I was chatting to a friend at work the other day. They were telling me all about their weekend and how they had been out to a nightclub and got “totally rat arsed”. It made me feel very old but not that envious, to be honest. I was never a club raver even when I was younger and going out purely to get so drunk you won’t remember it in the morning seems like a complete waste of time to me. As I said, maybe I’m just old?

Anyway, my workmate finished her story by telling me “then I went straight to bed and slept like a baby.” I looked at her and just thought, “what a stupid expression!”

Unless my workmate was telling me she woke up five times, screamed her head off, shit her pants and got it all over the sheets, the expression “sleeping like a baby” is all wrong. In fact, I’m convinced the only people out there who say they “slept like a baby” don’t actually have one.

Another expression I really don’t understand is “taking candy from a baby”. This is meant to imply that something is easy! Have you ever tried to take ANYTHING from a baby they don’t want you to take? Aside from the fact the little devils have superhuman grip, the result of taking it is normally loud screaming, crying and flailing around. I would never use this expression to describe ANYTHING as easy.

One last expression that drives me potty is: “there is no use crying over spilt milk”. I guess I can kind of see the point here but if that milk has been painstaking squeezed from your breasts by something resembling a milking/torture device and it has taken you half an hour to get two fucking ounces you can bet I’m going to bloody cry over it!

Are there any stupid expressions you don’t really understand?