Originally charcoal on textured paper by Yvonne Dorward [click for large version (730kB)],
which hangs at the shareholders' end of the bar at Ti Tree

another John Clancy link [Not Found, 2006]

Note: There was a get-together at Ti Tree on 3-4 May 1996 at Clancy's Place, which resolved to make it an annual event, every May Day weekend. But then the Place was demolished, razed, in April 1999, and the block is run by Anmatjere Community Government Council has erected their main building there.

1. ... of the Overdraft.
2. Soupers, just soupers. [Irish who moved to Scotland for a bowl of soup; antecedents thus described]
3. Mrs Clancy's pride and joy

Visiting

4. Lock up the cutlery / Lock up the fowl house!
5. Have you had a feed?
6. Take the weight off your feet.
7. Count the spoons, count the spoons!
8. Why don't you lot go to bed so we can go home.
9. Au reservoir / Tanks!
10. Throw a rock on the roof 
    

Conversation

11. To make a short story as long as I possibly can, ...
12. Lend me your tolerant ear...; ...your shell-pink ear...
13. Did you do aah aahs this morning?
14. Resume your customary silence.
15. Have a verbal rest.
16. Never just tell a friend: he has a friend...
17. Never waste a lie when the truth will do.
18. He didn't let the facts spoil a good story.
19. We were just having a glass... of tea...
20. (As my mother used to say:) If you have an hour to spend, don't spend it with someone who hasn't.
21. (As my mother used to say:) If you can't speak well of someone, say nothing at all.
22. It's not what he said, it's how he said it.
23. Have you got your hearing aid on?
24. You get a crook seed in all packets.
25. If life were a thing that money could buy
The rich would live and the poor would die;
But God in his wisdom has made it so
That rich and poor alike must go.
26. There be no good or bad but the mind makes it so.
27. Christ and all his disciples couldn't tell me that...
28. A fool can ask a question (that) a wise man can never answer.
29. Speaking as an uneducated man... [before incisive response]
30. Where did I go wrong?
31. (As my mother used to say:) You'll only miss me when I'm gone.
32. It's an ill wind, ...
33. Coming events cast a shadow before them.
34. That is for sure and for certain.
35. Is it what...!

Words

36. ... if that'll do for a word.
37. in your paw-paws
38. tootsies
39. He is nothing but the two ends and the middle of a... dirty dusty dog.
40. I'm not as think as you drunk I am.
41. Edward the marsupial...
42. Full marks!...or Karl Marx.
43. palsie-walsie
44. the dough re mi
45. Girlie
46. Petals
47. Pongleterre
48. grizzle
49. earbash
50. having a wonga
51. I've got the CRAFT disease: can't remember a thing.
52. an excellent forgettery
53. If ph spells f, how do you say upholstery?
54. Was Marconi a half-caste? [asked in the Alice Springs Verdi Club]
55. DVWP -- God Willing Weather Permitting
56. Pygmalion!
57. As Omar Khayam says in A Pilgrim's Progress, "A man's a man for all that".

Method

58. That very uncommon thing: common sense.
59. What we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.
60. There's two ways of doing that: the right way and the way you're doing it. /
There's two ways to do it, this way and the right way.
61. the awkwidity of it...
62. Put your hands in your pockets and do the brainy bit.
63. Don't get blood on that axe!
64. There's a difference between timber and wood.
65. Did you hear about the one-armed violin player...
66. Move over here a bit and block the whole bloody path.
67. Ever used a plectrum? Back of the knife towards the handle of the steel so you don't get blood on the handle. Wrist only.
68. [... or something:] I'll take the something.
69. You never say please with an order.
70. Are you asking me or telling me?
71. The only thing wrong was he was right...
72. (I'm a bloody idiot, but) a bloody idiot that know's he's an idiot may be just that little bit in front!
73. (As Churchill said:) There are pages of British history best left unturned.
74. They lived on tinned dog and none of them would ever get a place on a cricket team. [the household of the author of Vision Splendid]
75. Marriage is a lottery, few draw a prize.
76. ... to try and wipe a bit of mud off my name.
77. Half the fleet in town and not a girl in the house washed.
78. He was at zig and I was at zag...
79. Happy Jack they call me.
80. Stop looking, I've found it!
81. Where's me beads...
82. Fiat (bloody) lux.

Labour

83. I'll do the brainy bit.
84. On the mad end of a pick.
85. (You deserve something for that:) Take a dollar out of the housekeeping (as soon as you get home).
86. There was no shortage of work. The only problem was getting paid for it. [on the Depression]
87. "Never to be employed by NSW Government Railways / Tourist Bureau".
88. We don't need commies to stuff the system, we're doing very well without them.

Food

89. He wasn't a bad cook as cooks go, and as cooks go... he went.
90. Cooks and cuckoos, food poisoners and fair bloody bastards.
91. Don't interfere with the bait-layer.
92. Don't tell me now, think about it! [immediately following for instance "Are you hungry?", or "How many eggs?"]
93. Never give a woman a sharp knife.
94. If you want to help me, stay out of the kitchen!
95. Get the tools.
96. Steward!...
97. Feel the weight of that...
98. Murphs. / Le moeuf. (Only the uneducated call them pommes de terre.)
99. I had a feed last week.
100. I know what's in it.
101. Hunger's the best sauce.
102. (As my mother-in-law used to say:) Dolly's wax.

Health

103. ... white ants (in the chest)
104. ... the universal binder...
105. There's only one cure for sea-sickness: sit under a gum tree.
106. There's no drunk like a reformed drunk.
107. That is as I see it.

Northern Territory Archives Service held:

CLANCY, John
NTRS 226 Oral history interview TS 509
NTRS 1304 Personal diaries of John William Clancy 1934-1986
NTRS 1341 Slides of J.W. Clancy 1991

© 1996 David Nash