Simple Toys for Children to Make 1 – Feed the Brute!

By on May 8, 2012 in Home and Family, Household Hints & DIY

On Saturday, Freelance Unbound and I went to the Market Harborough Book Fair and I had the great good luck to find a 1930s book entitled ’Hundreds of Things a Boy Can Make’.  Well, as evolution would have it, seventy years later, girls have developed opposable thumbs and can make them too.

This will now become an occasional series which will be particularly useful at weekends, half terms and holidays.

FEED THE BRUTE!

What you will need:
1 x cardboard tube eg from a loo roll about 5” x 2“ (13cm x 5cm)
Scissors – sharp and pointy
Crayons, paints or marker pens
PVA glue
Bits of coloured card, paper, wool, goggly eyes etc
1 x shoebox lid
A bit of elastic – about 8” long and ¼” wide (20cm x 0.5cm)

How to make it:
Take your cardboard tube and cut a large circular hole in the side as shown in the illustration
Draw a face around the hole, using the hole as a big mouth
Now decorate the tube to look like a person.  The illustration shows a paper moustache and a mortarboard hat, but you could add woolly hair, goggly eyes, a hat, jumper etc
Now get the shoe box lid and cut out 2 1/2 ” (7cm)  square out of the upstanding edge of the shorter side.
Make a little hole on either side of the opening
Thread the piece of elastic through each hole and secure it with a knot
Stand the cardboard figure at the end of the lid and use the elastic like a catapult to fire small marbles or paper pellets into its mouth
Score a point for every marble or pellet you get in but lose a point if you knock him over!

Comments { 10 }

Top Tip for Mowing Wet Grass

By on May 7, 2012 in Household Hints & DIY, The Great Outdoors

This is an old gardening trick which is particularly relevant at the moment when, in Britain at least, every other human has foot root from the constant rain.

If your grass is desperate for a good mowing but is very wet, walk up and down the lawn with a rake and bash the grass with it.  This knocks all the water off the grass onto the soil and allows you to mow with ease.

Comments { 6 }

Sunday Poem 137

By on May 6, 2012 in Culture

Sorry this is so late – long, long day….

The Thought-Fox – by Ted Hughes (1930-1998)

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest :
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star :
Something more near
Though deeper within the darkness
Is entering the loneliness :

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf ;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still ; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

This poem can be found in ‘Verses of the Poets Laureate: From Dryden to Andrew Motion’

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An Unhealthy Interest in Medical Paraphenalia

By on May 2, 2012 in Culture, Health and Beauty

Collecting things is so brilliant. Not only is there the joy of tracking things down and displaying one’s new toys in order to drool over them on a daily basis, but one learns so much around the items; geography, social history, fashion, the skills of the maker and so on.  I have always encouraged my children to collect stuff for all those reasons.

DIY ECT

I collect Ladybird Books, gollies, books generally and old-fashioned cut glass (particularly perfume bottles).  But, given the money, I could very easily be persuaded to collect powder compacts, trains and train pictures, WW2 stuff in a significantly more serious way than I do now, paintings, beautiful furniture, odd musical instruments and recordings of them being played, and Indian artefacts.

However, I do have a secret thrill which I am rarely in a position to indulge.  Medical Stuff.  I have a craving to collect old medical books, medical instruments and associated items.  I once saw, on the Antiques Roadshow, an apparatus for giving tiny electric shocks by cranking a handle which conducted electrical impulses through little paddles which were held against the body to stimulate circulation and muscle tone in invalids.  It was in a beautiful wooden case and was a thing of beauty.  “I wants it precious, I wants it”, I mumbled to myself.  It was several hundred pounds and out of my reach but if I ever get the chance, a similar apparatus will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

DIY bronchial dilation

I do own several very old medical textbooks including Diseases of the Skin (1937), The Encyclopaedia of Sex Practice (1938), a turn of the century anatomy textbook, Applied Surgery (1894), A large, layered anatomy model from the late 1890s and, my pride and joy, Alimentary Sphincters and their Purposes (1910).

I have very little actual equipment; a Wrights Coal Tar Vaporizer, an old bedpan, a leather doctor’s bag, assorted bottles and some baby stuff.  Then, just as I was leaving the market a couple of Sundays ago, the couple on the next stand showed me this:

It is an old DIY enema kit.  The wall-mounted enamel jug would be filled with the cleansing fluid of your choice and the tube would then be inserted up your bottom while you lay on the floor on a pile of towels, and after a period of time, one would repair to the lavatory and …er … release.  I bought it on the spot and it now resides on the bathroom wall, between the basin and the loo, with the rubber tubing hanging down in a disconcerting and slightly menacing way.

It will never be used, well not by me anyway, mainly because I have a pathological distaste for anything to do with back bottoms.  However, a coffee enema is an extremely efficacious treatment for acute pain and migraine.  Not a skinny, double-shot cappuccino with sugar you understand, but strong black filter coffee.  No really.  I know people.

Comments { 15 }

The Market in Market Harborough has been saved!!

By on May 1, 2012 in The Big, Wide World

The Market Hall - saved to make it better than ever

I reported in this article in February that the Market Hall in Market Harborough was under threat of closure.  The council needed to raise money to refurbish the Council Offices and reduce costs and wanted to put a big retailer onto the site of the existing market, thereby banishing the market traders to an unsuitable, outdoor location in a car park.

I am delighted to report that at the council meeting held on Monday 30th April, the councillors overwhelmingly voted to keep the market hall (no opposition, 2 abstainers – or ‘chickens’ as I loudly called them) and to move forward co-operatively with the traders to refurbish and revitalise this marvellous facility.

Councillor Rook stated that the people of Market Harborough District had made their wishes clear and that it was a sign of a working democratic process that the council had listened to them.  Oh really. And I suppose it had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the council hadn’t performed effective or accurate economic modelling of the situation and were unable to attract the major retailer they had hoped for.  But pointing it out would be churlish of me – it is the outcome that matters.

The people of Market Harborough did make their wishes clear.  Numerous letters were written to councillors, radio stations, newspapers and MPs, a well-supported public march and demonstration were held and over 18,000 signatures were collected for a petition which was presented at the meeting.

Gentle Readers; this is indeed democracy in action.  When faced with a situation where councils and planners are riding roughshod over the needs and wants of a community, you have the power to stand up to them.  Backwatersman has recently been writing about apathy in politics and there is a rather good television campaign running at the moment which points out that everything is politics from your heating bills to the sausage on your plate.

Remember also the successful campaign run by GASP in Buckinghamshire who prevented a sports stadium being built on Green Belt land?  They succeeded because they stood up to the planners and they stood up to the council and they worried at them like terriers worrying a nest of rats.

I would like to extend my personal thanks to the market traders who put so much effort into this campaign and worked tirelessly on behalf of the weekday and Sunday traders in order that their livelihoods have been saved.  I would also like to thank the public and other organisations who gave such heartfelt and vigorous support

There will be changes and I welcome them.  The market must become more dynamic, exciting and professional and we must be prepared to conceive a plan which will make the facility more flexible and versatile.  Bring it on.

Ps.  The Wartime Housewife has a stall there every Sunday.  Do drop by and have a chat.

 

Comments { 8 }

Wills’ Cigarette Cards No 14: Frosting a Window

By on April 30, 2012 in Household Hints & DIY

This is a much cheaper method than taking out the glass and replacing it with swanky frosted glass.

Comments { 3 }

Sunday Poem 136

By on April 29, 2012 in Culture

Lady Somerset has many virtues but singing is not one of them.  Until I met her, I was convinced that anyone could learn to sing, given the right training, but her larynx defeated me.  Many years ago, she left a message on my answerphone which turned out to be all six stanzas of  ‘The Woad Ode’.  Her insane warbling covered nearly every note of every scale (and filled up the entire tape on my answering machine) but thankfully she informed me that she was singing to the tune of ‘Men of Harlech’.  I would never have known.

Written 1914 by a housemaster at Eton College, this humorous song became popular with the Scout Movement in the 1920s.  I insist that you sing this to yourself out loud and then sing it to all your friends.

THE WOAD ODE – by William Hope Jones
(Sing to the tune of ‘Men of Harlech’)

What’s the use of wearing braces ?
Vests and pants and boots with laces ?
Spats and hats you buy in places
Down the Brompton Road ?

What’s the use of shirts of cotton ?
Studs that always get forgotten ?
These affairs are simply rotten,
Better far is woad.

Woad’s the stuff to show men.
Woad to scare your foemen.
Boil it to a brilliant hue
And rub it on your back and your abdomen.
Ancient Briton ne’er did hit on
Anything as good as woad to fit on
Neck or knees or where you sit on.
Tailors you be blowed !!

Romans came across the channel
All dressed up in tin and flannel
Half a pint of woad per man’ll
Dress us more than these.

Saxons you can waste your stitches
Building beds for bugs in britches
We have woad to clothe us which is
Not a nest for fleas

Romans keep your armours.
Saxons your pyjamas.
Hairy coats were made for goats,
Gorillas, yaks, retriever dogs and llamas.
Tramp up Snowdon with your woad on,
Never mind if you get rained or blowed on.
Never want a button sewed on.
If you stick with woad!

Comments { 11 }

Thought for the day…

By on April 23, 2012 in Household Hints & DIY

Here is your thought for the day, courtesy of the comedian Sarah Millican, whom I saw live over Easter.

Don’t bother looking for the light at the end of the tunnel
Crawl down there and switch the bugger on yourself

Comments { 19 }

Sunday Poem 135

By on April 22, 2012 in Culture

Having heard a programme about Henry Newbolt this afternoon on Radio 4, I thought it would be a good time to have some.  I was going to chose something obscure but decided on this popular one because it gives me a shiver.  There is something tremendously sinister about the old public school notion that war and PE were effectively the same thing.

Vitai Lampada – by Henry Newbolt (1862-1938)

There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night -
Ten to make and the match to win -
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote -
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”

The sand of the desert is sodden red, -
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; -
The Gatling’s jammed and the ~Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England’s far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of the schoolboy rallies the ranks:
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the School is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”

Comments { 5 }

Buying clothes when you don’t want to buy clothes

By on April 21, 2012 in Health and Beauty

Unless you are twenty, beautiful, thin or bursting with self-confidence, there is a reasonable chance that clothes shopping is a less than pleasurable experience. In the event that you even know what suits you, the high street is a place of fear, bewilderment, discomfort and the risk of humiliation by bored, skinny, indifferent persons who have no interest whatsoever in making you feel good and gorgeous.

And yet, we need to buy clothes, even if only occasionally and I would like to offer you a few pointers to makes clothes shopping less onerous and even, potentially, successful.

  • Give yourself a decent amount of time.  Rushing will thwart you from the beginning
  • Wear thin clothes because shops are always boiling hot which will make you tired and fractious, and your feet will swell up which is no good for buying shoes
  • Wear clothes that are easy to slip on and off when you need to try things on
  • Wear decent underwear.  Not only will it make the clothes look better from the outside, it will also make you feel less unattractive than you would be in a graying, saggy ensemble redolent of personal neglect and laundry issues
  • Try things on.  If you buy a load of stuff which, when you try it on at home looks awful or doesn’t fit, you not only waste time and petrol taking it back but you will feel miserable, foolish and unattractive and this experience will make you even more hostile to clothes shopping
  • Take a friend with you who will not spend the whole time buying fabulous, skimpy things for themselves but will devote some time to you and be truthful and objective about how you look
  • Allow this friend to select a few things that you may not have selected for yourself.  You may be pleasantly surprised
  • Have a look through some magazines and see what people your shape are wearing and try adapting that look for your own personality and taste.
  • Remember that the harsh lighting in changing rooms appears to be designed to make you look pallid, sickly, ten stone overweight and with skin the texture of pebbledash.  Walk back into the shop if you can bear it, head for the door if there is natural light, and look in a mirror with a bit of distance between you and it.  This will give a much more realistic impression
  • Try not to be intimidated by the staff.  Unless they are helpful, charming and facilitating they are of no consequence whatsoever.  Sweep past them with an air of self-containment and the sure knowledge that their lives are a worthless round of clubbing, nail varnish and hangovers. I bet some of them haven’t even heard of Jeremy Paxman and think that Steven Fry makes Turkish Delight.
  • If, however, you chance upon a shop where members of staff are helpful, charming and facilitating, make the most of them.  Ask for their advice and get them to fetch different sizes if you need them to prevent you dressing and undressing as you scamper across the store in search of that illusive 18 or XXXL (or indeed 6 or XS)
  • Don’t be seduced in to buying the latest fashion if it doesn’t suit you.  Take the time to seek out shops that sell the right type of clothes for you.
  • Take breaks.  Shopping is exhausting so make sure that you stop for drinks or food at regular intervals.  The heat of the shops means you will need to hydrate more regularly
  • Last but by no means least, BUY CLOTHES IN THE RIGHT SIZE.  It might make you gasp to realize that you have gone up a size since you last bought anything, but it is far better to wear the correct size and look good than to squeeze into something unrealistic and looking a fright.  If you look great, you will feel better about yourself and this may even incentivize you to change shape if you need to

Comments { 22 }