Good Things #4/366 :: I won a prize!

A couple of months ago I spotted an ABC TV competition to win the DVD's of Upstairs, Downstairs. It required coming up with a new character for the story.

I was inspired. One night I put fingers to keyboard and came up with Eleanor Holland. I checked it. I reviewed it. I read it to my husband. He loved it. I hit 'send'. And forgot about it.

Until today. I checked my email and guess what? Yes, I won a prize. Not $200,000, which is a great pity, but a couple of DVD's which I will enjoy immensely anyway.

Isn't it nice when you get a prize for doing something? A Good Thing. Good on me.

"My new character for Upstairs Downstairs is 8 year old Eleanor Margaret Clementine Elizabeth Holland, which is rather a mouthful of name for a small girl.

Eleanor is Sir Hallam Holland's niece, who comes to them due to a tragedy in the family. She is precocious, sneaky, naughty and cheeky, and likes nothing better than to be chatting to the staff in the kitchen rather than study her French lessons with her tutor. Her boots are often scuffed, her hat crushed (if not missing altogether) or her hair ribbon coming loose and fraying at the ends.

A typical day for Eleanor shall include, but not be limited to:

*Shocking Ivy with a dead mouse in her night pot when Ivy comes to straighten her room in the morning (Eleanor, by happy chance, found the mouse drowned in the mop bucket when she was looking for biscuits after supper the previous evening);

*Blacking the doorhandle of the drawing room with some of Johnny's boot polish so as to watch Aunt Maud's face when she unwittingly entered the room to retrieve a pair a gloves (which Eleanor had placed there herself and then mentioned to Aunt Maud):

*And finally, tying pieces of dustcloth over the feet of Sooty the kitchen cat, so as to see if cats could polish floors. (As it happens, they can't: however they can run frightened, slipping this way and that, knocking over hatstands and a large ornamental vase, into the parlour until captured and relieved of their cottony burden by a very much vexed Mr Pritchard.)

When things becomes tense during the conflict, Eleanor proves herself very quick-thinking and brave, encouraging Aunt Eleanor to help care for wounded soldiers during the war at the magnificent 165 Eaton Place and herself eventually becoming a very competent junior nurse and becoming great pals with some of her patients.

So that's Eleanor. Quite a handful, wouldn't you agree? Fortunately, she is also very loving of her Uncle Hal and Aunt Agnes and despite her dreadful escapades, is quite contrite and remorseful - for a day or two! "