The horse's laugh

“Soon as I told you I was in Dickie’s Meadow,² with this damned fortune to be shipped and Sturgess in dock, what sympathy did dear old friend Flashy offer? The horse’s laugh, and wished me joy!”


2. “Dickey”, meaning shaky or uncertain, has a currency of centuries, but “in Dickie’s meadow”, meaning in serious trouble is, or was a North Cumbrian expression, and it has been suggested (fancifully, no doubt) that since Richard III was in his younger days Warden of the West March with his head-quarters in Carlisle, where he is commemorated in one of the city’s principal streets, Rickergate, the proverbial “meadow” may have been Bosworth Field.


Flashman on the March, p.3, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Bred in the bone

      That, of course, was the point. She was my grand-daughter, and what’s bred in the bone . . . oh, but she’d hocussed me properly, playing shrinking Purity, and I’d been ready to shell out half my fortune — and I’d come within an ace of committing murder for her.



Flashman and the Tiger, pp.310-11, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Size of a tangerine

All kind of mad fancies flit by — not to be taken seriously, you understand, but food for wild imaginings — like bleaching your hair and striking out for Valparaiso under the name of Butterworth and never looking near England again . . . two million quid, Lord love us! Aye, but d’you dispose of a diamond the size of a tangerine?

Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.314, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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A continual funk

At first I went about in a continual funk, but after a while one became fatalistic; possibly from dealing with people who believe that every man’s fortune is unchangeably written on his forehead.

Flashman, p.111, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.

Fortune

...and by that time I had taken fortune by the foreskin, in my own way.

Flashman, p.69, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, foreskin, fortune.