Just saying

The funny things kids say never fail to tickle us.

The Dark Lordette spoke with a lisp for the first seven years of her life. I used to say it’s only a speech impediment here – if she’d been born in Catalonia, Spain, everything is pronounced with a TH!

Retired teacher Julie Coan, in Heywood, Greater Manchester, writes: “I spent many happy years teaching infants in a primary school in Greater Manchester and I have such great memories of deciphering five-year-olds’ spellings.

“One favourite was a little girl who had been on holiday to Pawchicle, which turned out to be Portugal.”

Reader Julie also has another very funny story just in time for bonfire season. She says: “After a lesson on Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, I was puzzled when one little lad asked how to spell China.

“When I read his sentence later, he’d put, ‘Guy Fawkes was China blow the king up’. He meant ‘trying to’! Maybe this is how we talk up North? Ha ha!”

And Arthur Cooper in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, was shamed for a grooming fail. He writes: “My fiveyear-old granddaughter,

Florence, was looking up at me intently from the floor as I sat on the sofa about a year ago.

“After a few minutes, she said, ‘Grandad, why are you growing a beard down your nose?’

“I laughed and jumped up to do the necessary!”

But today’s Mrs Malaprop is Patricia Blake’s wonderful granny. Reader Patricia, who lives in Ammanford, Dyfed, writes: “My late grandmother told me that she had a chair with tuberculosis legs (tubular), eucalyptus on the ceiling (anaglypta) and even had her dog humanised (immunised).

“And in our family, her favourite comedian, Jimmy Tarbuck, will forever be known as Jimmy Tarbrush!”

Send us your funny or quirky family sayings – you can email them over to me at siobhan. mcnally@mirror.co.uk