… not forgetting the chickens

A Labour Day message embroidered on a banner from the wonderful British Peoples’ Museum.  Poultry care and redistribution of wealth: a fine and logical connection.  Are there any industrial folk songs about gardening?  If so, I don’t know them.

So I might have a hum along to “The Manchester Rambler” while I’m in the backyard today, relishing a long weekend gifted to me by yesterday’s union movement: “I may be a wage slave on Monday, but I am a free man on Sunday”*.

Protesting too much

We might ask, of course, is this elegant female sower of seed free from household drudgery on a Sunday?  It seems unlikely.  Her brother may be up in the mountains getting all his pleasure the hard moorland way, but she is probably going to have to go inside any minute and mop the kitchen floor.  So, in solidarity, no housework for me today! If you want me, I’ll be in the garden.

*Okay, more accurately in this case, I’m a wage slave on Tuesday but that doesn’t scan nearly so well.