Peeing in the garden

The title says it all really.  I remember he would go for a pee at the end of the garden rather than walking the 30 yards up to the house.  Used to drive Mum to distraction.  Both Aidan and I readily relieve ourselves in the back-garden here as well (Kris also reprising Mum's role effectively) , though with neighbours further away, we don't have the same publicity...

Two international Dadisms

As nominated by Beck, "Hon-he-hon-he-hon!" is an expression delivered in a nasal, cod French accent that can be used to react to pretty much anything vaguely Gallic.

When I was waiting for a card transaction to go through at an Italian restaurant on Sunday I filled the gap by asking the waitress: "So which part of Italy are you from?" in a sort of Dad-ish manner.

Pic of the day: Not such an easy rider ...

Twerp

Not an original Dadism but, as Beck and I recalled in London last week, a term of abuse he favoured and which, sadly, seems to have gone out of fashion.

Pic of the day: Dad wrestles with a changing tent at Embleton Bay in Northumberland in 1981.

 

A fictious "girlfriend"

When Dad was going to see or talk to a female he vaguely knew or often didn't know at all but just quite fancied he would refer to her as "my girlfriend". I say this whenever we go to the chippy in Boroughbridge where one of the regular servers (though not there last night, sadly) is this tarty, over-made up bird.

Pic of the day: Here's one from a walk in the Cheviot Hills of Northumberland c 1980. It's the finest headwear we've seen Mum sporting since that the legendary lampshade in the b/w shot from the sixties.

Dearest brothers....

I know I've asked this before, but one day, to show how much you love me, please could someone print off all the Dadism blog and pics and make into a kind of memory book for me (with the published comments too of course!)...

xx

Cheering at borders

Don't know if this is actually a Dad-ism, a general Kirkwood-ism or, indeed, peculiar to my family ... but we always clap and cheer when crossing an national border within the UK as we did last week going to and returning from Scotland.

Pic of the day: We know the grannie ... but who was the baby? The pic is dated on the back from June 1985. Answers on a postcard, please [or within the comments box would do].

Intelligent question and reversing a car

1. "Can I ask an intelligent question?" Dad would ask before posing a query which would result in an answer he actually knew and everyone would disagree with.

2. When anyone was reversing out of the drive Dad would stand in the middle of the road pretending to halt the [non-existant] traffic with one hand and beckoning the driver with the other - as I do with the mother-in-law when she leaves after Sunday supper. Dad must have been a frustrated traffic cop, I think.

Pic of the day: The happy twins, hands firmly clasped.

 

Two more tennis ones

"Deuce", the scorer calls. "Orange, please!" Dad replies, guffawing at his very unfunny and oft cracked joke. And sometimes he'd play the ball to a corner, we'd return it directly to him then he'd jink it to another corner with the call: "Run!" Just been doing that to Bertie.

Pic of the day: A relatively recently vintage, this one, from 2005. Fine volume, seldom off my bedside table.

Do that again...

When ever you did an incredibly lucky shot like deflecting the ball off the a tree and in to the top corner of the goal, Dad would always say "Do that again and I'll give you a 1000* pounds".  We would then spend the next ten minutes futilely trying to recreate the shot. Found myself saying this to Aidan this morning after he shot his plasma shooter ball (which was thankfully small) right in to my crown jewels from about ten feet.

* - Can't remember if it was 1000, 100 or 1,000,000, but it was a big number...

Holiday reading

Dad always used to buy the local paper when we were on holiday - to see the auction prices, essentially. I do likewise - as I did only last week on Anglesey when I availed myself a copy of The Holyhead & Anglesey Mail. A good read with lots of stories about places I'd been to or through as were The Shetland Times and The Orcadian on previous cycle tours.

Before I know it I'll be tying piles of library books up with string (and getting someone to put their finger on the knot).

Pic of the day: What an absolute classic - from the days kids wanted to be bus conductors and Indians rather than celebrities. Beck has never looked cuter. (Click once on pic for full size).

 

We're on a run here ...

Two Dadisms have cropped up in a conversation with Beck just now ...

"To apply your mind to": to ponder seriously and in a considered manner about - usually at a time when you'd rather be doing something else and about a topic you seldom want to think about anyway.

Writing 'first class' on an envelope. A thoroughly pointless exercise but one which I still do - with a red stamp.

Pic of the day: Another gem from that photo album - of Uncle Andrew and Aunt Pat, of  course, in front of table mountain in S Africa. What a fabulous, colourful, vibrant pic with the pair of them looking in fine form. [Is that another Dadism?] Worth forwarding to Juliet, Beck?

Catching the slips!

Having never really understood "caught the slips" when Dad used to say it - particularly in tennis - I found myself using it in the correct context at a cricket match the other evening!

A very short one

'k you, an abbreviation of "thank you" pronounced as just "cure". Bertie's just picked it up from me.

Pic of the day: Now this is the main reason for the post: a truly classic pic of Dad "selling Ayrshires in Sussex". It's taken from a retrospective photo album he compiled at our request in his final years and which the kids recently rediscovered on the book shelves. Plenty more where this comes from ...

 

Bath time

I loved it when Dad used to suspend the towels over John and I in the bath making it into a sort of watery tent. I can still remember how the acoustics of the splashing would change. All jolly exciting at the time. Then he would hold a smaller towel by its top corners below his face, smile cheesily, gradually raise the towel past his face and the reveal a grimace when his face was again revealed. Happy days.

Pic of the day: We know this one well, of course. It's from the slides I had put on CD. But worth another airing as summer nears. Don't forget that hat for Portugal, Ma!

 

Sunday best

"Don't swear: it's Sunday". Found myself saying this ... on Sunday, not surprisingly. Like the inference that the Lord (a Dadism in itself, I think) won't mind if you to f and b any other day of the week.

Pic of the day: This one's not really old enough for a place on the blog but, heh, it's 10 years old now and will get us in the mood for Suffolk three weeks hence. Just hope it's a bit warmer than this pic looks. Click on it for full size.

 

Whizz kid

Someone who Dad considered to display a special aptitude for something but actually wasn't as skilled as he thought. Example: 'computer whizz kid'.

I described myself as an "electrical whizz kid" to Bertie when he was impressed by how I was able to reconnect two ends of a cable that I cut while trimming the hedge.

Drinking hot coffee in a hurry

When in a hurry to exit but still with a hot coffee [we never had tea at home, did we?] to consume Dad would drink with a big "aah!" in between gulps. Swimmers used the same rhythmic technique for breathing.

Holiday games

When driving in to Akumal on our recent Mexico holiday, I found myself challenging Aidan to "first one to see the sea gets a Mars Bar".  Of course it didn't help that we had already seen the sea earlier when we landed and Mars bars are not freely available in Mexico or that Aidan doesn't even know what a Mars bar is...

Parlez vous Francais? Mais oui!

"Mais oui!": a curious use of the unnecessary preposition 'but' to add extra emphasis and a Gallic tone of surprise to the simple [and perfectly adequate on its own] 'yes'. I used this at a restaurant in Paris on Monday. The waitress was ushering us to our table. I followed her initial babble then lost it. She paused, I paused and then realised the question she was asking so responded with a "mais oui!" She smiled in a what-a-fool-of-a-foreigner sort of way.

The expression is sometimes followed by "hon-he-hon-he-hon!". But not on this occasion!