The other day, Mrs H and I were in a coffee shop and for some reason I found myself scrutinising a chap who was carefully spreading jam on a slice of toast.
The spreading operation attracted my attention because the chap was spreading his jam with such precision, holding the toast in one hand while taking great care to spread the jam right to the edge all the way round. I don’t know what flavour the jam was, but it was red.
I don’t eat toast and jam, I’m more of a marmalade or Marmite chap, but all I do is shove some onto buttered toast, smear it around a bit then scoff it. If the butter is too cold to spread properly then a few lumps of it will do.
I’d have consumed two slices before the careful spreader had taken a bite.
8 comments:
I am always fascinated by perfectionists.
Those that work on that telly restoration show where they rebuild knackered objects. I wish I had the skills and concentration but I am a bish bash bosh, that will do, I'm off to the pub kind of chap.
Quite irrelevant but I've just stumbled across a "no vote unless you've paid tax" rule in British politics, specifically for elections to Scottish Parish Councils according to the law of 1894.
"Subject to the provisions of this Act, a parish council shall be elected by the following persons, in this Act referred to as the parish electors, namely, the persons registered on the parish council register; provided that exemption from or failure to make payment of the special rate authorised by this Act, where such rate is due and payable by persons so registered, shall be a disqualification from voting at an election of a parish council, unless such rate is paid during the period of one year subsequent to service of the demand note requiring payment of the same."
The same act secured the franchise for women, a thing I've never seen mentioned before in spite of, or because of?, endless feminist complaints about the franchise.
Mike - I find restoration fascinating for the same reason, I can't do it, don't have the patience and probably the skill. There are lots of YouTube videos showing some remarkable restorations, although I saw one recently which was obviously fake.
dearieme - that's interesting, do you have a link?
Start with a Google AI comment on Scotland: "Early Local Franchise (1869): Unmarried women and widows who were ratepayers were granted the right to vote in municipal and local parish elections, establishing a foundation for female political participation long before parliamentary voting was allowed." I imagine that might be reversion to the old idea that the natural molecule of society was the household and so the head of household got the vote, even if a spinster or widow. (Some English parliamentary constituencies used that idea until the Great Reform Act of 1832 abolished it.)
Next: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/57-58/58/body/enacted?view=plain
Note item 12: "Married women not disqualified
A woman otherwise possessing the qualification for being registered on any county council or municipal register of electors shall not be disqualified by marriage from being registered on a county council, municipal, or parish council register, provided that a husband and wife shall not both be registered in respect of the same property."
So if our widow or spinster marries she does not automatically lose her vote. This may have been a big deal for households where the husband might be absent on election day - fisherman, mariner, sailor, soldier, or dozens of other occupations - so that the wife could still cast the household vote.
Separately: as you doubtless know there were women who sat in the Old Scots Parliament but that was swept away in the Act of Union of 1707.
Less likely, perhaps, is that you know that in Scotland a girl could inherit her father's right to be a trader in a Burgh (As a Burgess? As a member of a guild? Dunno: I'm working from schoolboy memory on this one.) God knows how old that law was; the Burghs were established by King David in the 12th century.
History is so much more interesting than propaganda, don't you think?
And another thing: the women who sat in the Old Scots Parliament "were expected to be represented by proxies or husbands who could attend and cast votes in their stead" says Google. I suppose it would be a brave husband who cast her vote except as she demanded.
dearieme - thanks, I know very little about the Old Scots Parliament except that there was one and it was dissolved in 1707.
Yes, history is much more interesting than propaganda, the role of women being just one example. Far more complex than common generalisations claim and far more varied at an individual and family level.
If a girl could inherit her father's right to be a trader in a Burgh, then that must have been important enough that many girls did just that, especially if they were the ones running things anyway.
And why were there women sitting in the parliament? Because there were Scottish peerages where a girl could inherit the title of nobility if she had no brothers - and hence a seat in parliament. There are still such peerages in existence.
The old laws can also lead to such delights as the Sutherlands. A (Scottish) Earl of Sutherland was later appointed the (British) Duke of Sutherland. After some generations the Duke/Earl dies with a daughter but no son. The Earldom passes to the lassie (who is thereby Countess of Sutherland in her own right) and the Dukedom to some related male. That's the status quo at the mo' - the titles have been divided. Most entertaining, eh?
Anon, but probably dearieme, it is entertaining. I've just been browsing the story and the history of Dunrobin Castle. What a place that is, I just visited it on Google Street view.
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