Flat Out Like A Lizard Drinking
Recently I’ve been flat out like a lizard drinking. After having used this colloquial phrase a few times, I started wondering about its origins, and found these definition on the Urban Dictionary website:
Flat out like a lizard drinking
1. Verb/simile. To be working really hard, or so under the pump that you’ve found yourself dehydrated.
2. Adj. Simile. To be extremely busy to the point of running “flat out,” a play on words involving the image of a lizard that physically stretches itself thin to literally drink water from a pond etc.
3. To be, or have been, hard at work. Originating in Australia.
I have indeed been rather busy lately, which is why I haven’t updated this blog (or the rest of this website) for a long time. My readers may know I’ve been studying and working for some time now, which accounts for my flat-out-ness and reduction in spare time.
In April I reduced my studies to half of full time, and with a job also amounting to half of full time, I thought things would be more balanced. Not so! My assignments became more time consuming, which apparently is normal in the end stages of the course I’m studying (but they didn’t tell us that at the beginning). Then I acquired another job doing casual relief work in a number of libraries, with the amount of work so far exceeding my expectations. Between the two jobs I’m now working more than full time, while my home computer sits unemployed and neglected on most days.
It’s a good sort of busyness, though. With all the economic gloom we hear on the news, I feel blessed to have as much work as I can fit in. Also my two jobs are very different and provide balance and variety, while both being close to home and in my field of study.
I do hope to fit in some writing occasionally, because I find it therapeutic … but if I don’t it’s because I’m like a lizard drinking: flat out.
Hi Graham, I am so glad that you’re still around, I’ve missed hearing from you.
Posted on 25-Jul-09 at 1:38 am | PermalinkHi there. Love your explanation of a favourite colloquialism. Am curious about your field of study given your wide range of interests. Good luck - study combined with work is a real slog
Posted on 12-Aug-09 at 10:16 pm | PermalinkHi Oldgirl - I’m studying in Library and Information Services, to be a library technician (one step down from a librarian).
I’ve been described by many as “anal retentive”, a psychological term which describes someone who is very orderly, detail-oriented, and with a special interest in collecting, possessing, and retaining objects. This description, which I think is accurate, makes me suitable for library work and probably accounts for my hobbies too.
Posted on 13-Sep-09 at 6:52 pm | PermalinkHi Graham,
I enjoyed stumbling across your website. I was checking on the wines of the Plantangenet Winery as I am presenting a wine tasting for member’s of the Keswick Wine Circle (Cumbria, UK) in a couple of weeks, and two of the wines are from Mt Barker … a Riesling and a Pinot Noir.
By strange coincidence, I used to live in Perth W.A. (in 1961!)I left after 6 months to travel across the Nullarbor Plain to Adelaide and eventually Melbourne (which is where my interest in wine started) then moved on after two years to Wellington, N.Z. and after another couple of years returned back to the UK.
I well remember driving across to Kalgoorlie, down to Norseman, and then leaving the black top road behind heading for Cocklebiddy, Belladonna, and it was so hot… hot enough to fry an egg on the car bonnet! In fact it was so hot,,, the 1948 Ford V8 Canadian Field Ambulance (Registered in Manjimup) kept stopping …. and I discovered later it was the petrol evaporating before it reached the carbie … so drove at night in the cool….
In Melbourne, I worked for F. Kanematsu/Bill Gunson Pty and a guy I worked with once said…’flat out like a lizard drinking!’
Well, it’s bedtime here so I’d better be off. Cheers, Peter
From Peter Edwards, Melmerby, Cumbria CA10 1HH
Posted on 04-Mar-10 at 7:53 am | Permalink