A sentimental, lamp-based memoir is in Frank’s cupboard this week…
One of the more bewildering features of my childhood was my father’s fondness for saying, whenever I behaved in a foolish manner, “You’re as daft as a Toc H lamp”. (My father had grown up in Manchester, and never lost his accent, so one must imagine this said with a short, northern “a” in “daft”.) I had, of course, no idea what on earth he was talking about, though I did devise, in my head, an image of a Toc H lamp, which I pictured as a sort of hanging gas-lantern, possibly in a mineshaft.
It was many years later that I discovered part of the reason for my bafflement. My father had mangled the saying “dim as a Toc H lamp”, which at least has a certain internal logic. A lamp cannot be daft, but it can be dim. And the Toc H lamp, far from being the industrial revolution-era lantern of my imagination, was an Aladdin’s lamp, with a dull yellow glow, the symbol of the Toc H organisation. Toc H, originally Talbot House, was – still is – a Christian movement founded in Belgium during World War One by British army chaplain Neville Talbot and by the Reverend “Tubby” Clayton. The idea was to provide a recreational centre for soldiers to lure them away from the debaucheries to which they were prey when on leave.
Toc H survives as a Christian charity to this day, with its headquarters still at Talbot House in the Belgian town of Poperinghe, and branches around the world. It seems to be particularly active in Australia. My father, as a Mancunian Catholic, never had any connections with this strongly Protestant organisation, and I can only assume he picked up the phrase, and twisted the sense out of it, during his time in the army.
When I became a father myself, I occasionally found myself telling my own sons that they were as daft as a Toc H lamp. No doubt they were as bewildered as I had been. But I like to think that if and when they become parents themselves, they will pass on the phrase, yea unto every generation. It is in such ways that memories are kept alive. It may well be, in a hundred years time, that a future descendant of mine will gently chide their child for being daft as a Toc H lamp. They will almost certainly have no inkling of what they are talking about, but a faint echo of my father will survive.
‘Dim as a Toc H lamp’ was a favourite judgement of my gran’s. And like yourself, for many years I had no bloody idea what she was taking about. I found out the background later but that image is the first time, in very nearly 53 years, that I’ve seen what it was she was talking about.
I remember Dad saying that too – I always imagined a lamp on a miner’s helmet, connecting the saying with his northern roots. Strange to find out it is connected to Belgium. I wonder if Mum ever knew the phrase was connected to her country – I imagine her regarding it as another weird English saying, there were so many she had to learn. Another phrase I remember Dad saying, but only the first fragment: “One ‘ot flea rod…” Our brother Stephen could say the whole thing in the appropriate northern accent. I believe that was really connected with mining. Stephen, please refresh our memories. Then there was the admonition “What do you think this is, Blackpool illuminations?” when we failed to turn off a light.
I think you are confusing your childhood with a Monty Python sketch (possibly with some justification).
“One of t’ flea rod’s gone out askew on treadle” is a line from the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition sketch.
Frank, I don’t remember being on the receiving end of ‘dim as a Toc H lamp’, but on more than one occasion I copped it for: ‘You’re as dim as a NAAFI candle!’ The outstanding case was when I put a golf ball (thrown not clubbed) through our bathroom window just before my older brother was due to step in the bath as he prepared for an evening of canoodling with his girlfriend – possibly under a Toc H lamp or a NAAFI candle.
Thanks for clearing something up. I’ve heard it said “dim as a Toc H lamp” but thought it was a lamp outside the door of a Toc H house rather like the blue lamp outside the nick. So, it’s an oil lamp, rather like Aladdin’s.
Of course, we were often “as daft as a solar powered torch”.