JACK AND JILL HAPPY EVER AFTER

Someone accused me yesterday of not blogging as often as I used to. “I’ve been busy at work,” I explained.

“Too much work makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a dull girl,” I was told.

At least it set me thinking as I recalled the nursery rhyme:
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.
Up Jack got and home he trot as fast as he could caper.
He went to bed to mend his head, with vinegar and brown paper.

Were Jack and Jill dull together? Is that how they got on? Did she tend to his injuries and make a devoted caring nurse? Alternatively, did Jill resent Jack taking to his bed with a graze on his forehead when she was covered in painful bruises from her own fall? Was the vinegar on the pillowcase she’d only just washed and ironed the final straw, and was she off to see a divorce solicitor the next morning?

Enough of this pointless rambling, I have work to return to (and a meal to cook for Outdoor Man). Also I’m now reliably informed that the rhyme was about King Louis XVI being beheaded, with Queen Marie Antoinette not far behind. In that context, and despite the happier ending it was given for children to chant, there are times when divorce can be a preferable outcome!