Rhyming Slang

I'm sure lots of you have heard of Cockney Rhyming Slang. It's where instead of saying a word, you say a small phrase where the last word of the phrase rhymes with the word you are actually trying to say (this is really hard to explain).

For example, instead of saying "go up the stairs to bed" you could say "go up the apple and pears to bed". The thing that makes it complicated is you usually drop the second part of the phrase and just say the first part, the part that doesn't rhyme. So you would say "go up the apples to bed". The people I hang out with don't use really it (thankfully), but apparently in some parts of London people use it all the time.

Other examples I know of are "saucepan lids" for kids, "trouble and strife" for wife (somewhat ironic), "frog and toad" for road, "pig's ear" for beer, and "rub a dub" for pub (the last two are from Guthers t-shirt). There are stacks more that I can't think of right now, and even more that I'm sure I've never heard of. If you know some good ones, fill me in.

Anyway, the main point of this post is that I have recently realised that there are a couple of examples when we use rhyming slang in Australia, but most of us have probably never thought about it.

If I were to say that "I've had a barry", I'm sure you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. For those that don't, barry = Barry Crocker = shocker. That is, "I've had a shocker".

Another example would be "I haven't seen you in donkeys". Donkeys = donkey's ears = years. That is, "I haven't seen you in years".

I'd be really interested to hear if there are others in common usage in Australia that I've probably never thought about before.