17 February 2016

Buckets

What is on your bucket list? Swimming with dolphins? Perhaps a sky dive...  being a contestant on a TV quiz show... a bungee jump... seeing the northern lights? None of these things are on my own  bucket list. In fact, my bucket list consists of... err... buckets.

1  A traditional leather fire bucket

2. A plastic mop bucket

3. A wooden bucket - especially useful if you have a well or you are playing a part in a medieval drama,

4. A children's bucket for the beach - good for making sand castles.
5. A galvanised zinc bucket - good for collecting milk from farm animals.

6. Hyacinth Bucket in the old British TV comedy show "Keeping Up Appearances" - played by Patricia Routlege:-
I bet you had bucketfuls of fun laughing at this blogpost!  No? Well I tried.

24 comments:

  1. Bucket list always struck me as an odd phrase and it's only this post that made me look it up. I obviously missed the film.

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    1. Thanks for that SP... but how did they get the name for that film?

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  2. Dear Hyacinth...what a glorious character she was!

    When I was a teenager living and working in Gympie I knew Max Cornwell - he was the brother of Judy Cornell who played "Daisy". She emigrated to Australia with her family (and then moved back to England when in her teens). The family had settled in Gympie. Their father, Barry Cornwell, worked for "The Gympie Times"....Gympie's local newspaper.

    I've written about Gympie many times in my own blog. It was the town of my childhood and teen years. I got to know Max, the son and brother when we both were members of Gympie's Drama Club. Max was part of the same group of people with whom I mixed. We all went to the same parties, dances etc. Gympie in the early Sixties was a great place to live when in one's teen years.

    I have three buckets...all plastic. I don't have a bucket list, but if I did, I think just to be happy and healthy would be on my very short list. That's what I wish, anyway...it doesn't have to be in a bucket. I just don't want to kick the bucket for a while yet! :)

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    1. I just checked The Oracle (Wikipedia) and it confirms that Judy Cornwell was exiled to Australia for a while. She must have stolen a loaf of bread or failed to curtsey to the lord of the manor. I .like the word "gympie". It sounds like a condition. "Sorry Lee can't come out to play, she's feeling a little gympie today."

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    2. Just so you know from this moment on, Mr. Pudding - I assure you I do not lie, nor do I embellish what I write. To do so would serve no good purpose. So you see, you had no need to confirm what I'd wrote about Judy Cornwell, her brother and her father. It is all true.

      As for Gympie...the name has been tossed around jokingly for many a year in a similar theme as your own, although never before in reference to me. However, these days with the way my hip is, it could very well refer to me.

      "Gimpy meaning: Usually Disparaging and Offensive. a term used to refer to a person who limps or is lame."

      The facts are...the name of the town of "Gympie" derives from the Kabi (the language of a tribe of Indigenous Australians aka Aborigines that historically lived in the region) word gimpi-gimpi. Gimpi-gimpi means "stinging tree" - botanical name - Dendrocnide moroides. The tree has large, round leaves that have similar properties to stinging nettles. The town was previously named Nashville, after James Nash, who discovered gold in the area in 1867. The name was later changed to Gympie in 1868.

      Referring to James Nash - when working at Tozer & Jeffery, solicitors as a legal secretary (my first job upon leaving school; a job I held for 5 years...the firm originally, when it first started out many, many years before was known as "Tozer & Tozer"), one day I was foraging around in the the lower level of the building...it was below street level.

      Out of interest and curiosity I was going through some ancient ledgers, etc., etc., and I came across an entry in one of the volumes mentioning James Nash...he had, apparently, in the very early days, been a client of the firm. I was thrilled to discover that piece of history among the yellowed pages of the dusty old, hard-covered books. Of course, I alerted my discovery to the rest of my workmates and my boss...those old books are now with the Gympie Historical Society as far as I'm aware. I'm still friends with my then boss's son and his wife. Graham, the son, was one of my co-workers. Graham did his Articles at the firm, and later took over from his father (the "Jeffery" in the firm's name).

      I apologise that this has run into such a lengthy response...but it will save you having to check up what I've written! :)

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    3. Thanks for the background Lee. Very interesting. Please be assured that I was not checking up on you - I was just curious to find out a little more about Judy Cornwell.

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    4. I know, Yorkie...I'm just mucking around. :)

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    5. Phew! That's a relief! You are a woman that I would not like to get on the wrong side of! Like Queensland's Angela Merkel!

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  3. As I am well into my second childhood (he said sadly), I thoroughly enjoyed this post! The video needs Burl Ives, though.

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    1. Did Burl sing it too?...Oh yes, The Oracle confirms that he did.

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  4. Yes, Hyacinth Bucket - what a character ! In fact the whole cast were excellent - it was a ridiculous, tongue in cheek, slightly off-beat BBC comedy.
    I'm afraid YP, I don't have any of your rather swish looking buckets, but I do have a couple of no 2 - one in red and the other in black, I think. I haven't used it lately, and it's not something that stays in the memory - like Fabergé Eggs or diamonds.....

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    1. Two mop buckets! Wow! I am so jealous. I bet you are an excellent mopper CG - in your nylon housecoat and headscarf tied above the forehead.

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    2. You've been peeking again YP - no good will ever come of it, you know - or so my mum always said! You forgot the trodden down manky slippers, that I shuffle round in, slopping greasy water as I go !

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    3. Oooo! My pulse is racing now.

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  5. ... and then isn't an old car sometimes referred to as a bucket of bolts? You could be on a large theme here.

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    1. The front part of a big excavator is also often known as a bucket...

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  6. You forgot " bucket list"

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    1. Eh? Did you see the first sentence? May I humbly suggest that you lay off the cooking sherry!

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    2. ...it could be the smell of that bleach......

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  7. It's just shows to go you. I assumed that I knew the origin of 'kicked the bucket' (committing suicide by hanging after kicking the bucket away) and hence bucket list but having just consulted Wiki and various other sites on the origins of the saying it would seem that it is far from clear.

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    1. In 1993 it seems that the term was sometimes used with regard to meetings. Items that were not up for discussion could be shelved or placed in a virtual bucket - postponed until another time.

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  8. Just like I don't make New Year resolutions, I don't keep bucket lists. Of course there are things at the back of my mind I think of in the category of "one day... maybe...", but these are so not serious that they aren't worth mentioning.

    As for proper buckets, there is my red plastic bucket which I use every Saturday morning when I mop the floors in my flat. In the cabinet under the kitchen sink, there is another plastic bucket (in white) where my cleaning utensils sit when I do not need them (i. e. all week apart from Saturday).
    A zinc bucket would be rather heavy. We used to have one at home when I was a kid, to carry the ashes in from the woodburning stove in our bathroom, and another one for the pieces of coal.

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    1. Until now, I thought your parents were kindly people...but now I have a picture in my mind of a weeping little girl being forced to carry heavy buckets of coal and ashes from the stove. Were you barefoot too?

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    2. Very often, I was indeed barefoot, but never when I went downstairs into the cellar - I was too scared of spiders and always imagined one would scuttle across my feet.
      At least I always had a delicious piece of dry bread waiting for me at night in my tiny attic room.

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