Lydia, We once had part ownership of nextdoor's cat, he had it made!! we called him Riley!!

I once said to my daughter "that lady is a little dot" meaning that she was small, she gave me a queer look.

Kath I can recall saying "don't get your knickers in a knot", another is "sitting up there like Jackie", it just goes on and on "don't give me that", "shiver me timbers" gives people a little shock to start with, also another one is "far out".

One that makes my twenty-something kids cringe is "hook up." In my day, that just meant to get together with someone to hang out, i.e. "Did you guys manage to hook up with Danny last night?"

Apparently, that expression now means something sexual. Who knew!?

Frieda, it made me smile to think that anyone would think saying 'don't get your knickers in a twist' was talking posh!
Australians have a general suspicion of anyone they suspect is putting on airs. That could include putting on an accent or using Brit-speak, although here in SA we have a large number of British immigrants and hear such things 'from the horse's mouth' and therefore they seem natural. I know I have picked up saying 'half four' for the time of 4:30 from British friends, and 'cheers' is now almost universal among young (and older) people instead of 'thanks' or 'goodbye'.

I have a habit of picking up speech patterns, and find myself saying things like 'I'm down with that' and 'It's all good' making me incomprehensible to some of my peers :-)

As I have mentioned here before, my mother has a wide variety of sayings that most young 'uns wouldn't understand. My two sons do, from being exposed from a very young age *VBG*

Lydia: I'm guessing that the girls from Omaha were 'groupies'. Was that right?
Many years ago I got confused with the expression "Close but no cigar" which I thought referred to a person in a book being in Florida, not in Cuba as some people believed. I'd never seen the Groucho Marx show and I made a guess which was completely wrong.

"that only counts in horse shoes" is one that my family understands but that generates mass public confusion.

CeeCee, I like "well butter that and call it a biscuit." I may use that one with my crew, but I'll probably get the trout look from them. Is that akin to your 'fishy stare'?

Indeed, Lydia, I know that verse from Grand Funk. It's a clever bit, even though the grammar in the rest of the song is atrocious. They was out to meet the boys in the band. But that never mattered much in rock lyrics. Ha! I swear Dylan and Morrison (and others) messed me up for ever, grammatically.

Speaking of song lyrics, I'm prone to quoting lyrics apropos to certain situations; or maybe just a single word will remind me of some song. I can't sweep a floor without humming "while my guitar gently weeps." And "if there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now" has popped out of my mouth on various occasions. That used to drive my sons up a tree, but now they take their revenge on me with their own equally obscure lyrics. It's rather a game with us that daughter-in-law hasn't learned yet to join in. But she will, I predict. Do you have similar song or other word games in your families?

Kath and CeeCee, those family sayings are a goldmine (or a minefield, depending). I've inherited quite a number that I actually don't know how or with whom they started. One that has startled guests is our family request at the dinner table, "Please, a lil bit o' budder fer de sick lady." Translation: Please pass the butter. CeeCee, "that only counts in horse shoes" sounds to be the same sort of thing and probably has a good story behind it. Right? :-)

Lydia, when was the last time you saw a 50-cent piece? -- Jus' raggin' ya!

Oh my, Vicki, I cringe at thinking how many times I've unknowingly used 'hooked up' around people who must think I'm a dirty old woman! It was just a month ago that I 'hooked up' with an associate in Juneau...perfectly innocently.

Kath, believe me "knickers in a twist" is refined speech amongst some I know. Anyway, it sounds that way to them. Some Americans are so ga-ga gooey about Brit-speak that the dullest lump of a Brit can utter the most inane things and the Americans will simper. We have British commentators and reporters, as well a erstwhile politicians and drug-fried rock 'stars', who appear from time to time on US television. Some of my compatriots claim they can't understand half of what the Brits are saying, but it sure does sound good. Then there's an American contingency who thinks the opposite.

I enjoy this sort of thread so much! Too much probably. Thanks to you all.

Friedag: I relate to your singing in certain situations, I have always muttered a line from Shakespeare's poem 'while greasy Joan doth keel the pot' when I am washing saucepans etc. because someone told me that 'keel' meant 'to clean' and I imagined a sturdy Tudor kitchenwoman in a vast apron doing the same job as me with the same lack of enthusiasm.
But I have just looked up the phrase and the word is defined as archaic for 'cool'. Nah! I prefer my picture!

Frieda -- I, too, used to quote apropos (at least in my mind) song lyrics all the time. For some reason I don't do that so much anymore. But I now find that when I wake up at night, which these days I usually do at least once a night, I have a line from some song running through my mind. It's the first thing I become aware of when I awake. It's not always a song I like, either. It can become quite annoying.

My DH and I have a habit of quoting Monty Python, and The Holy Grail in particular, so when we first judged our sons old enough to watch it, they spent the entire time saying 'So that's where you got that!'

Some of our favourites:
"Nasty sharp white pointy teeth'
'I blow my nose at you'
'It's only a flesh wound'
'Camelot!' "It's only a model"

DS2 was most amused when in his first week of Uni in a Psychology course the lecturer showed them the clip of the witch weighing the same as a duck!

Here is a link that might be useful: She's a Witch!!

friedag, you won the bet you made above. This thread put the topic on my radar and sure enough something happened.

This afternoon my kids and I were in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. What immediately popped into my head and out of my mouth was "Ding dong, Avon calling."
My twelve year old son said, "Mom, nobody is calling. It's the doorbell."
Huh? I thought but I said to him, "I KNOW it is the doorbell. Oh nevermind, for now. I have to answer the door."
On leaving the kitchen I heard my daughter laughing and my son asking, "What's up? What is so funny?"

astrokath, my DH knows practically every line of "The Holy Grail." I know most of them too from listening to him quote them all the years I have known him.

Ah, but do you have a rabbit with nasty sharp white pointy teeth in your house? We do. Sitting on the bed in DD's old bedroom.

"Only counts in horse shoes" means "almost but not quite" due to the scoring in horse shoe tossing. At least the way my family scores, which is partial credit for getting close to the post without ringing it.
Did it again today. We were having writing workshop (5 teachers, 75 sixth-grade students, mini-lesson then writing with the 5 teachers circulating, reading, answering questions, approving rough drafts, etc.) I read a student's passage and laughed out loud (her aim was comedy) and another teacher looked over to see why I was laughing. I said "I can't help it, **'s turn of phrase just tickles my fancy."
Well, THAT brought the house down.

Annpan, I once stayed with a family whose family game was "Shakespeare." One would start with a line, say, The quality of mercy is not strain'd and someone else would supply the immediate following line, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, all off the top of their heads. They would get into wonderful arguments (to me, as a listener) about exact wordings and inflections. Their knowledge boggled my mind as this was long before the Internet and instant verifications. I wasn't very good at their game.

My mental image of 'greasy Joan' was of a none-too-fastidious woman with a very large spoon, skimming the fat and foam from a pot of meat soup. I don't know where I got that idea. I like yours.

Sheesh! Vicki, lyrics from songs you don't particularly like are the worst and hardest to get rid of. I just don't understand why they are so sticky. One that bothers me quite often is "Lay down the boogie and play that funky music till you die. Till you die. Till you die-ah-ah-AH!" I used to roller skate and ice skate to that song and the association with those activities is permanent, I'm afraid. My sons actually get a kick out of those lyrics and the funky beat and music.

Kath, I'm not well versed in Python, but my husband and I do a similar thing with "Jeremiah Johnson" and "Withnail & I", films that are too obscure for most would-be joiners. When our boys finally saw the films, I think it only confirmed to them that their parents might be a 'bit off'.

Hee! Lydia, isn't it funny that you won't notice something until it becomes a 'topic'. I reckoned it would be a safe bet. I hadn't realized until reading your posting that calling probably means something done exclusively through the air waves or electronically to most people, particularly youthful ones. As for Avon, has the 'Avon lady' gone the way of the Fuller Brush man?

CeeCee, I've had 'tickles my fancy' cause the opposite reaction when I've said it: glacial silence. Apparently some folk think there's something not quite polite about the expression. As Sarah Canary/Vicki says, Who knew?! Words and phrases and the people who say and hear them are such an unpredictable lot.

"You have a bee in your bonnet" or "You're like a dog with a bone", these have caused my daughter to ask the meaning.

Friedag: My Avon lady is a part of my life! She has called regularly for some years with her little boy. I have seen him grow from a shy two-year- old playing with a toy while his mother attended to business, to the present schoolboy! She chats and gives us in the Village Easter eggs and a Christmas gift. Always a welcome visitor and nothing is too much trouble.

Frieda, the Avon ladies are still very much a part of most neighborhoods, including where I live.

An expression I think might trigger bizarre looks from the younger generation: "The cat's pajamas" (meaning something outlandish or overdone or beyond the pale). I think its British equivalent was said to me the other day by an English friend: "Well, aren't you the dog's dinner!" Has anyone else ever heard that one? (It was new to me).

I have not had an Avon lady call on me in years. Solicitors in general have declined, I think. Most people did not welcome them and not as many people are at home to answer the doorbell.

Have you noticed that some (many) people no longer know what you mean if you say "hyphen"? I had a question about my water bill and I was asked for my account number, including the number after the "dash." I did not see a dash, but I did see a hyphen, a shorter mark than a dash. My husband also said our neighbor's name as "Mrs. Smith dash Jones." I told him it is not a dash but a hyphen. He said he knows but he has fallen into saying dash for hyphen because he hears a lot of people calling it that because they do not know the difference. Everybody is confused!

The Avon Lady is still to be found in the UK. These days she usually has a number of clients/regular customers and doesn't come cold calling.
Tickle your/my fancy is quite a common expression and wouldn't raise any eyebrows over here.
Cat's pajamas is probably rather dated and to describe someone as looking like a 'dog's dinner' would mean you were dressed in a multitude of strange garments, put on anyhow, or as a general term, for anything that was messy.
Mary, perhaps the English person meant to say "Well aren't you the bees knees. ;-)
In the UK the word 'solicitor' always refers to a lawyer who draws up legal documents and work for barristers (the lawyers who appear in court). People who turn up unannounced
at your house are usually called door-step salesmen or if from the Mormon church one foot in the door . . .

Frieda, re song lyrics. I grew up in an almost pop-music free environment. Forbidden at home, where the radio of the day (50's-60's) was almost all talk, except for dance-bands and dreadful drooling organ-music. 'Pop' came from a distant commercial station Radio Luxemburg on the old Medium wave. The DH says it was only on at night and difficult to pick up.
Boarding school was also a radio and TV free zone, so I grew up amazingly under-educated in that musical genre.
Ice-skating, at which I was totally graceless took place during College days, at an 'inner city' (aka slum) rink in Birmingham, where the one record seemed to be Swinging on a Star.

Re your Shakespeare Family. I hope they aren't your dearest friends because they sound very much like super-pseuds and as we might say over here 'totally up themselves'.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinatra Sings

Frieda, are you okay? I know you've been on the high seas a lot lately and worry about the Earthquake Tsunami. (When I checked The Age, they didn't seem too concerned about Australia. Go figure.)

As to the topic at hand, I am locked in frequent battle with my 14 year old nephew over the meaning of words, usually slang I find exceedingly vulgar. His constant refrain is that words don't mean what they meant when I was a kid. Sorry I can't think of any specifics decent enough to repeat. And note that this is a kid who's at church every time the doors are open. When he was 6 and had a nasty blow up on the soccer field, the worst thing he could think of to call another player was "Baby!"

Language does change, I just cannot believe I'm old enough to have seen it happen.

Cece, my family uses a variation of your horseshoes comment. For us, it's "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." My DH and I also quote Monty Python quite a bit. I can't think of any particular phrases we've used lately that have confounded the kids, but this thread is great fun to read.

Woodnymph,
I have heard it as "your all done up like a dog's dinner" it means that you do really look the "ants pants" (good).

I had completely lost track of the Avon lady. It's good to know she is still doing well. Lydia, the door-to-door people would get slim pickings in my neighborhood too.

Yes, Lydia, I have noticed that 'dash' has replaced 'hyphen' as what that piece of punctuation is called nowadays. I guess that people don't know that a dash is longer -- at least two hyphen lengths (it was once an uninterrupted line) -- and has spaces before and after, and a hyphen is short and has no space between it and the previous letter or before the following letter. (I went on pendantically with that sentence because I was just explaining the difference to my son. He claims he was never taught it.)

I think the hyphen/dash convention went out with the advent of computer keyboarding and html. I've noticed that lots of the once familiar marks of punctuation have disappeared, especially diacriticals. It's easier and faster to type without having to deal with them. And if you don't need them, why have a separate name for each? Choose an all-purpose, conflated one, such as 'dash', instead. That seems to be the thinking -- muddy thinking, in my opinion, that confuses both sides, as you say, Lydia.

Well, I'll give you all a break, but I'll be back.:-)

Thanks, Chris, for asking. As you can tell, I'm fine. O'ahu is okay, too. We were lucky. Maui and the Big Island got the worst for Hawai'i. I think California had worse than we did.

friedag, exactly. You explained it very well. Was your son reading over your shoulder? I usually do not make my dashes two hyphens long; I just use one but I make sure there is a space before and after - a stylistic difference only I think. I asked my daughter this morning what she called the character between the 0 (zero) and the equal sign on the keyboard. She gave me a quizzical look and said, "A dash." So there you go, the loss of distinction is real and not imagined on my part.

I think if someone said I looked "all done up like a dog's dinner" I would be insulted. My dog's dinners are anything but pretty or neat. Is this an example of irony when you mean the opposite of what you are saying? "Hello, old hag, you get uglier every year." I have heard people say that kind of thing to each other with apparent affection.

lydia, it was definitely meant as a compliment, given the way I was dressed. Perhaps you are right about the irony, given the fact that my friend is English. I will ask him about it today.

I was taught that a hyphen joins words and a dash separates them. Does this cover all situations?

I have had trouble with this symbol / which I call an oblique stroke. My address is (example, not really!) 1/123 but when I used to say 1 oblique stroke 123 on the phone, I would be asked to spell 'oblique' sometimes! I now just say 'stroke'. Have I got it wrong? How do other RPers with similar types of addresses describe it over the phone?

annpan, "a hyphen joins, a dash separates" is a very good, succinct way to remember which is which. It covers all situations that I can think of right now, but I am not an authority on punctuation. I find describing punctuation very troublesome.

I call the / a "slash" or a "forward slash." A "backward slash" is \. It seems to be generally understood in the U.S., but I do not know if that is true everywhere.

I've only ever heard "oblique stroke" used by John Steed on "The Avengers" a half century ago.

Junek, you are absolutely correct. I asked my English friend if the "dogs dinner" expression was meant as a compliment. He said it most certainly was and its origin is Cockney.

It is 'the dog's breakfast' that is a mess!
eg. "Well, you made a dog's breakfast of that sales order!" Scottish origin.
Ref: The Phrase Finder website.

Still on the animal theme, start to worry when someone say you look like 'Something the cat's brought in'. Are you familiar with that saying?

Veer, in the southern U.S. it often appears as "Something the cat dragged in and didn't want."

Lydia, yes, my son was reading over my shoulder because I was trying to illustrate to him what an actual dash looks like as it appears via computer. He's with your daughter in knowing it as a 'dash'. He was teasing me for my pedantry. I'm usually not very concerned about the style of punctuation: a person can form a dash with two hyphens with spaces, one hyphen with spaces, or a row of hyphens without spaces and I know what they mean. (I persist in calling that between-the-zero-and-the-equal-sign thingie a 'hyphen'.) But when someone uses a single hyphen without spaces, I will automatically assume they mean they are tying two or more words together and not setting off a phrase.

Annpan, in the US most hearers of 'oblique stroke' probably would think that is your street's name! and the following 123 would be your apartment number. We have some really silly-sounding street names, so 'oblique stroke' wouldn't be much sillier. For that symbol, I am another 'slash' sayer, but I do recall hearing it called an oblique stroke.

Vee, I meant to comment earlier on your music 'education': I don't know whether to congratulate you or extend my sympathy. At least you didn't have to endure listening to a lot of crap that stuck unwanted in your memory. On the other hand, I love the memories of some music on 'the soundtrack of my life' (ick-ick phrase), and I would feel deprived without them.

As for the "Shakespeare Family": No, they weren't my dear friends. I don't know if they were 'super-pseuds'. They had absolutely no reason to try to impress me. I think they just enjoyed Shakespeare and family competition. Some of my family played "Moon" and "42" with equal passion.

Ay-yi-yi, all this about dog's breakfasts and dinners! The breakfast example makes more sense to me.:-)

Here in the US, a mangle and a wringer were not the same thing. My mother owned both when I was a very little girl, which is how I know the difference. They were old-fashioned appliances even when she had them, and she was delighted to discard them for more modern versions. A farm family next door still had a wringer washer for a few years, but no one else we knew had either machine.

The wringer was a semi-automated washing machine. It had a tub with two rollers perched on top. After washing the garments in the tub, you fed them through the rollers to wring out the excess water and soap, then did the whole thing again with rinse water. As I small child, I was cautioned with gory stories about various parts of one's anatomy that could get caught in the wringers and ripped off the body. Later machines had a safety release, but in the case of early machines, this actually could happen. I was terrified of this machine, though fascinated, too.

The mangle was a big ironing machine. Really skillful operators could do detailed work such as shirts or ruffles on it, but all my mother ever used it for was sheets. And when permanent press sheets came out, she stopped using it altogether. It sat in our garage for a while until my parents eventually got rid of it. I believe that professional laundries still use them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Picture of a mangle

rosefolly/paula. In the UK your picture would not be described as a mangle but as an industrial iron. Over here the terms wringer and mangle are interchangeable. I well remember the early washing machine you describe (known to us as a 'twin-tub') and the joy with which my Mother greeted the automatic Bendix, which my father bought second hand and cheap from a woman who was terrified of it . . . her husband had failed to have it cemented into the floor and it chased her round the kitchen.

May I ask a laundry related question please?
I just read a 'letter to the editor' in the Daily Telegraph where a woman describes a visit to friends in Canada. She noticed that despite ideal sunny and breezy days her host never hung washing from a line in the yard. She was told no-one would think of doing such a thing as the implication would be that the family could not afford a dryer. In the UK 'line-dried' washing is considered far superior to 'machine dried', saves electricity and is far 'greener'. In fact many people will remark on how nice it is to see shirts, sheets and especially babies nappies/diapers blowing in the breeze.
Are we behind the times or what?

Here is a link that might be useful: Mangle from Newcastle-on-Tyne

Vee-there is a swing back to line-drying at least seasonally, but there are issues connected with it. For instance, my son has pollen allergies, so nothing that he wore or slept on was ever line-dried. That is because I live on the edge of countryside. My sister lives near a city-her issue would be pollution. If the wind is blowing one way, the factory puffs can reach her yard.
There are also some "planned" communities with neighborhood rules that ban clothes lines because the powers that be don't like to see their neighbor's unmentionables flapping in the breeze. One near us is built in and around a golf course-I guess the golfers don't want to be distracted.

Actually Vee, I think you in the UK are ahead of the curve, and we in the New World are a bit old-fashioned in our love of clothes dryers.

I prefer to hang my clothes on the line and do indeed consider it better, however I am in the minority. There are communities where it is strictly forbidden. It considered to be a sign of poverty that will lower property values. There is a movement to counter this, given that a home clothes dryer is one of the highest energy consumers in the household utility bill. I'm quite happy to have a clothes dryer, but it is a fallback appliance, to be used only if I must.

I just love the way line-dried cotton smells. For me it is an exquisite scent, almost intoxicatingly pleasant.

I once heard a clothes dryer defined as a machine that recycles clothing back into the fiber from which it was produced.

Rosefolly

I once horrified my nephew when I asked him if he and his longtime girlfriend had been "smooching". He took this to mean something filthy. In my own day, it only meant kissing, which seems quite innocent by today's standards.

Recently I had to explain to my nephews that the recently-departed Jill Clayburgh and Susannah York were huge stars in their time.

My grandmother had an expression which I always found grimly hilarious: "Green Christmas, full churchyard." When I explained its meaning to a younger person they were appalled.

I live in one of those neighborhoods that bans outdoor clothes lines, but I well remember the days as a young mother when I hung out diapers when it was so cold that the first one would freeze stiff by the time I hung up the third.

At home we heated with coal, and on a windy day the soot would blow onto the drying clothes. We always had to wipe the clothes line with a damp cloth before hanging the laundry. My mother had a wringer washer for years. The last one wasn't used very long, and at the estate sale an Amish man bought it for a tidy sum. He said they convert them from electricity to gas powered.

Line drying is still the norm in Australia, and I haven't heard of any places where it is banned. I have a drier but only use it when it is wet outside. Most of the clothes we have here are labelled 'do not tumble dry' so I have a clothes horse (well, sort of four-sided mini clothes line) that I hang all the shirts and trousers on and put in the kitchen to dry inside. The drier is mainly used for socks and unmentionables.

Where I live if you want your clean laundry to stay clean, you cannot line dry it - even on nice sunny days because there is still too much dust in the air. White and light-colored pieces will take on a peachy or rust-colored tinge, and everything will be gritty. I appreciate my gas dryer and would loathe having to dry things here outdoors again.

timallan, may I ask you to explain your grandmother's "Green Christmas, full churchyard"? I am not sure if I know what it means.

I believe that "green Christmas" bit relates to having lovely weather in December will lead to pneumonia which, at one time, was an almost sure death sentence.

My goodness Lydia, where do you live? If your washing gets polluted by the poor air quality what are everyone's lungs like? And may I ask what is a 'gas dryer'? Do you mean gas in the US sense . . . what we call petrol . . . or oil . . . or? Why is it OK for the Amish to use 'gas' but not electricity?
Kath, we still have the old-fashioned over-head, on a pulley clothes airer, in the kitchen. Very useful for overnight drying, but stuff has to come down while cooking is going on or everything picks up kitchen smells. We do have a tumble drier for the many wet days but they are very expensive to run.

I think over here the green Christmas full churchyard expression refers to having a mild end of year, often followed by a very cold/freezing January, when many old people were more likely to die.

I wonder what other 'signs of poverty' cause house-buyers to turn faint. Here it would be piles of old car-parts, packs of dogs, chip/piazza wrappings/broken bottles/feral kids etc but clean laundry is considered a plus. Cleanliness being next to Godliness and all that.

There are still many people who regard a mild winter with suspicion, believing that winter's bracing cold kills off germs. Sometimes you hear a mild winter blamed for different types of sickness experienced in the new year. My grandmother's folksy expression suggested that if the weather was mild in December, a lot of people would get sick (often fatally) in the new year. Not to be morbid, but I believe there is some sort of statistical spike in the natural deaths of people right after Christmas. I saw this on the news last year.

(Not to be outdone, but my other grandmother would hold her breath whenever she drove past a cemetery. She may have been on to something, since she died shortly before her 95th birthday.)

Vee, I suppose the Amish people use natural gas, which is plentiful in this area. They do not have anything that plugs into electricity (although I've heard some do generate their own by using a windmill), and they do not drive automobiles. Just recently our newspaper reported a difference of opinion regarding the use of bright red stick-ons for their buggies so that they can be seen by car drivers. I think the issue was that they wanted to use a glow-in-the-dark grey tape instead. Must be hard to live an old-style life nowadays.

We are new to this neighborhood, but I think it is that the powers that be decided long ago it isn't "upscale" to view one's neighbors' laundry even if it is clean. I always had a clothes line before. Where am I to hang my electric blanket when it clearly says not to put it in a dryer? Fortunately, my handyman husband put up a bar for me in the basement.

Sometimes there is truth in old wives tales, and I wonder if your grandmother was on to something. Since I have moved to Maine, I have come to feel that the cold contributes to a clean environment. Probably - mostly - because we don't a large population. A harsh climate like this is generally something to flee from. But somehow it just feels cleaner.

One thing that is scientific - deer ticks are killed by very cold temps, and have been surviving the relatively mild winters as of late in places like Massachusetts, leading to the danger of the dreaded Lyme's Disease all year round.

The Amish here in Lancaster County use propane for cooking, heating, and lighting. I once had a meal in an Amish home and the smell of the propane heatlamp put me right off my food.

Being fortunate to have usually unpolluted air, excepting when an occasional bushfire makes washing smell smoky, I did not realise that it could be impractical to line-dry.
The cleanest air I have ever breathed was in Adelaide, South Australia, on a visit in 1988. It was so fresh. I was told this was because it comes from the Antarctic. Was that true, Kath?

I have a hunch that mild winters contribute to high numbers of certain annoying insects. Several years ago, we (Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada) experienced the worst outbreak of fleas in years. Every animal was infested, and the fleas had not trouble moving into people's houses. Many people found them in their furniture, clothes, etc. Popular wisdom blamed the freakish outbreak on an unusually mild winter.

The jump in the numbers of feral cats is also blamed on unseasonably warm winters.

I prefer a cold winter, though I am no fan of being snowbound for days at a time.

Ann, I don't think Adelaide's wind would be more from the Antarctic than Perth's - both places have prevailing south west winds, so I guess it is from the ocean rather than over the land, and that would mean less particulate matter like dust and pollution. Adelaide doesn't have much heavy industry either, and we don't often have an inversion layer, so the air would be pretty good. I live in the hills and drive down to the city every day for work and get a good look at how clear the air is, and most mornings it is great.

I line dry sheets in summer and mangle them on my modern mangle, rather like the one in Rosefolly's picture but it stands on the laundry bench with no legs of its own. It works alright but is a poor substitute for a real stone mangle like the one in the laundry room of the 4-family building where I grew up. I have to fold my sheets but this old mangle took the whole breadth of sheets and linen table cloths. Many older buildings still have them in the basement but fewer people know how to operate them. They are very dangerous and many children have lost an arm in one of them. The last time I used one was after mine and my husband's combined 50-year party when we had used eight large white table cloths. No other mangle makes linen so shiny. I had to take them to a friend's house.

There were strict rules about how to hang your washing. The unmentionables were hung in the middle, surrounded by towels and sheets.

Here is a link that might be useful: old stone mangle

It is an amusing memory (on the subject of washing facilities) that in New York, I had to wash out my husbands only dinner shirt in a metal waste paper bin, roll it in a towel and get it dried and ironed for the next evening. We had not realised he would be invited to visit so many Lodges and could not rely on a quick turnaround at the hotel laundry, which was very expensive anyway! I borrowed an iron but could not get a sink plug! They were not supplied in case the guests let them run over, I was told.