Tiddly-pom

'Tiddly-pom' makes me think of Winnie-the Pooh, who used it in his Hums - 'Nobody knows, tiddly-pom, how cold my toes, tiddly-pom', and so forth. But a friend of ours sometimes referred to 'getting into a tiddly-pom' to mean 'being worked up, agitated, excited, anxious', that sort of thing.

You see, I just had to use six words to describe being in a 'tiddly-pom'. There isn't really a word for it, but there are lots of expressions meaning the same thing. 'In a spin' is probably the most usual one, but if something is literally spinning, and keeps spinning, its perfectly smooth and balanced, and not in a tiddly-pom at all.

The Scots talk about being in a 'stooshie'. I love that one. Then there's 'all of a doodah', which I often use when I'm all of a whatnot. 'Having a fit of the vapours' is good. I was having a wobble myself last night while we tried to work out how I can be in three places at once in a couple of weeks time. Oh, and there's Cockney rhyming slang. 'Two and eight' means two shillings and eight pence in old money, but it also means 'state'. So, if a Scot is in a stooshie, a Cockney is in a two and eight.

Any more? What do you say when you're all of a tiddly-pom?