Wednesday, 8 June 2016

Dad's Dictionary...

As you may have noticed I haven't been blogging for a looooong time, but I will try from now on to post a little more often. I like blogging. It's just finding the time. All my children but one have almost or completely 'flown the nest' and I now find myself in a totally different situation. Whereas before everybody had their jobs to do around the house and garden, now guess who has to do it.

So, in keeping with tradition of a word for Wednesday, I am now going to introduce you all to another of me Dad's favourites:

ARGY-BARGY

This expression remains all too clear for me even now, probably because I was almost always the one on the receiving end! Dad would give me something to do and would invariably add "now, I don't want no argy-bargy, you hear me?" If that particular something involved my brother or sister then my guess is that he felt he had even more reason for adding it!

Argy-bargy was a late nineteenth-century modification of a Scots phrase, which appeared early in the same century in the form argle-bargleThe second part of the two forms, in fact, is no more than a nonsense rhyming repetition of which the English language is full. The technical word for such doublets is reduplication. Think easy-peasy, hoity-toity, super-duper, etc.

So what does argy-bargy mean. In most webs I've looked at it means 'a lively discussion, argument, dispute, perhaps one which becomes bad tempered enough to produce a spat or minor quarrel'

Shall we call it a day?

Monday, 6 June 2016

Monday, 22 February 2016

Winter garden produce

Been doing some reaping...

Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and lettuce

Saturday, 6 February 2016

Yums!

Been doing some baking...

Banana and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies

Anzacs

Rainy day biscuits*
*Yes, we do have a legitimate excuse to make them as it rained a little during the night, for the first time in three months. The last time it rained was during the first week in November, last year!

Thursday, 4 February 2016

Cutie pie!

Been doing some sewing...

Meet Alfred: