I may have previously alluded to my family’s liking for a good catch phrase. Ones that could be repeated infinitely, it seemed.
After a while of using favourite phrases, they come to have their own conversational uses. Ones that fitted a particular type of new circumstance, depending on the saying.
In my family, growing up, there was something you could say when you continued eating and finished something up. “I’m just checking to see if there is cheese at the bottom.”
This was Winnie the Pooh’s marvellous excuse for investigating a full jar of honey in his larder, even though there was little reason to suspect it contained anything other than honey.
This phrase can be used for other situations where you are finishing something up, or investigating right to the end.
“Still reading that report?”
“Nearly done…just trying to see whether there’s cheese at the bottom.”
Try it for size over the weekend. Perfect for that Monday morning conversation with your boss.
Bis bald!
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Winnie the Pooh, Chapter V: In Which Piglet Meets a Heffalump
[Pooh checks the jar of honey in his possession – the one that he has agreed to put in the Heffalump trap.]
…”But you never can tell,” said Pooh. “I remember my uncle saying once that he had seen cheese just this colour.” So he put his tongue in, and took a large lick. “Yes,” he said, “it is. No doubt about that. And honey, I should say, right down to the bottom of the jar. Unless, of course,” he said, “somebody put cheese in at the bottom just for a joke. Perhaps I had better go a little further . . . just in case . . . in case Heffalumps don’t like cheese . . . same as me. . .”
A. A. Milne
[If you want to read the whole chapter, the link above will do just that.]