Peas and Queues

Source: etsy.com viaJanice on Pinterest

Peas and Queues

‘Remember your Ps and Q,’ was a common reminder to children when I was growing up. I wonder if today’s children receive the same advice and if they then regard it with consternation or curiosity.’

‘Remember your peas’ – does that mean I have to remember to eat them, to grow them, to cook them, to buy them? I don’t like peas – do I still have to remember them?

‘Remember your queues’ – does that mean don’t push into the queue but line up nicely, joining the queue at the back and ‘waiting your turn,’?

I don’t suppose they learn the little verse I was taught as a child and which I have attempted to teach to generations of children unfortunate enough to pass under my teacherly gaze:

There’s a magic little word

That works wonders when it’s heard

Though it sometimes seems to lose itself with ease,

But there’s such a charm about it

That we cannot do without it

And that magic little word is only

PLEASE.

Ahh, sweetJ

I sometimes wonder if manners are ever taught to children. An item in the morning news astounded me. A school in England has banned the provision of triangular flapjacks because the points are too sharp! A boy was hurt during a food fight when a triangular flapjack hit him in the face causing injury sufficient for him to be taken to hospital for treatment. The food fight took place in the school canteen. 

Several thoughts occurred to me simultaneously, some of them unrepeatable, chief among which was, ‘Whatever happened to common sense?’ Surely the primary objective should be to address the poor behaviour of children supposedly eating on school premises. Does no-one supervise these children and tell them that throwing food is unacceptable and that the food is there to be eaten, not used as a missile in gang warfare? (I must here confess that when I was at school the shortbread occasionally served to us was so hard it bounced when ‘dropped’ on the floor – but we threw it at the floor, not at each other!)

I wonder how long it will be before pens, pencils, rulers, scissors are all banished from schools because they are too dangerous. Wax crayons, too, should be removed from infant classrooms – I had two little boys in one class who on the same morning stuffed crayons into their noses. One boy was lucky – the crayon was ejected naturally. I had to take the other child to his doctor! No lasting harm was done.

And now manners dictate that I must apologise to my faithful followers because I have not responded to your comments. You may remember that my granddaughter, Marnie, was having a troublesome pregnancy and Dorothy, my elderly mother-in-law, was going into occasional hibernation.  Marnie’s baby was born on 12^th March, fit and well and beautiful, naturally, though I have yet to see her in the flesh. A week later, on 19^th March it was Dorothy’s 96^th birthday. She was suffering from pneumonia and died a day later. Her passing was a relief to us all, not least to Dorothy herself – the person she was had departed many years ago and the stranger in her place was unpredictable and difficult. The funeral is at the beginning of April. 

Meanwhile, Barry’s brother is undergoing a third round of chemotherapy, so all in all both Barry and I have been somewhat ‘scattered.’ My resolve to be a better blogger in 2013 has not been honoured but I hope things will return to a more normal state of affairs and my concentration will improve and I shall be able to visit your blogs more regularly. I plan also to try and finish at least one of the books I’m writing.

As for the kittens . . . more to follow laterJ (News, that is, not kittens . . . )