Monday 2 May 2016

Rainy Days and Mondays.....!

Picture this.......
Last Monday morning, just home after a wonderful week of camping. The wash basket is full. There are two sets of sheets from the house, a weeks clothing from camping, plus bedding, towels and washing-up cloths from the caravan......and it is raining!
Don't get me wrong, the rain was not a problem. This was, read on....
I looked down the bed to see who was still lying with us feline or canine wise, and saw, near my toes, a pile of something. Something suspicious. A lorry act!*
Now, let me explain *.
When I was teaching last century (scary thought that), we used, among other schemes, a wonderful reading scheme called 'Gay Way'. These were first published in the '50's and updated with new covers and pictures as time went by. The Red Books were the starter readers, then came the Green books and so on until the Violet books. They were lovely, and the children enjoyed the easy wording and the funny stories. They met Fat Pig, Sam the Fox, Meg the Hen, Deb the Rat, Ben the Dog, Jip the Cat and Tod the Giant and the stories were simple and the updated illustrations were just lovely. (I always felt sad for Fat Pig because he had no name, so my classes used to choose a name for him to make him feel better!)

Sam, Fat Pig, Meg and Deb!


Still with me? Good!
The first Red Book had a story about a 'big red lorry' with pots and pans on the back. It went up and down the hills going 'honk honk honk'. Well, my sister (who was also teaching at the time, same ages and same reading scheme) and I soon used the word 'honk' to describe the action of physically being sick! And that progressed to 'doing a lorry act' which is still used to this day in our households!
The scene is set, back to the present! One of the felines had 'done a lorry act' on the bed and so, added to the already large pile of washing was the following:
I duvet cover, I fitted sheet, 1 duvet and 1 mattress protector.
And it was still raining.
So, after several words from me, none of them repeatable or respectable I must add, Rob checked the weather and assured me that the rain would clear and the sun would shine. So I threw a load into the machine and left the pillows neatly on top of the 'egg box' looking foam sheet that we have on the mattress for added softness for our old bones!
And we went shopping. When we came back I did more loads until all our bedding was flapping nicely in the sun and Alfie was sleeping happily upstairs. All was well.
Until I went up to re-make the bed. We had experienced a foam storm. The floor was littered with small bits of foam. The bed was covered in small bits of foam. And there were thin patches, and valleys instead of egg-box shaped peaks on the foam sheet.
More words from me. Colourful words. Lots of them. All bad!
Alfie had obviously had a great time either biting bits off or scratching with his nails. Rob refused to believe that his precious little lamb had done that and immediately blamed the cats.
I ask you, would cats have bothered to do that?
I didn't think so either!


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Ogod those Gayway words brought back memories....!At least they were a tad better than those insufferable prigs Janet and John, Dick and Dora, I hated those children!! There'ssomething about foam and dogs...how much havoc has Darcey wreaked in our house with foam!!

Pauline said...

You left out Kathy and Mark........ yes, I agree with your sentiments completely!! And about the foam!!