Turning into your Grampy

[Bored Of Education]

I have long gone past the point of turning into my Dad - saying "I don't care who started it, I am finishing it", refusing to queue for more than 5 minutes, making groaning noises when I get in and out of chair etc.

I have always known that I got certain elements from both my grandads - a curmudgeonly belligerence that, at its best, manifests itself as a stubborn opposition of injustice. However, I have started turning into my Grampy in more subtle ways.

He collected teaspoons and we used to bring him back souvenir ones from holiday with "Sidmouth" written on them or whatever. Similarly, I like certain object for their tactility or aesthetics or whatever - old-style desk pencil sharpeners, lemon juicers etc.

Recently, I have realised that I have refused to use any teaspoons that don't look roughly akin to this
or variants thereof

rather than any new-fangled designs (which are fine for yoghurts etc but not for putting sugar into tea) and started realising what my Grampy saw in them

[Gerontophile]

Turning into your Grampy

from the thread title, do you mean 'dead'?

[Bored Of Education]

Turning into your Grampy

No

[kugelrund]

Turning into your Grampy

I've never heard "Grampy" as a diminutive before. Is that a Welsh thing, or does it exist elsewhere, and I've just moved in circles in which relations' names are too rigidly circumscribed?

[Gangster Octopus]

Turning into your Grampy

You mean Jewish circles?

[Mumpo]

Turning into your Grampy

I was chatting to one of the blokes on my evening course last night and it transpired that, in order to accommodate his growing collection of toby jugs, he's moved his son into the attic.

[Bored Of Education]

Turning into your Grampy

I've never heard "Grampy" as a diminutive before. Is that a Welsh thing, or does it exist elsewhere

I think it may be Welsh. I have heard "Grampy", "Gramps" and "Bamps" used by Welsh friends. My other Grandad was called "Poppy" as my Dad called him "Pop"

That is one of the interesting things about parenthood in that you think you will carry on traditional grandparent calling through your kids and they make up their own thing. Similar to me having called both my grandmothers "Nanny" and suffixing it with their name, my own son calls my mother and mother-in-law both "Grandma" and then suffixes it with the name of one and the name of the dog that my mother has for her so go figure. My friends children call their Welsh grandmother "Gee" from the Welsh "Mamgu"

For my son, my Dad is Grandad and his other Grandad is dead. As is Ken Dodd's Grandad's Dog

[Gerontophile]

Turning into your Grampy

Probably had a grandad, and would have done the 'Werther's' thing, but all dead, before I was alive... something to do with 1914-1918... not sure.

Wish I did, probably make me a little less 'radio'...

[Gangster Octopus]

Turning into your Grampy

Both my grandfathers went bald in their mid-fifties. I can hardly wait...

[Gerontophile]

Turning into your Grampy

I refer the learned GO to the above post.

[Gangster Octopus]

Turning into your Grampy

Actually, gero, unlike yourself, I was incredibly lucky with my grandparents. I didn't lose one until I was in my twenties, so I got to know them as an adult; something I've always been grateful for.

[kugelrund]

Turning into your Grampy

I had a Welsh girlfriend who was the first to use two great words which have stayed with me ever since: cwch, and pilch, both of which came from her Mum.

The other word her Mum used to use, to her enormous embarrassment as a teenager, was wank - only meaning "to scrounge something".

As in, "That Mrs Jones from number 3 was round this morning, on the wank again."

Maybe that one was just her.

[Bored Of Education]

Turning into your Grampy

Erm, I think it may have been just her (or perhaps her neighbours, maybe it was a cry for help).

I haven't heard of pilch either. I always use cwch though and, indeed, used it yesterday with a load of kids in school when trying to get them to move up I said for them to cwch up. They were completely confused unlike the teacher who was Welsh. I also had to as if daps were daps in Bath or whether they were pumps or plimsolls

A couple of other Welshisms I use a lot are "scram" for scratch and "over by there/here" with the extraneous "by" for no apparent reason and "Fair do's" instead of "Fair Paly" but that may not be exclusively Welsh.

"Crachach" is another one which means posh people or, perhaps more accurately, "nouveau riche", I have never worked out the subtle difference. People who live in "The Vale" (of Glamorgan) anyway

[G-Man]

Turning into your Grampy

I'm my own Grampy

[sw2borshch]

Turning into your Grampy

Fair do’s is also local to Teesside, but as we were settled by the Welsh (along with the Irish, East Midlanders, Yorkies and County Durham pit-yackers) there may be a link.

[kugelrund]

Turning into your Grampy

Pilch was the gusset area on knickers or trousers. (In the dictionary according to her Mam, anyway.)

I'd forgotten scram. And she used to do a good exaggerated over-buh-there and over-by-yur (although she didn't use it herself).

She also told me the first time she saw a Coca Cola lorry go by with the (then new) slogan on the side she genuinely read it in her head as "Coke, is it?"

[Eggchaser]

Turning into your Grampy

Well, as long as I don't father an illegitimate child or refer to my daughter as a "half-caste", I'm not yet turning into either of them, bless their departed souls.

[Disco Child Ballads]

Turning into your Grampy

I should probably start getting into cricket if I want to be like either of my grandfathers. I've tried but it still doesn't interest me.

[Wyatt Earp]

Turning into your Grampy

Gangster Octopus wrote:

You mean Jewish circles?

[Etienne]

Turning into your Grampy

Apart from cwtch and scram, the other phrase that struck me when I moved to Wales was "bothered with" to mean "socialised with".

I never met my dad's dad, and will never turn in to my mum's dad, a staggeringly reserved man.

[sw2borshch]

Turning into your Grampy

Hmm, "bother with" has that sense on Teesside too, generally in a negative, people you don't hang out with any more, you don't really bother with them now. This is getting ever more curious.

[treibeis]

Turning into your Grampy

I have heard "Grampy", "Gramps" and "Bamps" used by Welsh friends. My other Grandad was called "Poppy" as my Dad called him "Pop"

My maternal grandfather, who was born in Swansea, was referred to as Bamps. My paternal grandfather, who grew up in South Wales, was Grampy. My maternal grandfather referred to my paternal grandfather as "Pop" because he always claimed that that was how you referred to your children's fathers-in-law.

Mind you, my maternal grandfather also claimed that he'd spent five days in a Spanish prison after burning down a bullring and that he'd passed the aptitude test for the Royal Navy by swimming round the outside of an aircraft carrier faster than any of the other potential recruits. I only found out about ten years ago that he was a non-swimmer who'd never been abroad in his life.

He met his maker after Ireland beat Italy in the 1994 World Cup. Because he professed to hate England and all things English, he always talked about the Welsh, Scots and Irish being "in it together" and therefore got behind the respective teams at sporting events.

In this case, "getting behind Ireland", for him, meant drinking an entire bottle of Teacher's whisky in about two hours flat. They found him the following morning, fully clothed in bed, still clutching the empty bottle.

There are far worse ways to depart than that.

[WOM]

Turning into your Grampy

Mrs WOM's grandfather lived well into his eighties. Early on in our relationship, I was deposited with him while the women went elsewhere, and he told me fantastic stories of when he was stationed in British Columbia, flying up and down the coast doing submarine spotting work. Just amazing stories, told in detail as if it had happened just yesterday.

The next day, and from her father, I learned that he'd never left Ontario and the farthest off the ground he'd gotten was a few rungs up a ladder.

[ursus arctos]

Turning into your Grampy

treibeis, I always knew that Ray Houghton had blood on his hands . ..

[kugelrund]

Turning into your Grampy

Perhaps both of these grandfathers were keen computer gamers.