In our gang it was "as thick as a bible".

Our mother was forever saying she might as well be "talking to the wall" as trying to get us to do anything, and if she was going out she was "going away with a sailor". The trouble is, a lot of the time we believed she was going to do this!

Another saying was "Ten o'clock (or whatever the time was) and not a child in the house washed--and the streets full of sailors!"

Don