Odds and Ends

Posted on 2005/12/27 23:58:10 (December 2005).

[Monday 26th December]
I was required to leave work on time (no great burden there!) in order to be back at the flat to let some "little men" in to do a couple of odd jobs. The first guy was coming to install a kind of smoke / carbon monoxide detector thing, and the other guy was coming to fix a broken curtain rail. I attempted to chat a bit with the first guy, but pretty much left the second guy to it whilst I sat on the floor and wiled away the time on the internet. It was interesting to me how unobtrusive it felt - I could happily have sat there all night with the guy tinkering away in the other room without feeling uncomfortable or anything. In England I always felt I had to chat with these sorts of people, make them cups of tea, and stand by in case they needed anything.

Not much else to report really. It felt a little bit weird going straight back to work the day after Christmas - and indeed if it hadn't just so happened that Christmas fell on a weekend I wouldn't have had a day off at all!

I went to Uni on the 25th of December when I was living in Japan. I quite liked it actually, as the festivity seemed a lot more "real" considering that they should not believe in God and therefore Xmas is a pure coimmercial thing...

Posted by Lox at 2005/12/28 08:15:13.

did you call him Jeeves ;)

Posted by Kev at 2005/12/28 11:31:35.

The term "little man" (or men) comes from Vera (my grandmother) who uses it as a catch all phrase for plumbers, gas men, guys from the electricity company, builders, telephone engineers and essentially anyone who would come round to the house to do an odd job.

I think there is definitely a class hangover in this phrase - when Vera was young her parents had a maid, don't you know!

So the "little" is very much referring to social status rather than actually being of diminuitive stature.

Of course, I use in purely in jest, given that as we all know I am in fact working class myself...

(strange feeling of deja vu)

Posted by John at 2005/12/28 24:11:26.

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