More lost things

 

Did your mother ever give you a “cat’s lick and a promise”? This was when there wasn’t time for a bath so she washed your face and hands with a flannel (English-speak for a face washer) before pyjamas and bed. This phrase and many others seem to be drifting out of the English language although probably balanced by phrases drifting in. But as Grandma is not only grumpy but functionally illiterate in modern culture, I don’t know any of those.

As to those we are losing, how about “The pot calling the kettle black”; I haven’t heard that for many a year. And speaking of pots, one of my uncles had a mantra regarding tea making: “Take the pot to the kettle not the kettle to the pot”. Tea leaves were supposed to be covered by still boiling water to draw out the best flavour. My grandmother, incidentally, used to knit tea cosies, another lost art. They were knitted in at least two colours and the wool pulled behind each colour change, giving an inside padding to keep the tea pot warm. I received a lovely surprise at the wonderful Tumburumba Pioneer Women’s Hut, a place where the ordinary is celebrated, not the extraordinary. At this museum you are encouraged to touch the collection, so I was pulling out a draw to look at its contents and found 20 or 30 of the same tea cosies Nana knitted.

I have written a book (as yet unpublished – do any of you know anyone in the publishing industry?) which I’ve called after another vanished phrase: “A cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down”. Women at home (well ok, they were called housewives) frequently led lives of quiet desperation. Despite the fact that women took jobs throughout World War II, they were back at home in the ‘50s and except for trips to the shops and to walk the children to or from school they were always at home. Many resorted to a pharmaceutical product called Bex Powders which apparently dulled the misery; along with a cup of tea and a good lie down they would help to get the woman through the day. Unfortunately it did bad things to the woman’s insides so it was eventually taken off the market.

Sometimes a product on the market today is named from a lost phrase. For example I’m guessing that the cleaning product called Jiff may have come from the phrase “just a jiffy” meaning in just a short time. And sometimes matters were reversed. So the product Vegemite gave rise to the phrase “we’re happy little Vegemites” from the advertising jingle.

The full jingle went: “We’re happy little Vegemites as bright as bright can be. We all enjoy our Vegemite for breakfast, lunch and tea. Our mummies say we’re growing stronger every single week because we love our Vegemite, we all adore our Vegemite, it puts a rose in every cheek.”

Another advertising jingle, possibly written by the same musical genius, ran thus: “I love Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me; I have it for dinner, I have it for tea, a little a day is a good recipe. I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me. I like it for dinner, I like it for tea, a little each day is a good recipe. The quality’s high as the name will imply, it’s made from pure fruit, one more good reason why, I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane jelly for me.”

Sometimes a phrase utilised a similarity of sound to cover up or ameliorate another word. A perfect example is “None of your beeswax” with beeswax a substitute for the word “business” but sounding far less angry. Or how about “your Sunday is longer than your Monday” which meant that your slip (or petticoat) was showing beneath your skirt. I suppose talking about undergarments was another thing you didn’t do.

I recall an odd phrase regarding fashion: “Blue and green should never be seen” (together, implied). I recall having a “cocktail” dress made in a delicious patterned silk which used peacock blues and greens together, and thinking I was very daring. Cocktail dresses are another thing which has gone. In my late teenage and early 20s, you had to have dresses to fit the occasion and if you wore an ordinary dress to a cocktail party you felt humiliatingly out of place. I also had no fewer than three long dresses in my wardrobe as, again, there were occasions like wedding or barmitzvah celebrations where long dresses were de rigeur. If you wore your cocktail dress to a wedding, more humiliation.

And the above also reminds me of something my father used to say when I complained about having to sleep with curlers in my hair: “You have to suffer for beauty”. Where he got this maxim from is a mystery. I love the up front and personal criticism of an older woman trying to look younger: “Mutton dressed up as lamb”. It was fear of this which made me cut off my marvellous ringlets which had given me a good hair decade well into my forties. Another phrase struck home similarly: “She looks like a geriatric Shirley Temple”.

In the sixties there was “Ban the Bomb”, “nice girls don’t …” (but some of them certainly did!), a “baker’s dozen” still existed, children were supposed to be “seen and not heard”, first names were “Christian names”, “feed a cold and starve a fever” was a nostrum as was “you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die” (a peck being an old measure) and “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. Those whose intellect was challenged were called “not the full quid” (quid being Aust-speak for a pound which is what we had before dollars) or “a sandwich short of a picnic”. One comment which is old but I still use whenever I have to go upstairs a second time because I’ve forgotten something is: “I never use my head to save my feet”!

 

Quote for the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

British publisher Michael Joseph: “Authors are easy to get on with – if you are fond of children.”