o' greetin'-faced weans.

my mum and her family and my grandma had a bunch of weird phrases.

"cat's malak" to mean like a horrible mix of something, like eg if you put too much ketchup on your dinner. i thought this was common irish slang but friends don't seem to verify that.

"dol-di-dee" to mean rubbish or something that isn't true. feel like this is more common, in ireland, but dunno.

my dad's main thing he used to say was "DICK MACKESSY WOULDN'T DO THAT" in outraged anger if you did something stupid. when asked about dick mackessy he'd just explain he was like the village fool - "the mackessys were all eejits" but with no real deeper detail than that. i like to imagine dick turning in his grave.

I'm not quite sure how to spell this phonetically, but my grandmother used to call the cupboard under the stairs the "kutch" (
to rhyme with 'butch')

-- C J (CJ_The_Unrul...), November 28th, 2005 1:24 PM. (later)

i wonder if that's a variation on "hutch." (xxpost)

-- athol fugard (theundergroundhom...), November 28th, 2005 1:28 PM. (later)

iirc this is a welsh thing... i can't figure out how to spell it (cwtsi? doesn't look right!) ("si" makes a "sh" or "zh" sound) but as well as cupboard-under-stairs - or any little hidey-hole really - it means a quick cuddle, a little hug. i only remember because someone told me about people being beaten at school for using the word when the english were trying to suppress the welsh (haha, "were").

― emsk ( emsk), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 12:43 (10 years ago)

10 years later, and living on the English/Welsh border, I can confirm emsk is correct only it's spelled cwtch. Most people seem to use it in the sense of when they're under the weather and just want to lie on the sofa in a blanket. "I'm all cwtched up."

Also:

http://media.alesbymail.co.uk/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/t/i/tiny-rebel---cwtch_2.jpg

I'm not quite sure how to spell this phonetically, but my grandmother used to call the cupboard under the stairs the "kutch" (
to rhyme with 'butch')
"Cooch"????

― Dan (Where You Stick The Cucumbers) Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 28 November 2005 17:14 (10 years ago)

DJP should totally come over here and drink some cooch with me.

footery wee hings

"You'll have to use Shanks's pony."

'He dies in this"

Be back in a minute, just got to ben the other room.

oops

Be back in a minute, just got to go ben the other room.

not really an interesting colloquialism or anything, but when my gran first met my auntie's 2nd husband she whispered to my mum "She better get him insured, he'll be in the ground before me".

He was known as "Yellow Eddie" because he worked at LB Dyes for 30 years and must have been getting all the worst jobs because he literally was yellow and looked quite cadaverous in the best of health. He only died this year funnily enough, beating my gran by 18 years.

Today I sent Dan a photo of a 30ft cwtch.

My grandmother on my mother's side said strange things that never made sense to me. She came from a weird, desiccated Dutch old money family. She told me a story of how her three great aunts were draped in robes and watched her when she was sent off overseas or some bullshit like that.

What the hell is that? I still don't know what the fuck that is. I'll take this folksy crap in a heartbeat.