'skive' in that sense isn't only Australian, Alison, it's certainly common
in English vocabulary. I think Robin mentions it somewhere in one of his
posts but I doubt if the word has any close relevance to the usage of
'skivvy' (there may certainly be etymological links) as 'skiving' was
something 'skivvies' didn't get chance to do.
It was interesting to see Joanna's forwarded post, apart from anything else
I am minded again one of the puzzling twists (and there seem to be many)
about which this discussion is turning: on the hand it is being said that
CAD's poem is an expression of feminine desire so is therefore not to be
subject to erasure while on the other it is being treated as if a
representational poem in the realistic mode. To my mind it misses both,
simply because it doesn't establish itself, viz. the discussion about the
use of cliché. It has been said that a male could not have written the poem,
now I'd mention here Anne Carson's 'Autobiography of Red', a sequence by a
woman which deals with male homo-erotic desire and does so to my mind with
considerable success. Likewise a male writer can speak in the female voice,
if the writer has the imaginative capacity.
Back to the servants, and thanks again for Joanna's absorbing post, but I
don't see that there would be a necessary split between forms of labour in a
servant establishment except when numbers created hierarchies of labour. I
can give a parallel example from my own experience, one job I was in my
twenties, which was superbly low-paid, involved me having to variously scrub
floors, clean toilets, dispose of rubbish into skips that was accrued on an
industrial scale while simultaneously having the responsibility of ordering
hundreds of thousands of pounds of stock per month, I decided what to order
btw, being answerable for the security of that stock, supervising other
employees, reconciling the books, setting rotas and washing glasses in the
bars if they happened to be busy. My role was simultaneously 'low' and
'higher' in the hierarchy, although I was, as it were, one of the 'trusted
servants' I was also expected to get my hands dirty as required. I mention
that because I suspect it comparable to the realities of much of life
downstairs (or in the attic!) pre Great War.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2003 11:33 PM
Subject: Re: Skivvy
One thing about this discussion - I may have missed it, but I've seen
no mention of "skive" in the sense I understand it in Australian,
which means slacking off, being lazy. It must be related.
Cheers
Alison
--
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead Online
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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