Tag Archives: truth

Wash Time is A-coming – –

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Jack gets over the line – just – –

Yesterday was Wendy’s birthday and her present took a fair bit of work and preparation. When she just missed out in a job interview recently she decided her consolation prize should be the bathroom of her dreams. So I set to work – –

The bathroom we inherited was functional but drab, with an ancient tub we couldn’t keep clean and uneven yellow tiles that leaked!

We sent out a request locally for recommendations of competent folk to carry out the job. In a previous post I mentioned the arrival of Tom and how we weren’t too sure.

He turned to be much more than competent in every way.

A plumber, carpenter, tiler and designer – all in one person. But more than that, anything we needed done while he was here he also did and without us asking!

He also made sure our cats didn’t end up trapped under the floor and got to know them well.

What he didn’t know was that Wendy’s birthday was approaching, but he worked until late on Monday so everything would be finished and ready.

Of course I had to add something so I painted the ceiling and untiled sections of walls before Tom arrived. The pale blue wall color was her choice but she allowed me a small hidden area of orange to make me feel better!

A&A Home Improvements are hereby thoroughly recommended!

A lovely bowl of roses arrived today for Wendy with a card from Tom – – –

Inch by Inch – – –

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Jack just makes it in time – –

One of my early memories is of being given a new jotter (exercise book) at the beginning of each school year when I was attending primary (elementary) school. Some pages were plain, some were lined and some were graph paper. The cover was blue but it’s the back I particularly remember!

On the back cover were various lists of measurements – all incomprehensible imperial ones!

Pounds, shillings and pence – 20 shillings in a pound, 12 pennies in a shilling, 4 farthings in a penny – –

Just to confuse further there were guineas! 21 shillings!!

I won’t get into the slang terms – a bob, half a bob, half a crown, a tanner – –

Then there was linear measurement –

Furlongs, chains, miles, yards, feet and inches – –

I was so used to feet and inches that, when I eventually started teaching apprentice painters (who had grown up with decimals) I had real difficulty converting.

Also, there was capacity –

Gallons, quarts, pints, half pints – –

Paint cans went from gallons to 5 litres, but when I moved to the US I found that an American gallon is smaller than an imperial one – –

Finally –

There were weights as well – tons, hundredweights, stones, pounds and ounces.

We were required to recite all this stuff regularly and be tested on our knowledge!

Eventually decimalization and the metric system arrived and everything became much simpler. But for some reason wallpaper continued to be 21 inches wide and 7 yards long – – –

I wondered why ‘jotter’ also crops up when you are ‘given your jotters’ – in other words fired/sacked/laid off. So I asked my friends on Facebook – that will be a different post – – –