HOUSEHOLD TIPS NOT FOUND IN WOMAN'S WEEKLY

[Tripps]

Wait till he hits you with tervisergate

There - saved you the bother of looking it up.

[Stanley]

David! Try 'tergiversate'. If you are going to nurture archaic words, you have to get them right.

Find a copy of 'The Limits to Medicine' by Ivan Illich. He's largely forgotten now but wrote some good stuff. (LINK) That's where I first learned about iatrogenic disease......

[Tripps]

David! Try 'tergiversate'. If you are going to nurture archaic words, you have to get them right.

Oh dear - I'm sinking fast. I actually 'checked' it on my list of curious words.
I won't correct it since that would make your post look silly.
Thanks for pointing it out. Standards must be maintained.

[Tizer]

Plant names are always good for new words and derivations. While on holiday and identifying plants I found that several have the species name `vulneraris' (or similar). They got this Latin tag meaning `to wound' not because they are dangerous but due to their use in treating wounds.

[Stanley]

I wonder how many 'modern' drugs still owe a debt to the herbalists....

[Stanley]

One thing we have to watch these days in the UK is sneaky rises in food prices, in some cases by altering package sizes but in others by putting a label on that says 'Love low prices' while at the same time jacking the price up from 18p to 22p as in the case recently of Smedley's Mushy peas..... The Cunning Wheezes departments are working overtime..... There is no doubt that over the whole range, food prices are rising faster than the general rate of inflation.

[Stanley]

Not a bad idea to make sure you have a big bag of cooking salt in the cupboard. Plenty available at this time of year but when we get sharp frosts and icy yards you'll have a job to get hold of it. Not pessimism, reality!

[Stanley]

It's easy at this time of year when the heating starts to kick in on a regular basis to get into a slight panic over prices. Long experience has taught me that this is a waste of time, it's a fact of life and we have a choice, be comfortable or be stingy and make your life a misery. Remember that in a climate like ours, adequate heat is an insurance against illness. Besides, somehow we always seem to survive!

[Bodger]

"It's easy at this time of year when the heating starts to kick in"
Doe's tha mean " fetch a bucket a coil lad" We had an open fire range with a 3 piece suite arranged semi circular facing it, peggy rug in front, my play area was on the flag stone floor behind the settee , no heat radiation there !!

[Tizer]

I remember when my parents went up a step on the social scale by getting one of those concrete bunkers put in outside for the coal. We then cleaned the understairs cupboard where the coal used to be kept and used it for cleaner storage. The downside was that you had to go out in the rain and cold to bring in the coal.

[Stanley]

They were hardening you off Bodge for the vicissitudes of life! I'll bet you got callouses on your knees as well....
Tiz, the 1930s semi I lived in in my early years had a purpose built brick coal bunker outside the back door from new. Probably the best arrangement was the coal hole in the street and the coal hole in the cellar. Coal chaps loved them, no carrying. I remember a bloke in Lincoln once telling me that it was the worst place in the country for delivering coal because so many houses were built with steps up to the front door to alleviate flooding and the coal hole was always at the top of the steps.

[Stanley]

Have you noticed that in supermarkets all the meats are chosen for the leanest looking cuts? It makes you wonder where all the rest of the carcass has gone, for manufacturing no doubt. This wouldn't be any good for me, I like my shin, skirt, neck end and offal. I saw a TV programme a while ago and ox-tails were being thrown into the waste for disposal because 'there's no market for them'. How stupid can we get! Ox-tail is probably the best meat for a stew that there is, add some veggies and dumplings and it is gourmet food. So today's tip is remember the off-cuts and patronise an outlet that sells them!

[Stanley]

Quentin Crisp had a relaxed attitude to dusting, he reckoned that if you left it alone it stopped increasing after three years. I don't go as far as that but often wonder about the modern obsession with cleanliness and even sterility in the kitchen. I can't help thinking that this is a big mistake and far from protecting us it encourages allergies and infections by not allowing our bodies to build natural immunities. So, today's tip is yes, by all means keep clean, but don't take it to the point where it is actually damaging your lives! (I admit to verging on the obsessive with my kitchen sink and lavatory but believe that is allowed.)

[Tizer]

There's news from Aussie scientists who found evidence that eczema can be caused by hard water. The calcium and magnesium ions react with soap or detergents to form insoluble salts that remain on the skin or in the fabrics. These compounds then interfere with a specific skin protein and result in eczema.

[Marilyn]

If you leave enough dust to collect on your coffee table, you can use it as a message board.

I had a big clean up job after our dog sitting duties...despite a Hoover every day. I had to take wet paper towels to skirting boards and window ledges to collect hairs, and clean low windows of snuffle marks. The laundry needed a good steam mop, as that was where her water bowl was...and I had to get down low to wipe kick boards in the kitchen and laundry. The hairs just cling...not the dog's fault, but I can't live with them. I also have a few roll out pot drawers in the kitchen and find the odd hairs in them after she had gone. It is because she sticks her big head everywhere...nosey dog!

[Stanley]

Tiz, I never trusted London Water! I reckoned that if it produced scum on top of a pot of tea it must have something wrong with it! We're lucky in Barlick, lovely water......
Maz. Even I will admit that dog hairs are a bugger! My life is a lot easier now I have the Dyson hand held cordless cleaner, my stairs are lovely! It actually works on dog hairs. Funnily enough I had another dog hair problem yesterday. Taking advantage of the bigger drum size of the new Bosch machine I washed two full sheepskins in separate washes yesterday and had to pause both to pick out the handfuls of hair that collected on the front door, I was worried in case they blocked the filter! It must be more efficient than the old Bendix.....

[PanBiker]

Taking advantage of the bigger drum size of the new Bosch machine I washed two full sheepskins in separate washes yesterday and had to pause both to pick out the handfuls of hair that collected on the front door, I was worried in case they blocked the filter! It must be more efficient than the old Bendix.....

The filter should be easily accessible Stanley, its usually at the front. Mine has a small drain hose that you can pull out to empty any residual water into a container before removing the filter cage.

[Tizer]

When we were in Colyton, Devon, it was carnival time. The village shops competed for prizes with special displays in their windows. One of them took a historical theme and I think OGFBers will like this photo I took:

[Stanley]

The Bosch is like that Ian and the filter was perfectly clean..... It evidently ate the heirs!
I like it Tiz! When Bob Taylforth had Priest Holme Farm at Bank Newton, Robert's Circus used to winter at New Brighton next door and Bob took all their dung to spread on his fields. He told me that you had to be careful with the Tiger Muck because if put on grass neat it burned it off but occasionally he got people calling in and asking for a bag because if you lined the edge of your garden with small deposits it stopped deer coming in. So that's today's tip! If deer are bothering you, get Tiger Muck!

[Bodger]

My mother told me that when she lived in Sheffield her young sister brought home some brown loaves she had found, turned out they were elephant droppings from the circus nearby

[Tizer]

Reminds me of Billy Connolly saying that when the circus came to town in Glasgow the elephants left mini-roundabouts in the road.

[Stanley]

Bob said that elephant muck was good for fibre but not very strong.
My mother cured me of any antipathy to animal dung when I was a lad by making me go out in the road with the fire shovel to collect any horse muck dropped by trader's horses and put it on the roses. It was an unwritten rule that if it was dropped outside your house it was yours!

[BillHowcroft]

I used to get that job too but, being brought up in an area too posh to scrabble for dung, got the whole street's findings.

[Stanley]

Bliss! My mother would have been ecstatic. You've reminded me that our next door neighbour at 36 Norris Avenue, Arthur Thompson, was an obsessive gardener. I swear that every crumb of soil in the front garden was exactly the same size. The back garden was a complete contrast and I often think that this said something about Arthur's motives. In a way it was his version of the competition on washing day between housewives. Today's tip is don't allow things like the garden to become an obsession. It can ruin your life!

[Stanley]

One of the most frequent tips I hand out is that if you identify what Mr Pirsig described as a 'gumption trap' in you life, do something about it! I have had a good example. As part of my laundry campaign on free leccy on Sundays with my new washing machine I washed two full sheepskins. They are a lot cleaner but now they have dried, one of them, the one that sits on my rocking chair in the kitchen, has shrunk a bit and no longer stays in place when thrown over the chair. So it has been slipping down and wasn't practical. This morning I screwed a small hook in the back, punched a hole in the sheepskin and it is now doing it's job properly. So simple and yet so satisfying! (All right, I should get out more.....)