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The bin's ash remarkable

Posted by Simon Bland on January 13, 2011 at 15:12

Has anyone heard the phrase "the bin's ash remarkable" [possibly 'bins ash' or even 'binzash']? My grandmother, who died very recently at the age of 101 was fond of using this phrase, but I can find no trace of it on the internet and no one who has heard it before. She would use it to mean "being in serious trouble", as in "Simon, if I see you taking any more of those biscuits, you will really be in the bin's ash remarkable."; "If Mr Churchill hadn't taken over the country when he did we would all have been in the bin's ash remarkable."

I'm beginning to suspect that this phrase was just part of her own idiolect or peculiar to her immediate family, but would very much like to hear from anyone who may have come across it. She spent some time in India in the 1930s and it it is possible that the 'bin's ash' part is derived from Hindi or other Indian language, although more probably (and prosaically) it is literally ashes from a fire put in the bin. Any ideas?

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