The Long Saturday 6 & IWSG

Oops, I was too busy describing and explaining to use the last of the Words, that appeared on River's blog last Wednesday and were:

Study
Exercise
Gnome
Cagier
Fountain
Super
Enigma
Sludge

Those last four will either be used with the new set tomorrow or not at all.
Because this is what went on in the kitchen:

While they ate, Nora, Markus, Anders and Helgi told about their visit to the kitchen.
"We went down to the kitchen," Nora said, "and it was filled with smoke."
"Nice smoke," Anders added. "It made me feel totally hungry. And then we looked for Heidi or Lis or Tage, but we could not find them."
"No, they were not in the kitchen at all," Markus said, "but there were these here Gnomes. They were small, even shorter than Helgi."
"Yes, Even shorter than me, and the lady-gnomes had long hair in beautiful braids." Helgi said.
"How did they dress?" My asked.
"Old-fashioned like," Nora said, "colourful skirts, and petticoats, like for our school theatre."
"Yes that's right, just like as for our theatre!" Markus said, "And the male ones were dressed in short trousers and long stockings, And ... what's the word ... waistcoats?"
Like jackets with buttons and no sleeves?" Estrid asked and Markus nodded energetically having taken a large bite of his bun, he chewed frantically and swallowed. "But boy, can they cook!"
My looked out of the window, lost in thoughts, then she returned to the present: "They are not Gnomes," she said in a dreaming voice, as if still lost in the past. "I dare bet that they are Nisser," she said. "Finnbogi must have found them at last. At Unicorn Farm, we had Nisser cooking for us, It was the best food ever, and they were small, childsized, but grown ups. And some of them were stuffy. If you did not treat them with due respect, mainly the older ones, you were served unpalatable food and drink."
"Whew, I'm happy we remembered our good manners then," Nora said. "We remembered to say 'Please', and 'Thank you', all the magic words."
My started laughing. "Magic words indeed," she said. "Nisser are cagier with their cooking secrets, and more particular of how they are spoken to, than any person I ever knew. I dare bet some will not be happy with their lunch today."

*** 

They were almost done eating, and sat nibbling at the delicious buns when Anna returned with Helge.
"Hello Anna, And nice to see you, Helge," My said standing up. She shook Helge's hand and looked at him. "You have grown," she said matter of fact,
Helge smiled tentatively at My, "I'm pleased to be here, pleased to be able to help and generally finding the world a better place right now. And I'm even more pleased to see that you have something nice to eat, Knud showed me around, and as we reached the kitchen, that's where Anna found us and abducted me. We were surprised to not find Heidi, Lis and Tage there with their family doing the cooking. Instead some Nisser had taken over - and not all visitors were happy over what they found in baskets and jugs."
"Sit down and eat some of these delicacies before we begin," My said. "Preparing for hard work is best done by eating and talking! You eat, I do the talking."

- - - - - - - - - -

November 2 question - November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

My answer: I have tried twice. Never enrolled and all that jazz. The first time around it was a personal sort of challenge by Sue Elvis November: 30 days - 30 blogposts. I tried and failed, as documented here.
In November 2019, I wrote a lot of chapters of my mock autobiography starting here, and ending with a sum up here. After this I swore never to participate again. It was not fun, as I prefer to write in lumps and not every day for a month. Doing different things is meat and drink to my sanity, and I am a staunch adherer of the Spiral approach principle which I try to define here, I just copy / paste myself from an old post:

One of the great lies of our time is that you can do only one thing well. While this might be true if you want to win Olympic gold medals, play in the royal philharmonic orchestra or some such feat of strength, it does not automatically hold true for us normal human beings.
     If it did, it would mean, that all of us were meant to do one thing at the elite level. Or that each of us could master one thing only.
     MotherOwl argues that most people would be happier and less bothered by problems if they spread out their interests instead of trying to become a master of one subject - in older days they called such people monomaniacs.

Up until about 50 years ago man was a Jack of all trades. In a farming society, multi-skilled people were the norm, not the exception.

A good housewife should be able to:
- cook and make do with what she had, stretching the food to last through winter.
- milk the cows, make yoghurt and cheese and churn butter.
- make candles and lamps from lard and beeswax (the bees were the woman's domain)
- make clothing, bedclothes etc. from sheep's wool / flax /nettles from raw materials over spinning, weaving, dyeing and sewing.
- make, bread for daily consumption and cakes for holidays.
- brew beer (maybe also distilling spirits)
- care for the sick, using common medical and herbal knowledge.
- wash and dress the deceased for burial.
- harvest and store seeds, herbs and spices
- teach the children their ABC
- take care of and slaugther small livestock, e.g. poultry. 

The husband took care of:
- field work, including seed conservation
- large livestock especially the horses and their diseases
- woodwork and leatherworking
- tools and simple smithing.
- fences and hedges.
- carpenters and thatching, harvesting of reed and straw.
- Religious teaching of the household.

And even if you had a fixed function, smith, priest, miller, tailor etc. you still at least had a big garden and some small animals.
Of course you can not - or only partially - live like pioneers and farmers today but MotherOwl is very much in favour of following the seasons with their variation of things to be done.
Of course, my spiral approach principle follows naturally from doing this.