HOUSEHOLD TIPS NOT FOUND IN WOMAN'S WEEKLY

[Cathy]

Haha are you giving out hints Stanley?

[Stanley]

You've got it Cathy! As it happened, no beer but a very nice roast dinner.... It was a nice visit. Tip for the day, if you are being visited by an excited dog in a new house have the mop and bucket ready, he will pee on something to mark the territory! Luckily they are doing the house up so no carpets and everything was dealt with speedily by Mo.....

[Stanley]

Living with a dog is an art. Over many years I have worked out that the best way to manage a dog for its benefit and yours is to have a regular routine. They love knowing that certain things happen at certain times and once settled into a routine that contains enough interest and activity they will happily fill in the gaps with sleep. They soon get to know that if you are engaged in certain activities there is no profit in bothering you for attention. It works with bowel movements as well, you could set your watch by Jack's evacuations! Sounds obsessive but it's a very comfortable way of living with a good friend....
[The same rules apply to children....]

[Stanley]

Don't leave a tap running if you are on a restricted water supply......
In olden days when houses were cold, leaving the tap running a trickle during the night ensured it wouldn't freeze up.

[Wendyf]

"Don't leave a tap running if you are on a restricted water supply"

......Talk about locking the stable door after the horse has bolted!

[Stanley]

Couldn't resist it Wendy!
Today's tip. One of the worst places for microbes to lurk is in the orifice of the mixer tap on your kitchen sink. They get infected with splash back from whatever you are washing and can have a heavier load relatively than a lavatory pan. One good way to deal with them is to bleach a mug with boiling water and bleach and immerse the end of the tap in it. Then pour it over the handles of your taps! They can be a trap for germs as well.....

[Stanley]

We are all at the mercy of modern electronic technology these days. Like me, I have no doubt you are often baffled when one of these items does something you didn't expect. My first reaction is almost always to turn the offender off completely by disconnecting the battery or the mains supply. Than after a wait of about half a minute, turn it back on or re-connect it. This cures many faults.... Anything beyond that, get a competent person in to advise you!

[Stanley]

You need clear vision to see exactly how dirty your computer keyboard is! I've just cleared enough crumbs out to make a substantial meal for a small mouse.....

[Stanley]

20/20 vision makes a lot of work! I have spent 24 hours noting small pockets of dirt that needed cleaning! One is the keyboard, apart from the crumbs, closer inspection reveals that there is muck on the keys.... I shall have to give it a clean! Have a close look at your own......

[Tizer]

Haha! When you get better vision your house suddenly gets dirty.

[Stanley]

Too bloody right Tiz!! Telephone key pads, TV remote controls, tiny particles of dirt on surfaces I thought were clean, plugs and sockets.... These are only the ones I have found and dealt with so far! Last night I was perturbed to see a small red warning LED on the bottom corner of my new TV screen. I had to get the manual out and read it (no problem of course) and found it was the remote control sensor.... It's been there all the time but I had never seen it.

[Tizer]

Better get some dark glasses quickly!

[Tripps]

I ruined a keyboard once, with crumbs - I now keep a one inch paint brush in an adjacent drawer, and give it a brush now and then as required. Eating away from the computer, which would be sensible, doesn't seem to be achievable.

[Stanley]

That's the biggest enemy David. I have an old shaving brush handy and do the same as you....
Janet once told me she had one keyboard that was so bad (when she worked for Marconi) that she washed it with hot water and detergent on the grounds that if it failed they would give her a new one. Much to her surprise it was OK but I wouldn't recommend it!
I replaced my Freesat box last night and was delayed by the fact I had to do an OCD cleaning job behind the set before I could proceed.....

[Tizer]

At the publishing company I worked at in the early 1990s they banned eating and drinking at your desk when we all got computers. We solved the problem by going to the pub instead of eating and drinking at our desks!

[Tripps]

Speaking of publishing companies - I drove past one today called 'Whiteheads'. I had half an idea that there was a connection with this site - Was I right (Tizer)?

[Stanley]

That's an intriguing question.....
After my experience last night with the LAN stick.... If, after reading all the instructions, doing everything right, you still fail.... It may be time to reconsider the whole enterprise! Like "Do I need Catch up TV?"

[Tizer]

Speaking of publishing companies - I drove past one today called 'Whiteheads'. I had half an idea that there was a connection with this site - Was I right (Tizer)?

If you mean Woodhead Publishing, then yes, they were a family company publishing books on food science among other technical areas and took over our book list when we retired. Then Martin Woodhead sold the business to Elsevier. LINK Do you know Martin or perhaps someone else there, or was it just a good hunch?

[Tripps]

Yes - slip of the brain - it was Woodheads in Sawston. I was on my way to a Gumtree buy - can you get treatment for it on the NHS? Not sure how I knew the connection, but I was right. I am a nosey devil - I think you gave enough clues when you retired, for me to find it. They were advertising for proof readers a while ago in the local press. I thought of you and Mrs Tiz then.

For nosey - Nolic used to say 'knowledge ferret'.

[Stanley]

My version of 'nosey' is that one of the manifestations is you become a historian......

[Tizer]

One of our neighbours was nosey but he made an excellent `guard dog'! We wasn't afraid of asking visitors who they were and what they wanted. On the other hand, he was very open with us about his own life and we ended up keying in his life story for him on the computer. Very illuminating! He was born out of wedlock, brought up in an orphanage, worked in a garage, spent time in the navy, built his own boat on the Norfolk Broads, was abandoned by his wife, and then he and his daughter came to live in this village and he remarried.

[Stanley]

Uncle Bob congratulated me this morning on an article I wrote recently about being nosey... I pointed out that it illustrated nicely the quotation he appends to his mails. I hold that being nosey is another way of describing education.


It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about
education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated
person . . . -Edith Hamilton, classicist (1867-1963)

[Tizer]

That's a great quotation. Research scientists are nosey people, the nosier the better. I suppose all people who choose to take up research in some form are driven by nosiness, curiosity. For instance, I was delighted to learn yesterday that Abraham Derby spent 8 years in Bristol making brass using coke before he went to Coalbrookdale and that accounts for why he then so quickly managed to set up blast furnaces using coal. Also that he served his apprenticeship with a maker of brass mills for grinding malted barley and that's one of the ways he came to know about coke. Maltsters were already using coke to fuel their kilns because they knew that coal burning gave off sulphur dioxide which contaminated the malt and thus the beer brewed from it. Which is a nice parallel with the problem of coal fumes `poisoning' the metal in iron smelting. And another fact, Derby's great-grandmother was a sister of Dud Dudley, who claimed he could smelt iron using coke as the fuel. And Dud Dudley was the illegitimate son of Edward Sutton, 5th Baron Dudley. How about that for nosiness!

[Stanley]

There is little doubt that Dud Dudley was on the right track long before Derby. One of Derby's greatest assets was that he was a Quaker and they were great cooperators as they were all under the same disadvantages being barred from the Guilds, the Law and Universities. They were also good book-keepers and left records. Something that is often forgotten is that none of the ironfounders wanted to use coal as charcoal was so much better but they were forced into experimenting because wood was so scarce. Derby offered the coke technology to a fellow Quaker ironmaster at Barrow in Furness but he refused. He had just bought the rights to a large forest in Scotland and was OK thank you.... The reason why the Swedish iron industry was so successful and their products so popular was that they were using charcoal long after everyone else had been forced to move to coal technology. Their steel was always superior to ours.
Today's tip; Read Arthur Raistrick; 'Quakers in Science and Industry'.

[Stanley]

Today's tip.... When you are cleaning up don't forget that if you are a fan of soft toys, they like to have a gentle wash every now and again! I washed My Merrythoughts parrot (Made in Ironbridge) this morning....