Saturday 8 October 2011

Self-indulgence!

Today has been a totally lazy day even though I was up early at 6.30am. I sat and watched some programmes I'd recorded with a large cup of coffee and eased myself slowly into a grey and very Autumnal day.

As England were playing France in the rugby, I volunteered to go and get the newspaper and make breakfast and then spent the rest of the day doing very little. Keith watched sport all day so I surfed the net and caught up with my DVD of Victorian Farm. There's been a lot of very good history programmes on and I find it amazing that so many things from centuries ago are relevant still today. I've learnt the following over the last few days:

When people say "Sleep tight" when tucking children in, it's because in Tudor times there used to be a network of strings under the mattress. They had to be tightened to make for a comfortable night's sleep otherwise the mattress would sag!

The word "Gossip" comes from the women who attended a mother as she was giving birth. They were close friends and family and were originally called "God's Siblings" or "God sibs". 

When someone "Gets the wrong end of the stick" it relates to printing and the stick used for loading the blocks of letters before printing.

I'm sure I'll remember more but I have to admit I find it all fascinating!

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