[littlemisssunshine]

Well Monday came and went with no phonecall from the PC lady.  Here's hoping she rings tomorrow and puts me out of my misery.... :?:

[milkman]

I hope so 'cause we're all on tenterhooks awaiting the next installment!

[WG.]

Well I was interested to see where the word came from ...

tenterhooks ... comes from one of the processes of making woollen cloth. After it had been woven, the cloth still contained oil from the fleece, mixed with dirt. It was cleaned in a fulling mill, but then it had to be dried carefully or it would shrink and crease. So the lengths of wet cloth were stretched on wooden frames, and left out in the open for some time. This allowed them to dry and straightened their weave. These frames were the tenters, and the tenter hooks were the metal hooks used to fix the cloth to the frame. At one time, it would have been common in manufacturing areas to see fields full of these frames (older English maps sometimes marked an area as a tenter-field). So it was not a huge leap of the imagination to think of somebody on tenterhooks as being in an state of anxious suspense, stretched like the cloth on the tenter. The tenters have gone, but the meaning has survived.

Tenter comes from the Latin tendere, to stretch, via a French intermediate. The word has been in the language since the fourteenth century, and on tenters soon after became a phrase meaning painful anxiety. The exact phrase on tenterhooks seems first to have been used by Tobias Smollett in Roderick Random in 1748.  

[gobs]

Thanks, whisky, but where does bustard come from?

[Selkie]

you got me curious then gobs!

got my dictionary out and it says it comes from the french 'bistard' and from the latin 'avis tarda' which means 'slow bird'

says it's a misnomer as it obviously isn't a slow bird at all

[WG.]

Thanks, whisky, but where does bustard come from?

An egg, of course!    

Seems like it means slow bird

[Middle English, from blend of Old French bistarde and Old French oustarde, both from Latin avis tarda : avis, bird + tarda, feminine of tardus, slow.]

[Selkie]

woo hooo

i beat wg to it!!!

[gobs]

It's nothing to do with * at all then, for sure?

[WG.]

woo hooo

i beat wg to it!!!

okay - no jokes to slow me down next time

[Selkie]

nah you're just getting stiff in your old age

[gobs]

nah you're just getting stiff in your old age

That's surely something to be proud of. Innit?

[WG.]

[Selkie]

[littlemisssunshine]

Well folks, the verdict is in.....Wooohoooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The PC lady inspected my plot, said is was very tidy and acknowledged all the work I had put into it.

She said my fence was fine, actually suggested I moved the back posts further into their plot to keep it in a straight line!

She also took my rubbish away (bagged up) and told the other plot owners to sort the other pile out for themselves!!

THEN...she is going to suggest they either give the plot up or make a start on it as it is blighting the allotments!!!!!!

As a token gesture she has offered them a discount on next years rent until the plots are 'officially' measured in the summer.  As our rent is only £11.25 I cannot imagine they will be too chuffed.

Wooooooohoooooooooo        

As a final note she told me to just enjoy my plot and ring her when I need more rubbish collecting.

       

How's that then?    THANKS again for everyone's support.  My faith in human nature is restored.  I only wish I could have seen his nosey wife looking as though she had swallowed a fly.....still I can imagine!!!!


P.S.  Advice to ALL - take photos before you start, you never know when they might be useful.

[WG.]

RESULT !!!!