Plooter or Footer?

[uxb]

My dad used to accuse me of 'Plootering aboot' when I was wasting time in a lackadaisical manner.

It occured to me that I've just had a very nice afternoon in the sunshine 'plootering' about on my boat- doing the kind of jobs that aren't important but are easy on the back, brain, wallet and give plenty of time to sit and stare at the scenery while giving some purpose to being on the boat.

'Footering' was another good word he used, like when you take your bike to bits for no good reason.

Anyone else got any good old fashioned words for describing wasting time on their boat?

 

[Boathook]

I always thought it was pottering about on a boat.

 

[johnalison]

I don't plooter, ever, but I do a lot of pootling about, at least according to my better half.

 

[MASH]

Well, in my family mitherng (pron. "myethering") is an indecisive and unproductive form of footling about. eg what women of a certain age do at busy supermarket checkouts instead of packing, paying and going.
This might well be accompanied by the equally maddening though satisfying Old Norfolk activity of mardling, ie pointless gossip.

 

[prv]

I don't plooter, ever, but I do a lot of pootling about, at least according to my better half.

That's interesting - the first time I've heard that word from outside my family

To us it meant pottering about, but with a connotation of building stuff, probably out of old junk. I used to do a lot of that as a boy, and so the area of garden behind the shed and next to the compost heap, where I had a camp-fire and a lean-to made out of old doors (eventually upgraded to a more upmarket shack with an abandoned partly-broken Rayburn in it) was called the Pootling Pit. I remember mentioning this to our neighbour once, and her looking very shocked - I think she thought I was referring to some kind of pit latrine ten yards from her kitchen window

Pete