Bruce’s Business: mad as a hatter

Posted on 20th October 2011 | in Community

Shiver me timbers, scratch the anchor, pull the yard post, monkeys chuff, Lee make me a cheese sarnie how, all sayings but where do they come from?

Did you know that the phrase ‘as mad as a hatter’ actually comes from the hat makers who would put some type of solution onto top hats to make them shiny, and the fumes from the solution actually made them go mad!

Sun of a gun, for example, was for sailors who had crossed the Atlantic to the West Indies, they would take the native women on board the ship and have their way with them in between the cannons (better than a Travel lodge!).  Some of the women the sailors left behind would have boys, who were called sons between the guns.

The best one that I like is ‘Rule of thumb’. This is an old English law that declared that a man could not beat his wife with a stick any larger than the diameter of his thumb. So me wacking Kelly with the titanium baseball bat when the tea is not ready might be classed as excessive! Crackers eh! Right, went off on one there for five minutes didn’t I!

So the cold is back with a vengeance (even Belly will be wearing thicker shorts and a thermal vest soon) and cant you feel it in the air. Winter always brings that cold air in the morning that I quite like, wakes you up rapidly when you take the dog for a walk at half six!

We have just started our new contract at Alcan, which is training all of their 600 employees in basic manual handling awareness. It’s great to be involved with such a well known local company and hopefully we can provide the results that our national clients receive due to our distinctive type of training.

Already trained a few local lads, and I am still waiting on Bri to attend the circuit training classes like he said he would!

We are also starting the Amble Boxing Club back up at the Boys Club (an iconic club that used to be where all the lads of Amble attended) so keep an eye out for the start date of this. This will be for all ages and will ran by a qualified ABA coach so it’s great that someone is starting this up, let’s get behind it and get your sons/husbands/granddads down there when it begins.

Well that’s all from me for now. I am going to spend the rest of the day trying to come up with an excuse why I can’t be killed in the gym by John Kelly, again.  It never works though. I tried telling him last week that my legs had fallen off. I thought I had got away with it until he turned up at my door with a wheelbarrow to put me in. Remember, whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re totally right!

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One thought on "Bruce’s Business: mad as a hatter"

  1. coquetbird says:

    The solution was mercury ( as used in dental amalgam )
    The hatters suffered from mercury poisoning.

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