Here's something that I hope will amuse the gatherers around BE's barbie... the origins of some household slang. The classic in our house has for sixty years been "two tuppennies" for "what the heck: spare no expense!". Even when Linda and I bought our first house for more than we had intended, we used it.

In the sixties, British banks charged for cashing cheques (maybe they still do; I don't know). In 1963 Barclays in London charged threepence. This day, I and one of our other flatmates accompanied David to his bank to cash a pay-cheque. The girl at the counter asked for threepence in cash to buy the necessary stamp, and then apologetically informed him that she had no threepenny stamps, or one-penny ones, only two-penny ones. David took the news badly... and you see where this is going. The clerk waited expectantly, we flatmates waited expectantly. Time froze.... During the longest two minutes of our young lives, our man fought silently and desperately against the inevitable, before finally - finally! - admitting defeat and ordering in as strong a voice as he could muster, "two tuppennies, please"...before turning to where Chris and I were suppressing our hysterics, and asking us in puzzlement, "What?"

Any other offerings? I'm sure there must be!

Following my item on the topic of "families' household slang" - slang or sayings originating in specific families and not in the general public... Another in my family (and I will not follow up on it if nobody else does) is "c'est la meme chose", which began its life in our family with a visit to a restaurant in Montreal Canada back in 1965. An English friend of a friend lived in Quebec, flat refused to speak French, except those four words. His companion explained the eccentricity to Linda and me, and or but for the whole evening we were in the restaurant, those words were all we heard from him in the French language. If he couldn't fit them into the conversation, he stayed silent. We thought it was the funniest (and most ridiculous) situation we had encountered.

But not so ridiculous that we haven't used it ourselves, ever since.