Happy chappies

According to new research, they have the most laughs and the fewest days off. Must be good.

Most of their laughs are, surprise surprise, at the expense of their bosses.

No man is a hero to his valet. No boss is a hero to his secretary. They know too much.

Of course, there are pompous bosses, bullying bosses, downright incompetent bosses. The Office’s David Brent is not entirely a work of fiction.

A secretary is a bit like an office wife – but at least you can go home at the end of the day and forget about him and his like.

New technology did away for the need for many so-called secretaries who were little more than typists.

The credit crunch has seen off many more. Those who are left are the crème de la crème and worth their weight in posh biscuits – even if they have to go and buy them themselves.

I started my working life as a secretary.

A few years later, I had secretaries of my own. Whenever I opened my office door, they laughed. Kindly, friendly laughter, but laughter nonetheless. No chance of getting big-headed with them around.

Secretaries are in a great position.

They get all the gossip from the other workers and also know all the machinations of management. They know everything. They might be discreet, but they know where all the bodies are buried. Power. No wonder they’re smiling.

Hold that music

RINGING a publisher yesterday, and being put on hold, I was forced to listen to Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, apparently played with one finger on an out-of-tune toy piano. Not an uplifting experience, and certainly not for nearly five minutes. How much nicer when later I called the Yorkshire Dales National Park and heard a recording of bird song. Classy, clever and almost soothing.

Panic? Me?

ONCE upon a time, when your son left home, you probably wouldn’t hear a word from him for ten years when he would turn up on your doorstep with a beard and a parrot in a cage. Must have been worrying.

But not as worrying as being in constant communication. Because when they can – and do – phone, text or email often, there’s this dreadful worry when there’s a sudden spell of silence...

Panic? Me? Just because Smaller Son went off radar in the middle of Mongolia. His brother had to remind me, patiently, that there’s probably not a good mobile signal in the middle of the Gobi desert.

So a new device which enables parents to monitor gap year children on the other wide of the world sounds absolutely horrendous for everyone concerned. It can track their movements to within a few yards, which should be reassuring, but won’t be, of course. Because no self-respecting traveller will want to be tracked by his mum. Deliberately or dozily, they’ll leave the tracker in a bar or on a beach, or drop it overboard, or down a ravine, or swap it with someone in a hostel in Kathmandu, or tie it to a passing camel...

The tracker may be brilliant, but it’s still no match for the daftness of the average gap year student, or a mother’s ability to worry.

OKAY, so it’s forecast to be cloudy today, but we’ve already had more sunshine so far than we had during all of last summer. Everywhere you go there are people looking pink and smiley and more tolerant. I bet the MPs are praying that the sunshine will be back very soon and last a long time. Until the next election perhaps?

Who was looking out for Susan?

FROM the moment she smiled trustingly as the audience gasped and tittered at her appearance, it was clear that Susan Boyle was a vulnerable soul and that, whether she won or lost, it would all end in tears.

Which is why the makers of Britain’s Got Talent owed her a duty of care. They knew exactly what it was going to be like. Susan clearly didn’t have a clue. That’s why I just couldn’t bear to watch the final.

Yes, it made for fascinating television and huge audiences.

But it was all a bit too close to laughing at the lunatics in Bedlam or gawping at a public hanging. Next time programme makers might be more careful... and the audience figures will no doubt plunge.

MPs praying for sunshine

OKAY, so it’s forecast to be cloudy today, but we’ve already had more sunshine so far than we had during all of last summer. Everywhere you go there are people looking pink and smiley and more tolerant. I bet the MPs are praying that the sunshine will be back very soon and last a long time. Until the next election perhaps?

Refreshingly ordinary

CAMILLA Parker Bowles apparently shops on eBay, which sounds refreshingly ordinary and down-to-earth. I wonder what her user name is.

Meanwhile, her son, Tom, a food writer, said this week on the problems of growing up in the spotlight: “There’s no point moaning. You have to be responsible for your own actions. If you’re doing something you shouldn’t be and you’re caught, then you have to be prepared to take the flak.” Which also sounds pretty sensible.

When screen stars and celebrities make ever more ridiculous demands and throw tantrums (and telephones) at the slightest provocation, attitudes like that so close to the throne are somehow very reassuring.

Backchat: Memories of make do and mend

MANY, many thanks for your letters about make do and mend – inspired by my grandmother’s sheets that had an 80-year life as sheets, cot sheets, tea towels and, finally, floor cloths.

Dr Ann Carr, of Middleton- St-George, can certainly compete with that. She, too, inherited her mother’s sheets once they had been turned side to middle and worn thin all over.

Even the well-to-do, she points out, had to resort to such measures as to buy sheets from the clothing ration.

“But once they were too worn, I cut them up and used them as liners for the terry towelling nappies for my first child.

Being made of linen and Egyptian cotton, they were ideal for this.”

Doreen Hitchcock of Darlington remembers old sheets ending up in her mother’s rag drawer. “These were invaluable when we had heavy colds and would otherwise run out of handkerchiefs.

They were also used as bandages and I also remember them being used to bind the bread poultices, used to draw out infection from nasty cuts or boils. This was in the days before the NHS, when mothers treated minor illnesses and injuries at home.”

Bread poultices – does any one ever use those anymore?

Lynn Airey, of Darlington, can remember making cushions from old pillows, covering them with material from old curtains, with the broderie anglaise from a nightie as the final trim.

Sue Cox of Bishop Auckland can remember her grandmother raiding the pile of jumpers destined for a jumble sale. “She would carefully unpick the wool and use it to knit up new jumpers. They were sometimes a bit matted or lumpy, but as she always said, they kept us just as warm. She had brought up nine children in the 1930s, so she knew plenty about saving every penny.”

Even in the 1960s Barbara Wilson, of Darlington, used to make many of her own children’s clothes, often cutting down her own old clothes in the process. “My old baggy stretch ski pants always ended up as trousers for the toddlers.”

But now, she says, it’s hardly worth it. “When I go round the supermarkets I am always popping in a little item for one of my grandchildren. The clothes are so well designed and so cheap, that it’s just not worth making them myself. You can’t expect youngsters to make do and mend when they can buy such lovely new things so cheaply.”