Spending Time on the Loo

For my readers in the USA the title is "Spending Time in the Washroom" and for Canada substitute "Restroom".

When I was about 9 I was given The Schoolboy’s Pocket Book. It was a truly wonderful treasure trove of information including The Universe, Solar System, The World, Language, Tables and Formulæ (sic), Hobbies, Pastimes and Sports.

I used to shut myself in the bathroom with it and learn as much as I could. Unfortunately I was born with a very poor memory and getting things to stick in my brain was not, and still is not, easy. So I would write things out and pin them in places where I could see them and recite them which is why, over 60 years later, I can still recite the Greek alphabet. My brother reminded me a few weeks ago that as a result of me reciting it, he too (who had my share of memory as well as his own) can still recite it. I have to say that it has proved invaluable when doing crosswords.

Looking at some of the book's pages today gave food for thought and some interesting information.

Some is presumably relevant today:

Some probably not!

And  some might look quite bizarre by today's standards. I wonder if any of these records remain today.

Years later I came across Frank Bunker Gilbreth the father of work study and O&M (Organisation and Methods) having read the book by two of his 12 children, Frank and Ernestine, entitled Cheaper By The Dozen. One of his tricks was to put things he wanted the children to learn on the back of the toilet door.

So I have always used my time in the loo to good effect.

Nowadays if you play WWF (Words With Friends - a derivation of Scrabble) with me then there is a likelihood that my turn was taken in the bathroom.

I thought you’d like to know that.

Things I Learned Whilst Thinking

I've been back at work in the last few months helping my son at the house he's building on the Island. It's been a lovely experience for many reasons not least of which is feeling useful and spending time with Gaz. 

I have spent time painting walls and ceilings and it gave me time to think.

Gaz has BBC Radio 6 Music playing all the time. Until I started working with Gaz I'd never listened to the station. I have always considered myself to have very catholic tastes in music: opera, operetta, religious music, classical (romantic classical being my principal source of listening), jazz (blues slightly less so), country and western, folk, pop/rock and other genre. However I have learned that there is a huge amount of what may possibly be described a non-mainstream pop and rock out there. More than that though I have heard music which very much reminded me of Simeon ten Holt and Steve Reich and it made me ponder on the blurry divide between some pop and rock and classical.

The second thing it made me think about was good old apprenticeships. I've been painting and paperhanging since my early 20s and although I won't paperhang any more I do paint. I discovered, though, that after nearly 50 years I still really didn't know much about it nor did I have the skills I thought I had. This last few weeks I've done a lot of painting and have been watching a master painter and decorator at work. My painting, though far from perfect, is now much better than it was a few months ago. Most of us won't notice the difference between our amateur painting and that of a master craftsman but I do now. It made me ponder on a subject that I used to think about a lot: apprenticeships. Craftsmen used to learn at the side of the master. The master could have pride in the craftsmen he'd trained and the apprentice acquired the skill and learned the 'tricks of the trade'. 

I’m Ashamed

I have been having difficulty with the Times 2 crossword.  This is NOT, I hasten to add, The Times Crossword which is cryptic and completely beyond my comprehension.  Although I did once get a clue – about 30 years ago!  Anyway one clue on Monday for the Times 2 was ‘Successor to Julius Caesar’. Hmm.  Claudius lived about then.  Correct number of letters.  Fitted with two of the other clues I had.  Gave it a shot.  Later having almost finished it I had to re-examine it because what I thought was the answer to one of the other clues wouldn’t fit.  Eventually I decided that I didn’t know (mind blank time) and looked it up in one of my many reference books.  I take the view that in an emergency one can confirm or find information using a book.  It’s only cheating if you Google it!  That’s what you do when you realise there’s no hope!

The list of Roman Emperors didn’t include Julius Caesar.  Huh!  Julius Caesar was a Roman Emperor.  Wasn’t he?  No.  He wasn’t.  Apparently.  I am totally ashamed to say that I had never realised (or if I ever did know, I’d lost the knowledge long ago) that the Roman Empire started after his reign.  Julius was Caesar of the Roman Republic.  He was followed by Augustus, who was the first Emperor.  I’ve spent ages this morning reading it all up on Wikipedia.

So now I know.

The Adventures of Pip

This morning as I put away Archie and Mehitabel (a book by Don Marquis) having just re-read the piece of blank verse entitled a spider and a fly (the verse is not only blank but contains no upper case characters nor punctuation) which I was going to send to a friend.  My mind then wandered to what the fly had been saying in justification of its existence.  Then I recalled that I knew about flies and germs from Enid Blyton’s book The Adventures of Pip (written in 1948) which I had read when I was knee high to a grasshopper and from which I had learned so many things.  In fact it is a testament to the book’s author that I can remember much of what I learned and can actually trace it back to that book.

A propos this morning’s thoughts I learned that a Bluebottle (a large fly in case they are called something different in the US) carried germs from rubbish and dung heaps and deposited them on our food and so on.  I also recall that, as would have been usual then, good triumphed over evil and a Robin ate the Bluebottle. 

But I also learned that some trees (I think it was a chestnut) had buds covered with sticky stuff to prevent them freezing (although it didn’t explain about the chemistry involved – and at around the age of 5 I wouldn’t have understood anyway); that caddis larvae covered themselves with bits of vegetation to prevent tadpoles eating them; that male sparrows had black bibs'; that Blackbirds have bright yellow beaks; that you could tell the weather from the Scarlet Pimpernel; that the Hermit Crab had no shell so used discarded shells from other creatures.  There was also something about catkins and lambs tails but that’s a bit hazy.  There was so much more but all things have to end somewhere.  So this post ends here.

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?