after the Lord Mayor's show

English

Etymology

• from the proverb "After the Lord Mayor's show comes the dust-cart" (or "donkey-cart", or "shit-cart"). Bringing up the rear of the Lord Mayor's Show is a team to clean the manure of the pageant's horses.

1864 George Waters, Indian gleanings and thoughts of the past p.154 (G.H. Windeyer, Chatham):

• as is usual on all such occasions, after gaiety comes squalor; or, as we observe in respect to the annual pageant of the City of London that "after the Lord Mayor's Show comes a,—donkey-cart,"

Phrase

after the Lord Mayor's show

1. (idiomatic) Said of a disappointing or mundane event occurring straight after an exciting, magnificent, or triumphal event.
   • 1995 Dec. 10, Clem Thomas, "White hot Swansea", The Independent (UK):

     The All Whites came into this match hotfoot from their stunning victory over Castres last Tuesday which took them into the semi-final of the prototype European Cup. ... For a while it looked as if it might be a case of after the Lord Mayor's show as Swansea struggled with one of their dozy moods, against Treorchy.

   • 2006, Jeremy Carrad, Running on Empty, (Pegasus Elliot Mackenzie, ISBN 1843862182), p. 40:

     "After the Lord Mayor's Show."

     Freddy looked up from reading Punch.

     "What is, old fruit?"

     "The excitement's gone. Back to dull monotony."

See also

• anticlimax; hangover

References

• 1986 Eric Partridge, Paul Beale A dictionary of catch phrases: British and American, from the sixteenth century to the present day (Routledge, 2nd edition) ISBN 041505916X