1 EAGLETON NOTES: March 2009

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Sunday 22 March 2009

I'm Missing The Daffodils


Pat sent me an email today with some of her pics of my Scottish existence.  When I arrive home my plethora of daffodils will be gone: things of the past.  Shame really. I love daffodils and I miss their blooming in both New Zealand and Scotland.  And I miss my sea view.

Wednesday 18 March 2009

A Use of Time

For those of you who have read Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth  this posting may come as no revelation nor surprise.  (I notice that nowadays it's by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey but it weren't when I read it as a lad - sorry that has to be said with a Lancashire accent)   I've not seen the film but I doubt this bit made the celluloid.  

Frank Bunker Gilbreth Sr (July 7, 1868 - June 14, 1924) was an early advocate of scientific management and a pioneer of motion study, but is perhaps best known as the father and central figure of Cheaper by the Dozen.  

Anyway, I digress.  One of the things FBG Sr advocated was not wasing the time spent in the bathroom.  He put things to be learned by the children on the back of the bathroom door.  Many years before I read the book -  in fact when I were a lad - I used to take my Schoolboys Pocket Book to the bathroom with me and read all the interesting goodies it contained.  One of these was the Greek alphabet.  I learned it by rote before I left prep school.  At that stage I had no idea that all these years later it would serve me in such good stead.  "For what?"  you may well ask.  For doing cross-words.

Now didn't you just want to know all that?

Saturday 14 March 2009

Luxury Indeed

I was in one of the better menswear shops a few days ago trying to buy the old fashioned white hankies with a 'proper' border that didn't curl up when it was ironed.  The lady assistant remarked on the fact that I ironed my hankies.  I responded that, despite the comments of many of my friends - both male and female - on the subject of ironing as a waste of time, I didn't mind doing it and generally combined it with watching TV or suchlike.  Thus I don't feel guilty when I watch TV - which I would so often regard as a waste of time!

Somehow we strayed from ironing hankies to ironing in general.  I remarked that there was nothing better than ironed sheets.  Rather to my surprise she thought that that was going a bit too far.  I just love my sheets ironed.

In fact if I were really wealthy I would have my bed made up with fresh, immaculately ironed, superb quality (at least 400 threads per inch), Egyptian cotton sheets every day.  That would be luxury indeed.

Thursday 12 March 2009

The Frogs Have Been Busy

I wondered whether the frogs had returned again to the pond.  They have.  And how.  Pat took this photo for me: