Recent content by Nico

Said of one of my great aunties who was very eccentric, by her mother, "she was the scrapings of the pot." The last child. Grandad's mum kept pigs and the runt of one of the litters she called the nisgal. Not sure of the spelling. My great gran used to say pull yer trouser bags up. Nan had a...

I noticed when I was over there they have a type of street, Passe de whatever, a passage, and Impasse de whatever which I was told are cul de sacs also.

De riens Bob. And pensées, pansies and pis en lits, pee the beds = dandylions, I was told or I read dents somewhere de lion, lions teeth.

I have just asked my partner who is French. Cul de sac means just what you have all said, the bottom of the bag, and bottom like a rear end. But is is not rude. The French do not get offended it seems and just tell it like it is. As we used to here - my opinion. They have crottes and crottins...

Big flock of long tailed tits today about 20 queueing for the nuts but they couldn't work out how to use the sunflower heart feeder which is a clear tube with a hole each side and a perch. Inside a wire mesh squirrel preventer. Unless they don't want them. None of the birds are unless I put them...

We had a huge coke pile at school and we used to run up it but if we got caught we got the cane. In the baby class they was a big coke stove one end and it gave out such a heat, we dried our snowy mittens and hats on the fireguard. I never remember being cold at school the old radiators kept a...

Like the one with the rabbit in but their lid sloped like the one I can see out of the window now. 2 doors up..The put grass cuttings in it..

My Nan told me when she was a girl she read at night by candlelight. Her dad put marks on the candles so she was not allowed to burn it past the mark each night! She used to laugh at the nursery rhyme line, hear comes the candle to light you to bed and she would tell me about her dad's...

I had piano lessons taught by 2 old misers. Mrs Eberell was short and always wore an ancient longish dark silk looking dress with sparkling black beads and she taught on a baby grand in the front room. I was taught by her husband in the back on an upright. I can smell the room now. The fireplace...

That's what ours was built on to the pantry then the outside loo then the water butt then a wooden shed. All the houses I lived in had them. Like now except it houses the boiler now and has been made to be inside. We put tools and deckchairs in and flower pots, fishing rods, anything, zinc baths...

Some houses built during the war, had little coal bunkers with a lid on top and a little door in the bottom. I can see one from here now. My friends kept their rabbit in it. We had a coal shed next to the outside loo. We used it for tools and things. The Coal 'ouse. Again I grew up thinking it...

I was a nervous child too. We only threw stones at each other. Never at people's property. Only bad kids did that.My school mate moved some little red lanterns they used to have round road works, and a car went in the hole in the dark. He was mortified. He daren't tell his dad as he would have...

We were watching a Miss Marple, I said to my partner, lots of people were 'killed' like this, in dramas, and in films turning on the gas on the little bedrooms fires. We had ours taken out. All houses had them as I recall but I never saw one lit. Mum said they were dangerous. I remember Nan on...

My Nan used to examine the coal that was delivered tipped from hessian sacks. The coal men were very strong. He tipped it on to a piece of corrugated iron on the garden to keep it dry near the house, but she never covered it. When it was wet it used to spit when lit and crack and bang. So she...