S is for SAYINGS

'What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?' dad would say, when someone had said or done something that they might not have done, if more thought had been given to the consequences. I think at times it carried a vague reference to their family tree but often was nothing more than dad saying, 'I tole you so, that's what they're really like.' Dad was no angel but he tended to speak his mind. As we would say, 'he had no back doors,' for 'what you saw was what you got.' It wasn't the only saying he had. Often when a female visitor had left after dominating the conversation for a whole evening, he would utter, ' that woman would deave you,' a reference to the fact that listening to her for any longer might cause one to lose all sense of hearing, or else he would say, 'she could talk the leg of a stool,' obviously a pretty difficult job at the best of times. Or if one of my favourite singers was performing on the box, he would be likely to intervene with, 'that's the tune the oul cow died of,' which did my confidence in recognising a good song no end of damage. Likewise, I remember on several occasions after a small misdemeanour, like spilling a mug of tea over the tablecloth, he would look at me and say, 'you big-headed ram.' That was the ultimate insult he could utter at such a time and it was taken in the same vein as it was given and after one or two more additional comments, it seemed to appease his frustration and he would carry on as if nothing had happened. Later in life, he would use the same phrase to one of his grandsons, when they erred at the table, however the smile on his face as he spoke suggested that it was offered more in jest than in earnest. And he had his own language for the weather for in one day it go from 'spittin' to 'teemin' to 'a right wee shower' to 'a real wettin rain'. Or if one of his heifers was keen to have a male friend he would talk about her 'lookin away.'

Mum had a few sayings of her own, including, 'I'm going to wet the tea,' but she would have been more likely to have a verse from the Bible to endorse what she wanted to say than fall back on a well worn phrase. It's funny, but most of the things they said I find mingling with my own vocabulary from time to time.Such sayings are part of every day life here and I remember well when a previous boss was in a bad mood that a colleague would always refer to this by saying 'the ducks are in the nettles.' At such times you knew to avoid the area, presumably until the ducks had gone to a less weeded area.

But the other day I heard a new phrase that I'd never come across before. I was having a long chat with a friend and we got to talking about our families. I had remembered well the times his father had visited our house when I was still at primary school. He was a cattle dealer, like my dad, and most of the talk centred around the price of bullocks and heifers at the various markets they visited. This was interspersed with talk about people they both knew and as he sat there in his brown dealer's boots, still bearing the freshness of the cattle market he had just left, I listened with a captivating interest at the stories he could tell and the all-consuming way he could relate them. He really was a colourful character and though his language was not always to mum's liking he could hold you spellbound with his conversation. And that is what I told his son, for those are the memories I had of the man. But I was stunned by his reply for he said, 'well, when he came home, he always hung his fiddle on the door.' For a moment, I wasn't sure what he meant and then I realise that the character I had known was not the person his family saw. It stopped me in my tracks, not simply because my young mind had shown such a lack of discernment, but because I wondered how others saw me.

Am I always the same with everybody? In terms of my faith do I compromise to find favour? Is the person my family knows, the character that others see? Yet most important, is the image I portray to others, the real person that God knows? It's sobering to think, as James warns us that, 'Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.' Paul, in writing to the church at Phillipi reminds them that' Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.' for he is the same 'yesterday and today and forever.'

I don't want to hang my fiddle on the door. I want to bring it into every place I go. I want to share my faith with whom God chooses and not with my own choices. That would be music to His ears.