Self-justification

Don't waste any time justifying yourself  - it rarely works and usually does more harm than good.

Preparing to worship

What to do immediately
before corporate worship of God
is not easy to know
but it's certainly a subject to which
it's worth giving thought.

Preaching

Whenever you preach
Be yourself from the start
And speak, I beseech,
Always straight from the heart

Temptation

Temptation is rarely very far away
It just varies its strength and approach from day to day

Extremity

A man will try anything in extremis - even praying to God!

Being sure

A mark of maturity in understanding a position you may hold is to also see what weaknesses it has.

(He could appreciate the value in something, even if he ultimately rejected that something – and could see the errors and flaws in something, even if he ultimately accepted that something. Eric Metaxas on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p 61)

Strong convictions

The man with strong convictions can afford to be liberal towards those with whom he disagrees.

Preaching

Entertainers amuse, politicians abuse,
But it's only preachers who come bearing good news.

New

A new year, a new month, a new week, a new day - the one who makes all things new gives opportunities aplenty to start out once again.

Means of grace

When we feel dead in making use of the means of grace, we should not abandon them but then especially seek to make use of them.

Morning communion 01

There's nothing like the silence of a brand new day
For getting on your knees and starting to pray

Am yer up?

My grandfather was born in Bilston though he came to Newport as a youngster. Apparently, he would at times shout this black country phrase at the bottom of the stairs to rouse his sons for school or work. "Am yer oop?"

Where do you think you are, down 'ome?

My nana (who started off in Bristol but lived in Newport most of her life) would say to me as a kid, if I did something cheeky
Where do you think you are, down home?

What did Horace say?

Sometimes if I mumbled my dad would say
What did Horace say?

Apparently it comes from a radio programme during WWII. Harry Hemsley had a family programme which featured 3 children, the youngest being Horace. Being the youngest, Horace wasn't able to speak clearly and whenever he said anything, the father would have to ask one of the other two children "What did Horace say?" and the child would translate.

'E 'ad it on 'im, aye

One of my dad's again - describing someone in a temper
'E 'ad it on 'im, aye
He might add that the man was tampin', South Walian dialect for very angry. Tamping could also be used for heavy rain as in "it's tamping down".

Lie down there and I'll fan you

One of my mother's this. It's ironic, of course, a response to laziness, though sometimes I would lie down and once she even did fan me! Apparently it is an RAF saying from the twenties, influenced perhaps by the existence of Raj punkah wallahs.

Lie down there and I'll fan you
(or Lay down there and I'll fan you).

Don't say I don't do anything for you

Don't say I don't do anything for you is a phrase I would hear as a child. It was used as a joke when someone did some small thing for a person. I used it just now pulling a harmless unnoticed thread from my wife's jumper.

Providence

"You can't prove anything from providence"

Again, I think this is original. It's not that you can't learn from providence or make an educated guess but you can't prove anything simply from what happened. "My children are okay so my way of bringing them up must be right", etc. The example I like best is when you're playing tennis in the garden and there is a disputed call and so you play the point again and when it turns out in your favour you say "shows I was right". It doesn't, of course, at all.

TV and E-mail

This is original I believe
If television has killed the art of conversation then the telephone and e-mail have killed the art of letter writing

A maxim a day

A maxim a day will help you maximise your day.
(It's a long time since I kept to this maxim but there was a time when I tried to. I'm still looking for a notebook of around 150 I did a while back).

Boiling gallops

My mother would sometimes say the kettle's "boiling gallops". I discussed it with her once and she said she thought it should be the kettle's galloping. The only reference to "boiling gallops" I can find on the net is an entry in a dictionary of Newfoundland English! See here.

Stone the crows

My mother would sometimes use this exclamation of incredulity or annoyance (sometimes with the adjective 'flaming' inserted).
Apparently, there have been a few attempts to explain the origin of this odd phrase. A croze is the groove at the end of a wooden barrel that holds the end plate in place. It has been suggested that the expression was previously stow the croze, ie break open the barrel. There's no support for this, though.

The more prosaic idea - an allusion to throwing stones at crows - is much more likely. Some English sources think it American and vice-versa but it is held to have originated in Australia. Most of the early citations in print come from there. It has a sort of Australian twang to it and is in common with several other similar phrases, all with the same meaning: starve the bardies [are grubs], stiffen the crows, spare the crow. If that's true I don't know how my mother came to use it.

More here.

Not down Cardiff

One of my dad's this
"You don't have to shout, I'm not down Cardiff!"

Well, I'll go to Cardiff

This is something my dad would say from time to time. In a book called 'Newport First Stop - 100 Years of News Stories' the author Derrick Cyril Vaughan begins Chapter 4 with these two paragraphs.

'Well I'll Go To Cardiff" 1850-1860
The title of this book reflects the importance to South Wales and Newport in particular of the coming of the railway. It opened up a whole new world to the inhabitants who up till then had perforce to use the stage-coaches for long journeys which could entail days of travel. Now it was possible for many of the cities of the United Kingdom to be reached in a few hours.
The fact that Newport was going to be the first stop on the line caused a certain amount of jealousy in Cardiff which had overtaken Newport both in size and population in the early forties. The knowledge that Newport, purely by geographical location, would receive the first train irked the Cardiffians no end and the Newportonians knew it. From that time on the expression "Well I'll go to Cardiff" was born and is used, particularly by old Newportonians, to denote amazement or disbelief.

See here.

The Bible repeats itself

I think this is original, though derivative. "The Bible repeats itself. It has to - no-one's listening."