Inch by Inch – – –

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 – – –

The Monday Book: KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND WEAR BEIGE by Kathleen Seidel

I am a sucker for character-driven plots. This one was fun because it set up a problem not so often discussed in latte lit. And also not universal. I myself have never been the mother of the groom, but Seidel’s subtle humor and wicked insights made me feel empathy for her narrator’s plight.

This book has a cast of thousands: two families, a new girlfriend, even a snarky nasty prima donna writer. And they’re all fun. Some are omnipresent, some are thrown in as plot devices, but each makes their appearance in ways that elicit sympathy or condescension.

The basic plot is, of course, the wedding. But the wedding is complicated by one family being wealthy and the new girlfriend being a social climber. And the wealthy family has a special needs kid. And the narrator is having a hard time with her ex-husband’s social climber taking over wedding plans. The narrator (Darcy) has a streak of do-gooder to her that keeps her from being too perfect as she tangles with emotions and attitudes and tries to maintain her son’s needs, her own sanity, and the mental well-being of other children who surround the wedding and maybe get a little less attention during this time. Darcy can’t stand not being needed.

It was a fun read, the kind of relationship-driven character novel that makes you smile when you recognize a personality and laugh when your least favorite gets a comeuppance. Which they all do at one point or another. Read it at the beach or on a plane, before a big family wedding–or maybe, if you have a wicked sense of humor, just before you vacation in the Hamptons. There’s a lot of “poor little rich people” observations in the book.

Two bouquets up for Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige.