Mau: the organism. (She's cuddly.)

Mau are a name what rhymes with "glow". Were it not for Mau, the world would be a poorer place, for there would be no mauisms. "What the dickens," you wonder perplexedly, scratching your head and furrowing your brow, "is a mauism?" Well, wonder no more - if you have courage enough, read on. But take heed: the mauism is not for the fainthearted or the fragile of mind...

MAUISMS

· Don’t teach your grandmother to lay eggs
· Don't look a gift horse in the eye
· The truth is in the pudding
· Horse rack (= clothes horse/clothes rack)
· Water passes through your hands like money
· Score and two blackbirds
· That nursery rhyme about the 4,000 horses (The Grand Old Duke of York)
· How would you feel if the foot was on your shoe?
· My heart was in my stomach
· I’ve never scremt like that before
· Hand glider (backed up by my Antler, my sister)
· Ernie and Wise
· Mollycollied
· Reindeer ears (= antlers)
· Just you shut your traphole
· Spiky lemon (= sticky melon)
· The creature from a thousand lagoons
· I failed on reversing backwards down a hill
· I’m surprised there’s been no blue murder
· Harvey’s probably fed of seeing the sight of you
· Supermarkets have got their fingers in all sorts of kettles
· Richard Branson has got a pie in everything
· The worm has changed
· Handsweeper (= dustpan and brush)
· They come and go like the flies on the biscuits
· The kiss comes to a crunch
· Like a duck out of hot water
· Rewind it forward
· Like closing the door after the pigeons have gone
· To amputate the foot off
· The traffic was absolutely choc
· You always get your better way
· He pulled the whistle on corruption
· Don’t tire yourself to the ground
· It doesn’t really ring of roses, does it?
· My feet are like cubicles (= ice cubes/icicles)
· (Sweeping porch:) You’re messing up my front passage
· I can’t think myself hear
· They’re trying to egg me out
· I wouldn’t trust you with a barge pole
· I wonder if the police could act posthumously
· You wouldn’t remember anything if your head wasn’t screwed on
· Shall we put the car in the boot?
· Eight men in Britain suffer from balding
· William the Pitt
· I’m a fairly easy go lucky person
· You seem at a limb
· I’d forgotten lights have fridges in them
· Innuendoes - the wit of gems
· We have to make sure the house is spick
· The Wat Rebellion (= Wat Tyler and the Peasants’ Revolt)
· Try not to get all the bristles on the floor. No, not bristles: sesame seeds.
· He went absolutely AWOL
· The pâté on your head
· I was born in one of the busiest cities in London
· He doesn’t look as old as he looks
· Waxproof candles
· Drip-dry candles
· Tamazepan - as featured on Crimewatch
· Do you know who the new Paul McGann is?
· We’d be paying it tooth and nail otherwise
· They don’t know what their arse is doing from their head
· Nutty as a fruitbat
· Tung ting oolong tea
· The hall upstairs (= the landing)
· Your grandad just loves to fish his feed
· The water’s too heavy (= high)
· Do you think men give me the second eye?
· I would have thought your clores were pogged up with tobacco
· They’ve got no qualms about spilling the dirt on him
· Hairdresser (= chest of drawers)
· Dust spectacles
· She hasn’t got two brains to rub together
· He who laughs first laughs last
· To do something on the brink of the moment
· Moroccos (= maracas; on noticing my mirth, Mau amends this to “castanas”)
· The whole house needs such dry cleaning (= spring cleaning)
· To sort the chaff out
· Spanking (= new)
· Sarcharin (= saccharin)
· You haven’t got your finger out to help me
· Leading me up the wrong garden path
· Dust your feet
· Screech marks (= skid marks)
· It’s as if someone put me through the cat mangler
· The whole thing was a lie from start to beginning
· Arts (= arrows/darts)
· King John’s being coronated
· Switch the fire down
· Roaring to go
· Close the tap
· Body temperature is the hottest thing in the world
· Bogpit
· Is the light all shut?
· You haven’t got your finger out to help me
· Turn the curtains down
· Do the fish like water?
· Torment (“one of those circular things in the sky”)
· Flemings (“lizard-like creatures”)

Talking about inventions by Europeans:

Me: The telephone...
Mau: Ah, no; that was invented by Alexander Fleming.
Me: No it wasn’t! - that was penicillin. The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell.
Mau: So who was Fleming?
Me: One of those “lizard-like creatures” that hurl themselves off clifftops.

A different occasion (there are so many, God help me...) - the topic is “Can you think of any merchants that have gone down in history?”

Mau: Sir Randolph Scott?
Me: Sir Walter Scott?
Mau: Yes, that’s who I meant.
Me: Yes, he set up some great trade links with the penguins and polar bears.
Mau: He imported tobacco.

TV Presenter: ... the venerable Bede.
Mau: Doesn’t he mean the venerable bird?
Me: No, Byrd was a composer.
Mau: Wasn’t Shakespeare a Byrd?

Japanese chap on TV: “Father, he’s killed himself!”
Mau: “Kawasaki.”

Incomplete title on side of video cassette: M_NY M_NY WIZ_RDS
Me (joshing): “Mausie, guess what the missing letter is.”
Mau (in all seriousness): “O?”

“999” reconstruction: rally cross car plummets down ravine the height of Canary Wharf, turning over repeatedly and causing occupant to flail about wildly, head being crushed between slope and metal on regular basis. Mau: “That must be a dummy in there.”

“Knees up knees up don’t forget the cheese up
This is a bad song
And something about kicking someone in the face”

“Knees up Mother Brown
Don’t go under the table
Don’t forget to bend down”



(Honourable mention by Mau’s friend Tikiko:)

· Too many cooks cooking the cake

(Honourable mentions by a volunteer of Tina Halperin, a former work colleague of mine:)

· She left me holding the fork
· Can you shred some light on this?
· A post-Morecambe
· He had Hackney all over his face