Author: Liz Dawes
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I had a job interview recently, and one of my girlfriends told me she’d cross her fingers for me

Another remarked that in her native Sweden, they would “squeeze their thumbs”; the equivalent in Botswana has the literal translation: “I will stand on my toe”.  I love idioms; they aren’t supposed to make sense (it’s actually not that hard to compare an apple and an orange, when you think about it).  It’s only when you trip over them in another language that you realise how absurd yet lovely they are.

My obsession with strange sayings started with my Great Aunt Gertrude, who had a colourful phrase for every occasion.  If she saw someone very cross, for example, she would say they had: “a face like a smacked bottom.”  She would have liked the Puerto Rican for an angry expression too: “Una Cara De Telefono Ocupado” or “a face like a busy telephone”.  I suppose that if the fury continued, it would eventually reach “the last straw” which the French refer to as “le fin des haricots!” Literally: “the end of the beans!” (Never underestimate the seriousness with which a Frenchman takes his bean.  If you do you may see him join the Chinese and “expel smoke from the seven orifices”).

Food is always a great source of amusement.  The Dutch “sweat carrots” (sweat like a pig), the Czechs “walk around hot porridge” (beat about the bush), and the Italians have their “ears lined with ham” (meaning to not hear what can clearly be heard.)

Splendidly obtuse, and undoubtedly my favourite, is the Colombian phrase for being hopelessly in love: “To be swallowed like a postman’s sock”.
There are plenty of phrases for a person who is very lucky – in Italy you are “born with the shirt” which is reasonably close to our idea of being born with a silver spoon.  Less explicable, and yet tremendously Gallic is the French equivalent: “avoir le cul borde de nouilles” meaning “to have an arse full of noodles.” 

It turned out that all the finger crossing and thumb squeezing and toe standing did the trick, and without a noodle in sight I managed to secure the job, which is good, save that I am now in a total panic about how to juggle work and childcare, while fitting in enough time to write.  “We probably should have thought of that before you accepted” said Fireman, unhelpfully.  At least he’s not Russian.  Had he been, I would have had the indignity of him pointing out: “Snyavshi shtany, po volosam ne gladyat.”

“Once you’ve taken off your pants, it’s too late to look at your hair.”