@John Brunner Well if its one Cockney to another - we say …… 'He's popped his clogs' which I've said a good few times
You all's morbid humor is too much. I'd leave if I had any other place to go. That's so odd. Clogs are shoes? What does it mean to 'pop' them? Just try speaking good Amurican, okay?
I hope you're not serious …… Anyhoo, to answer your question there isn't a definitive answer to the meaning of the phrase but I like this one The poor people of society working in the factories had to wear clogs to protect their feet, it was also common to pawn things on a weekly basis to manage financially, the pawn shop was also called 'pop shop' so when a loved one passed on ….. (a revised phrase for @John Brunner ) …. the family would probably 'pop his clogs' for a bit of much needed money
Your answer is anything I could require. Sorry to sound so serious about the other, just my own morbid humor, I guess.
Don't try to make much sense of it, Dwight. When a Cockney is leaving, they are going "up the frog" rather than "down the road," because "toad" rhymes with "road" and a frog is kinda like a toad. Just as they don't "go up the stairs," they go "up the apples and pears," because "pears" rhymes with "stairs." My mother was British and had lots of Limey friends here in the states, include one from the East End of London. (Great lady. Least pretentious of all my mother's British friends.) Oh, and Bonus Points for saying "speak American" rather than "speak English." They, obviously, are two entirely different things. And you, obviously, know that. Obviously.
God Bless you! IMO nurses are God's gift to humanity. I always felt and still feel physicians get all the glory while the nurses deserve way more recognition than they receive. It takes a very special person to be a nurse
You're reminding me of someone I haven't thought of in a long time. An English lady by the initials of PH was born in India to wealthy parents. She married and left India. By some long and convoluted set of events I never quite fully pieced together, she ended up divorced, estranged from her family of origin and came here to the US. When I knew her ( she was friends with my mother ) she had a house in the rural part of Dorchester County, on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay. There she took in animals who couldn't be adopted in the normal channels. Besides copious numbers of old dogs and cats, she had a pair of donkeys, parrots, and I think I'm remembering ,maybe even a boa constrictor. It was a mystery where she got the money to care for these animals. Maybe she had some remaining legacy of family wealth. She drank too often and too much. Some of her companions seemed on the lesbian side. I was maybe 20 when I had the most interaction with her. Her education and depth of character were impressive, to say the least. She intensely followed the Watergate hearings. I never got to know her as well as I wish I had today. The last I saw of her, she was in the hospital, dying. I had just returned to Cambridge from hitchhiking from Oregon with my dog, whom I discovered was pregnant somewhere in Ohio. I had laid down with my head on Lady's stomach and heard the mewling of the puppies. I straightaway got up and started hitching, not sleeping again until I got back home. Lady had eight, healthy puppies under the back porch. Miss H wanted me to write the story of my trip for her. I told her I would although I didn't see it as all that unusual.. She died that night. Her animals went here and there, some adopted, some put down. Her house, leaning and close to collapse into the bay, was torn down. So was her life a success or failure? Was she happy with herself or no? Al I know is that she was definitely her own person, even if it cost her a lot to achieve that.
@Dwight Ward Interestingly, I've known quite a few British women whose background stories were never quite consistent. I don't know if it's those women I met, or if it's a cultural/generational thing where they believe things should have been different for them, so sometimes they recall it as being so. Regarding a "successful life": I've often wondered whether life is better or worse in a day and age of so many choices. We are no longer locked into the class or trade we were born into, so we can pursue our own desires. For some people that's a good thing, while others are overwhelmed by choices and the self-doubt of the roads not traveled. Some do better being given a set of circumstances they can focus on without distraction, while others might find that such circumstances would be predestined irrevocable failure. So who knows what a "successful life" really is? Perhaps "good enough" is a laudable goal. Humans are cursed with all this self-awareness stuff, huh?
A saying that I have heard used here, in reference to the end of someone's life, is that "he got done with it. The same expression would be used to indicate that someone got fired, or quit their job, without differentiating. "He got done with that job."
John, you're just going to have to stop with these big questions. "while others are overwhelmed by choices"..... I'd never have thought myself capable of thinking there might be such a thing as too much freedom, in my own life or others. Maybe the problem is freedom unallied with discipline - a word I never cared for. Too soon old, too late smart. ( doesn't apply to me... I'm talking about the rest of you. )
“maybe the problem is freedom unallied with discipline” @Dwight Ward, you’re just going to have to stop making so many profound statements.......