Macca888 posted:- There's a few that my gran and grandad's and mam and dad's generation used (still use) that don't get nearly as much of an airing theses days
When someone was pie-eyed and were walking, they called it the "yankee staggers."
Someone walking while they were pissed or with impaired mobility or obvious disability, and they used this one that still cracks me up, but it was sung rather than spoken "Look at the fucking state of him walking half past eight, a quarter to nine, twenty five minutes to ten"
Anyone who was a but gammy or did anything stupid got called a biff or a flid or a joey (the Deacon variety and not the taxi version which was a joey or a jobe).
Anyone in a wheelchair got called Ben Hur.
And my favourites for someone who was gozzy was "boss-eyed" "one eye on the tea and one eye on the toast" or "one eye on St Johns and one on Blacklers" (places on different sides of the same street for non Scousers)
any sort of shop that sold things like DIY stuff or mop heads and bric-a-brac was called a "Chandlers"
A dollar meant half a crown or twenty five pence (that was the exchange rate roughly at the time)
Paraffin oil faced twat was one of the greatest insults I've ever heard from my granddad.
Does anyone still use Doolally or one of Winnick's (not sure of the spelling of that) to describe someone who's a bit mental or angry?
One me nan used to use if you looked scruffy was "you look like the wreck of the Hesperus"
"San Fairy Anne" was used to mean an inevitability that it's all over or there's nothing you could do about it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A lot of stuff going on there lad!
A couple of observations from this Manc.
Boss-eyed or sken-eyed as we Mancs say would be described by my old Nana (my great-grandmother who was a Scot) by the lovingly delivered phrase ..."one eye in the pot and the other up the chimney".
A dollar when I was a lad in the 50's was a whole FIVE shillings . It derived from the days when four yankee dollars equalled one pound sterling. It wasn't two and a tanner Macca mate- that was half a dollar or staying very British, half a crown.
Re Winnick - I believe from my Widnesian distant cousins that it was spelled
Winwick and it was a mental hospital in Warrington. I just confirmed this via Google
see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winwick_Asylum#HistorySan Fairy Anne - my grandad Ted's favourite saying - came about from the WW1 Tommies getting their gobs wrapped round a bit of pidgeon-French.
It is derived from the French "Cela ne fait rien" which broadly means (as Macca correctly states) it doesn't matter. The cela bit usually gets shortened back to ca - hence the pronunction of "ca ne fait rien" which to the Anglophone ear sounds like San Fairy Anne!
Manc-speak about walking with a swagger usually went something like "Look at that tit putting his feet down like ready money!"
We could go on a long time - but one word I took notice of was flid. My wife's mother now long dead - and also a Manchester lass - always used it to describe someone (usually a kiddy) having a paddy / temper fit.
My Grandad Bill (mother's Dad) was alovely fella and he rarely ever swore. The worst I ever heard him say was about a bloke at work who he did NOT rate at all. He called him a closet. A closet being a euphemism for a water closet - or a plain shithouse to me and you.
