Family Record For Making Blunders

Press, Volume C, Issue 29468, 21 March 1961, Page 2

Family Record For Making Blunders

[3l/ AUDREY WEIGH] There snrely could not be another family anywhere with such a record for making blunders. There are only four of us, which is perhaps just as well, and anything might

happen. I don’t mean the simple things, like joining the sleeve of a jumper to the neckband, or getting the lid of the kettle jammed in the teapot—they happen daily. I am thinking of the sort which make friends and relatives ask with amusement whether anything has happened recently. Naturally, most of them come about from trying to save money.

No Handyman Father is absolutely no use at all as a handyman, which he cheerfully admits. One of my earliest memories is of him trying to fix a small cabinet to the kitchen wall. The small holes intended for the plugs suddenly developed into cavities big enough to take a football. A few attempts further along looking for firmer plaster only made thinks worse, and an extra hammer tap nearly brought the wall down. Eventually we were left with huge bulges where the holes were hastily filled in and painted over—and no wall cabinet. For years a mirror hung over the spot, but did not cover the “mishap” entirely. After that, whenever mother suggested that a few extra shelves would be handy, father pointed to the wall and she decided it would be far less trouble to manage without them. At an early age I showed signs of following the family trend. I was given some material for making dolls’ clothes, and sat down quietly in the corner to do the work on my knee. Everybody was enthusiastic about the result until I stood up and they saw the identical shape cut out of the front of my dress.

Making Bread When I suddenly had an urge to try my hand at breadmaking there was no comment but everybody watched for things to go wrong. In the warming process the yeast rose beautifully and everything seemed to be going

well, but when I put the mixture in to bake it rose alarmingly until we thought it was going to burst out of the oven. From time to time I opened the oven door to find it rising still higher. By mistake I’d used self-raising flour instead of plain. Cutting out anything always seems to be full of traps for us, but we never seem to remember until it is too late. However, when we decided to lay new lino in the kitchen there was a family conference on the best way to do it As father had blundered so often in the past, he easily shifted the responsibility to the rest of us. Mother suggested cutting round the various obstacles as we came to them, but my brother persisted that there was only one way to do it properly—the mathematical way. Wrong Wall

As his helpers, we knelt down and held the edges while he measured carefully with compasses, ruler and protractor. Our kitchen was a most peculiar shape, with several corners, two doors and a bay window, with a fireplace to add to the difficulties, but he measured every angle to the exact degree. The pieces were cut out and it looked perfect, until we found that the space for the fireplace was in the middle of the wrong wall. As time passed, that lino needed painting to make it look respectable again, but every time somebody found some spare minutes to do it, the others forgot and walked on it. Even the dog left his pawmarks across it more than once. At last, mother and I made up our minds to do the task while the others were in bed. When father had a wet paint brush in his hand his enthusiasm was liable to run away with him and he painted everything within sight, so we thought we would get on much better without him. We made sure that the dog was safely out of the way, then planned our method of approach carefully On Painted Lino

We remembered all the cartoons we’d seen on the subject, so first of all we made certain the back door was locked, then started from there and painted our way through to the hall. When

we’d finished we stood and admired our work for a moment, then crept quietly to bed. It just would have to be that night that father woke and decided to go downstairs to make himself a cup of tea. As my brother grew older he learnt woodwork and building and became quiet a handyman. No job seemed too much for him and there came a day when he decided to enlarge the kitchen. The trouble we’d had with that kitchen. Mother and I took a few days’ holiday, hoping for the best, left him to it, with father to carry bricks and cement when needed. He made a superb job of it, except that he forgot to close the inside doors before he knocked the wall down. For weeks after that we were still getting rid of dust and plaster. Upside Down One of our latest faux-pas was very simple and often pointed out as another family joke. We bought new material for curtains, and trying to finish them quickly before visitors arrived, mother made one while I made the other. It wasn’t until we hung them up side by side that we found we had each used the patterq the other way up. We couldn’t decide which was supposed to be right way, so there they hang to this day—a typical example of our family mishaps.

A survey disclosed that one out of every four families in America uses an outdoor grill.