At Home With Fourstar

My good friend Alex recently posted the following question over at his blog:

What is your favorite "at home" phrase?

and it led me to think about the nonsense I spout on a semi-daily basis. Now I have distinctly different "at home" and "at work" phrases (as should everyone...) but for the purposes of this exercise, there is one Pharaoh of phrases, an Excalibur of exclamations, the Prince of proclamations, which is:

"Everyone's a winner, petit dejeuner"

Back in the heady days when I used to play sax in a touring soul covers band, we shared the stage with two of the most hilarious guys I have ever met. Tony (trombone) and Shaun (guitar) had known each other for years and had such a natural rapport they could easily have been working the clubs as a double act. They would have the tour bus in stitches at their tales of derring do and natural affinity for the absurd, which lifted the spirits of those humour-sapping drives across, say, for example, to pick somewhere totally at random, Lincolnshire.

However, whenever something went particularly well (which could be anything ranging from a well-paid gig in Dublin to a delicious sausage roll from a Sunderland truckstop), without fail Shaun would exclaim "Everyone's a winner!" always followed closely by Tony's rejoinder of "Petit dejeuner!".

Now quite why a French breakfast should be the epitome of delight for two jobbing musicians from York, I have no idea - and I'm not sure they did either. However, it stuck with me and to this day, when something goes well at work or at home, this is the line I come out with.

Breaking The Seal

There are some things in life to which you want to be first.

I'm not talking about the North Pole, the finish line of the New York marathon or the handbag department of Selfridges on Boxing Day.

No, what I find the most satisfying of all is being the first person to plunge a knife into a brand new pot of Marmite. Penetrating the slight oily sheen and carving down into the murky depths of its rich, black goodness, leaving an almost perfectly hemispherical scar in the otherwise pristine surface.

Clearly, this is not limited to Marmite; many other spreads lend themselves to this phenomena. Peanut butter (smooth more than crunchy) is good, as is Nutella.

However, although you'd think they might, pots of jam & marmalade really don't give that same exhilarating feeling of being the one to break virgin territory. And honey is rubbish as it 'self-heals'.

So what do you like to be first to?

First person to say '...point out that you have ended your sentence with a preposition' owes me a bag of Twiglets.