Idleness

wasting bright golden hours
sitting on your heels
propping up the railings
trapesing aimlessly
lounging
sitting
standing

These words might have been used (quietly) by servants as they observed the Bulloughs entertain in their sporting country estate on the Isle of Rum (see post below). But they weren't. These words were actually used in the Accrington Times and Observer to describe employees, who were neither at war nor at work in August 1914 when Howard and Bullough, a major Accrington employer, refused to meet the demands of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and locked out 5,000 boys and men from the cotton machine works. It being not long after the 'Glorious Twelfth', I wonder where George Bullough was at the time and whether he was holding, 'either hammer or gun', as the newspaper jibed that the factory men were not doing, 'to play your part for the honour of your country'.