Fun in the woods and a gift

 On Valentine's day I received a beautifully packaged little heart gift - no not from Mr M although he did buy me a card - but from Ann who blogs over at Love Making Things and who had a little giveaway recently to all those who commented on a particular post.

Inside the little package was this dear little wooden heart - isn't it cute?   Thank you so much Ann - a letter is in the post to you.

I decided to walk to to the post office to post the letter to Ann, as I also had one to post to Australia and it would need to be weighed, and to take the route through the woods, it had been raining this morning and it was very muddy but it was lovely - I noticed the different barks on the trees and the moss and lichen and what with the birds singing and it not being as cold as of late I really didn't notice how muddy it was at all and didn't want to come home!  On my return I passed a granny (I assumed she was his granny by her age) with her grandson a boy of about 6 and she commented on the mud and she said she thought they probably shouldn't have come to which I replied that it was lovely and worth a bit of mud and she agreed that it made a nice change from staying indoors.  I noticed she was holding the lad's hand and wondered why he wasn't dashing about sliding on the mud and getting filthy as boys of his age should!!  Maybe his mother would not be best pleased if he got his wellies dirty.  I do sometimes wonder if there is a generation growing up with no real contact with the natural world and what a lot they miss out on if so.  It's not just knowing that milk comes from cows but how to make dens in the wood, scooping up mud and making it into pies, playing houses or shop in the roots of the trees and learning to whistle with a blade of grass or how to climb trees ripping one's clothes in the process - or am I remembering my childhood through rose tinted glasses?  There is something about being in touch with Nature that fills a need in many of us I think and I fear for those children growing up indoors and not being allowed or perhaps able to get muddy and to play in the woods as I did this afternoon - no I didn't actually make mud pies nor did I climb any of the trees but in my memory I did!!

Thoughts on Time and Memory

A couple of rather abstract concepts have been occupying my thoughts lately the first of which is Time.

 Time can be measured in years, months, weeks, days and each day can be split into hours, minutes and seconds (and if you are competing in the Commonwealth Games into fractions of seconds!)

But what a slippery eel time can be - although it passes in measurable units it doesn't seem that way at all.  Remember being a child and "in a minute" being an absolute age to wait?  Why is it that almost any retired person will agree that once you leave work with all those empty hours ahead, in which to do all the things you used to dream of, suddenly there are less hours in each day and less days in each week or so it would seem!  How can this be?  When I look back I remember finding time to cycle to work, to cultivate an allotment, to sew and knit clothes for the Wanderer, to bake cakes and make my own bread and to go for walks gathering blackberries and crab apples to make into jams and puddings before I had to pick her up from school and still having "change from half a crown" as the old Hovis ad used to say! (or did it?)  Now I get to the end of the day and realise I haven't actually done anything much at all some days.  How can that be?  Or is it down to the other concept I have been thinking about?  Maybe I didn't do all those thing every day it just seems like that.

Memory - is another slippery character - it can't be measured (unless we are being asked what is the date today and who is the Prime Minister as we are diagnosed as having or not having Alzhiemer's - do they really ask such questions I wonder as if so I might be suffering already!)  but it's there alright.  Why is it that I can remember in vivid detail things that happened back in the 1940s but have difficulty in remembering what I did yesterday?  But memory is a real gift and is something which nobody can take away from us.  My days out (which maybe one of the reasons I don't get much done) are filling my memory bank so that in the winter I can call up the sunny memories to keep me going through the months which always seem much longer than the summer ones - see Time above!!

All kinds of things trigger memories - for me it might be flowers - you might remember me telling you about the snowdrops at Pope's Hill back when I was writing about my childhood perhaps, colours especially in combination such as bright blue and buttercup yellow which immediately remind me of some sheets of paper I was given as a 6 year old to cut up and make patterns with or perhaps lime green and turquoise which were the colours in a check dress for a paper doll which came each week in my mother's magazine.  Who remembers dressing a card doll with cut out paper clothes fitted with little fold over tabs? Sounds such as classical piano music which reminds me of school assemblies, smells such as warm milk reminding me of having to drink those little third of a pint bottles at playtime at school - no refrigeration for the bottles they just sat in the crates getting warm and horrible all morning, and so on and so on.  Truly memory is a marvellous thing even if it cannot be measured and it also cannot always be believed!

For those who enjoy coming with me on my outings I am off to London again on Friday so will share that outing with you when I get back - it's no wonder I don't get much done at home is it?!   Having been inspired by the crazy patchwork we saw at the Tate Britain last week I took advantage of the wet weather on Friday afternoon to make a start on a piece myself.  When I have stitched this I intend to use it on a small bag - watch this space!  So perhaps if I were to write a diary of what I do it wouldn't all be time wasted and in any case maybe sitting in the garden musing on this and that is not time wasted anyway but just another memory for my mental scrapbook!

Just received this link from a friend - imagine what a memory this might be if you were lucky enough to come across it!

Less is often More Part II

 I think I am beginning to get the hang of patchwork!  I have been busily making this little quilt using up the fabrics I have to hand.  I had wanted to try out the disappearing 9 patch I'd read about on various blogs and so here is my attempt - I made 2 different blocks and used 2 of the cut squares from each block in each cushion to give a wider range of colours.

 I have a couple of wicker chairs in the conservatory which have shaped cushions in what was originally a pale cream colour which needed replacing as they have become stained and worn in spite of repeated washing (the cats having chosen them as their preferred beds in warmer weather) but rather than attempting to make shaped cushion covers I decided that small quilts tucked over the top would do the job, be easy to remove and wash and look just fine.  Now all we need is for the weather to warm up sufficiently for us to sit out there with our cuppas!  The second quilt is nearly finished so now what I wonder?!

Following on from my last post in which I suggested that less is sometimes more and mentioned my book The Garden Cottage Diaries I thought about technology and how much I now use the internet and how I keep trying to cut back so as to have time for more crafting.and other things and was reminded of the Three Day Week and how we were all plunged into darkness forty years ago in 1974.  I wonder just how we would manage these days without electricity 4 days every week?  Of course we had no computers then nor any of the myriad electronic gizmos that people use all the time these days and which require re-charging regularly.

We were lucky enough to have a Parkray fire - this was a cream enameled glass fronted fire with a back boiler for hot water (we didn't have central heating back then) and used solid fuel so we were warm enough in the living room on the days when there was no electricity but of course the rest of the house was freezing as it was from January to March that the 3-day week took place.  We had candles for light and a little camping gas stove which we could heat a kettle on.  But - and here is the thing - we managed and knowing everyone was in the same boat led to a kind of Blitz spirit.  At work we were bundled up in coats and scarves and luckily not having computers nor even electric typewriters an office job was not much affected apart from not being able to see what we were typing after 3.00 in the afternoon and not being able to feel our fingers!!

We didn't have a TV back then so that didn't matter to us and we made use of the radio Mr M had brought with him to our marriage which ran on a battery!!  Reading by candle light was not easy but we managed and I used to make casseroles and suchlike on the days we did have electricity and then we'd have something to re-heat on the camping gas stove on the days when we didn't have power.  And at least we didn't have to worry about not having a fridge as the house was so cold and freezers were only just becoming fashionable and we didn't have one.  Perhaps my childhood without electricity helped me to deal with it all.
 
Maybe my idea of running away and living off-grid  - which I spoke about here - wasn't such a bad idea after all!  At least I would have some knowledge of such a lifestyle from my years of living in the Forest at my grandfather's of which I have written in my childhood memories posts.  There we had no electricity nor gas and although there was mains water by the time I lived there and the well had been covered up the tap was in an outhouse and shared between the two houses.  Life was different then but I don't remember being unhappy at not having all mod cons even those that were by the 50s available.  After all most homes in the 50s had mains water and indoor toilets along with electricity for lights if not for power (who remembers electric irons being plugged into the light fittings?!).  However we had paraffin lamps for light, a range fire for cooking and heat and a toilet out the back which must have been connected to a septic tank or something - it certainly didn't have a flush.  We had a wind up radiogram which one of my uncles had apparently made years before in the 20s perhaps, and a few rather dated 78's to play on it when we had any needles!  We did rent a radio in time for the Coronation I remember but that required an accumulator to run it and this had to be recharged each week at the shop and necessitated a walk to said shop carrying the accumulator (see below) which weighed a ton!

No telephone let alone a mobile (not yet invented), no computer, nothing electrical no iron (heavy flat irons heated on the fire were used, kettles (black iron kettle on the fire), washing machines (obviously no plumbing nor electricity so washing was done by hand) but there was time which always seems to be in short supply these days.  Time to talk, time to read (preferably during daylight hours!) time to make meals from scratch rather than shoving a ready meal (not then invented) into the microwave (not yet available for domestic use).  Chores took longer of course and were physically harder but together with not shopping for so much (having to carry it all home on foot cuts down on what can be bought not to mention the lack of money and rationing) meant nobody was overweight!

Less use of the car (what car?!) meant more walking as it was the only way to get about other than taking a bus or train.

Less comfort indoors and very little space meant more time spent outdoors playing for me and my friends which meant more exercise - no couch potatoes with their electronic gismos to play on then!

Less money to spend - more creativity - not so much in the way of beautiful crafts but more of the necessity being the mother of invention kind!

I could go on and on but I'd better stop.  Here is a little piece I came across which says it more briefly than I have!

Mixed bunch today.

SNOW ON THE HILLS
We woke this morning to snow - unusual this early in the year and probably because I was only saying recently how we used to dress up in scarves, gloves and all the warm clothing we could find for Bonfire Night (5 November) and that nowadays we don't seem to need to and my gloves are still hidden away since last winter.  As it had been pouring with rain in the early hours it didn't settle here and the sun is now shining though still very chilly.  I notice that the hills beyond Sherborne towards Wincanton are still covered though.  Brrr winter is upon us!  See on the internet that round Bath and Radstock (not a great distance from us) they have had up to 6 inches of the stuff - see here

PATCHWORK WINNER

You may be interested to learn that the winner of the first prize in the Patchwork exhibition I went to recently was the one many of you liked best - this book one with the hare and the tortoise pages.  The prize this year was a leather bag - last time it had been a super dooper sewing machine donated by the manufacturer.  Economic climate affects everything!

KNITTING - CAN YOU HELP?
When I was in France my friend and I took a meander up the main street of St Junien and stopped at a wool shop as my friend had noticed a box of oddments outside and one of the balls would be perfect for the hair on a doll she was in the process of making.  Once inside to purchase her yarn I noticed a lovely scarf - I think they are called shawlettes being a shallow triangle knitted in simple garter stitch and with a fringe.  Scarf was not for sale but the yarn was so I bought a skein.  However although it would be really simple to knit I have no idea how to calculate how often I would need to increase to get the required angle.  Any of you knitters able to help?  Apparently I should use size 5 or 5.5 mm needles but that was all the info I got.  I was assured that one skein should make said scarf but they had no patterns and even if they had I can't read French knitting patterns!

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
I mentioned recently that I felt another Childhood memories post coming on so if you are not interested look away now!

Medicinal Memories

Wandering round the supermarket recently I noticed how many items they have for sale of what might be called a medicinal nature - cough medicines, pain killers, vitamins, and so on and I thought back to the ailments we seemed to suffer from and the medicines we took back in the early 1950s. Of course there were no supermarkets back then and if one purchased any remedies it was from a chemist shop recognisable by the large glass bottles filled with coloured solutions in the window.  I think that the chemist used to actually make up the prescriptions and not just dispense manufactured one as now too.  For an interesting article about old fashioned chemist shops see here. Olive oil could be purchased in very small bottles at the chemist - I don't think it was ever used for cooking or certainly not in our house! 

From a very young age we were dosed with cod liver oil - provided for those under a certain age by the government along with delicious Clinic Orange which was supposed to ensure the upcoming generation grew strong and well after the deprivations of the war years.  Cod liver oil was disgusting and a big teaspoonful was administered daily and left a horrible oily coating in the mouth and the taste was awful.  No sweets to be offered after either since sweets were rationed!  Then there was Virol which I loved and was happy to take with its lovely malty flavour and the thick sweet texture like condensed milk!  I remember the orange and blue enameled advertisement boards on every station saying things like:  "For Health and Vitality" or "Growing boys/ anaemic girls/ delicate children/ nursing mothers need it"!  We all needed it seemingly.  Having recently watched The Wartime Farm one might see why!!

Keeping "regular" was considered important too and to this end doses of Syrup of Figs were often administered.  I remember my mother once accidentally giving me 2 tablespoonfuls instead of 2 teaspoons and worrying herself sick but needless to say I was fine!  We were made of sterner stuff in those days I think.  Not sure if it gave me a clearer complexion as mentioned in the ad or not!

Children back then suffered from the usual childhood illness like measles, mumps, whooping cough, chicken pox and so on and sometimes from more serious ailments like scarlet fever, diptheria, TB or polio and sometimes diabetes. One thing we rarely suffered from was obesity - getting enough food was the problem rather than eating too much in the post war days. Luckily I never had any of these last illnesses and was quite happy to have time off school when it was closed due to an outbreak of scarlet fever but then realised I wouldn't have anyone to play with as we were all in quarantine, I did get the other more usual illnesses though apart from whooping cough!  Being ill in those days wasn't a pleasant experience when you could lie on the settee and watch the television all cosy and warm with the central heating on but rather a miserable lonely time when you were tucked up in bed with a book and left to get on with it most of the time!

Winter of course brought the usual crop of colds and coughs - hardly surprising considering that we had bare legs even in the depths of winter.  Below the knee we wore long woolen socks kept up with elastic garters and our bodies were well wrapped up in warm coats with scarves tied crosswise over our chests (for some reason it was considered necessary to protect our chests from the cold) and woolen hats or bonnets for the girls and knitted balaclava helmets for the boys but as girls wore skirts and boys shorts the bit between our garters and our knickers got chilled and our knees were usually blue with cold!  I do remember as a child of about 3 or 4 having a green woolen tweed coat with a velvet collar which came with a matching bonnet and leggings like the little girl in blue above so I must have been a bit warmer then.

When I had a cold or a cough my mother used to make a little saucer of butter, sugar and vinegar all creamed together for me to take with a teaspoon.  I guess it was a home made version of glycerine lemon and honey but using what we had to hand!  Another option was to liberally coat my chest with goosegrease (usually only possible after Christmas when the goose had well and truly been cooked!)  Can't imagine how or if this worked and must surely have made my vest all greasy!  Then there was Vick vapour rub which I always thought had something to do with my non existent father whose name was Vic(tor)!!!  Or the dreaded Friar's balsam whch was added to boiling water and one sat with one's head covered with a towel breathing in the vapours - it worked for a while but the effect very quickly wore off and you had the added danger of getting scalded too.  Tissues hadn't been invented and so old clean rags were used for wiping noses- not sure if they went on the back of the fire after use or were washed for next time!

When we lived with my grandfather any ailment could be cured with a cup of his "herb tea" made by drying elderblossom, horehound and other nameless herbs and then steeping these dried herbs - I remember them living in the cupboard beside the fireplace after being dried on a sheet of yellowing newspaper in the sun - in boiling water.  It was truly foul stuff and so worked a treat for any imagined illnesses as rather than drink the stuff I always felt suddenly miraculously better!

Chilblains were another thing that some of us suffered from - again probably caused by getting chilled and then warming our hands or feet on the stove at school or in front of the fire at home.  The recognised treatment was to rub them with a block of green waxy stuff called Snowfire.  I remember one girl at school had to wear fingerless gloves as her chilblains were so bad and this was long before such things were a fashion accessory and they were normally only worn by old men at that time!!

I remember little pink strips of Aspro 5 or 6 tablets to each and obviusly cheaper than a boxful - bought by my mother or aunt at the little shop nearby.  I used to read the things that it could be taken to relieve and always wanted to know what period pains were!  Maybe that was why they had needed them I don't know and I never had any of the tablets though I liked popping them from the little blister they were packed in.

Were we any better or worse off back then I wonder.  I think we had to be more self reliant and I do wonder if the pendulum has swung too far now that there are pills and tablets for all manner of problems most of which as well as relieving the original problem are the cause of another for which further medication is required which causes..... ad infinitum.

Sorry to have wittered on  and if you are still with me many thanks to those of you who left such welcome comments on my previous blog - I read and appreciate each and every one.

Games

 Warning - this is a long one so you might need a cup of tea with it or perhaps to just skip it altogether.

 No not the Olympic Games about which there is plenty being said by others more capable than I but games children play or maybe I should say used to play.  I read of a Canadian report recently in which it said that many  children  spend less than 3 hours a week out of doors and this really shocked me.  I know that they must be including those who live in high rise flats with no gardens where playing outside might well be difficult apart from an occasional trip to the park and always assuming that mum or dad is willing and able to take them but 3 hours a week?!!!!

 As is my wont these days my mind went back to my own childhood and I seemed to remember being outside all the time.  Of course that couldn't have been true and I began to think about what we played both indoors and out, of how we filled our hours back in the 1950s .

I was lucky in having a mainly country childhood and never did we live anywhere that didn't have a garden.  My earliest memories are of living at Hightown near Liverpool where my mother worked as a live in housekeeper for a couple of elderly ladies (well they seemed old to me though were probably a good bit younger than I am now!)  Here I am riding my tricycle round the garden aged about 3 or 4 I also loved paddling in their pond .  They seemed to think I was the best thing since sliced bread and so thoroughly spoiled me and I was free to run about their garden most of the time as I pleased..

Children in the late 40s and 50s had much more outdoor exercise than nowadays as we usually walked to school, we had daily physical education lessons sometimes outside where we played rounders, running and jumping etc, and we spent nearly all our playtimes out in the playground playing games like tag, skipping, ball and so on as well as climbing and swinging on the frame in the playground - I particularly remember enjoying hanging upside down with one leg over each of two parallel ropes which were provided!  Then in our free time we would walk to our friends' homes to see if they wanted to come out to play and proceed to spend hours playing in the road.  There being very few cars this wasn't as dangerous as it sounds and when the shout went up "Car coming!" we rushed to untie our skipping rope (probably a piece of old washing line) from the lamp-post across the street to allow said car to pass before going on with our games!  Imagine that now!

No this isn't me this time!

We played two, or even three, ball games where we tucked our dresses into our knickers (well the girls did) and played complicated games including different movements with the balls against some poor beleaguered neighbour's wall sometimes throwing the balls under one leg hence the need for dresses being tucked up out of the way.  We did handstands against the walls too and when we got tired of that we would find a scrap of old chalk or maybe even a scrap of slate or soft stone and draw out a hopscotch pitch on the pavement for a game of hopscotch.  If we fancied something a bit less physical we might play five stones or if anyone had some maybe a game of Jacks which involved squatting down and bouncing a small rubber ball whilst doing intricate manoeuvers with the jacks.  Or we might decide to go for a walk and collect wildflowers which we'd press when we got home.  Or maybe just a game of pretend such as mothers and fathers or for the boys more likely cowboys and indians or something like that.

Many of our activities involved plants such as making daisy chains, shooting the heads off plantains by wrapping the stalks round just below the head and of course that perennial favourite of most children where you choose a length of grass and holding it between both thumbs to keep it taut blow on the edge to create an ear splitting sound!  We knew that elder trees had hollow stems if you could poke the pithy insides out and had ideas of making blow pipes or recorders though I suspect we never got that far.  We knew the names of many of the wild flowers, which plants were safe to eat and which to leave well alone, natural remedies such as dock leaves to soothe nettle stings and so on and best of all we were free from adult supervision.

We learned hand eye co-ordination, independence, to use our own initiative and our instincts and many other of life's lessons along the way and all the time we were outside in Nature's classroom.  I wonder how many hours a week we spent out of doors - probably 4 or 5 hours a day on dry school days and more in the holidays  and even on wet days we would have had to walk to school.

Yesterday I took a walk into town, along this route past the lakes, to pick up a few library books and came across some children playing a game of "Dare" and was immediately transported back to my own childhood.  These children were daring each other to jump across a ditch (probably about 3 feet wide) which feeds this lake and was filled with shallow water from the side I was walking across to a little wooden jetty presumably placed to allow people to feed the ducks without standing in the mud.  I remember playing a similar game where we dared each other to jump over a dry ditch with a barbed wire fence at ever widening places!  It's clever how children's innate sense of self preservation and their ability to recognise their limitations meant that nobody ever attempted what they couldn't achieve and so there were no gashes and no trips to hospital ever required or maybe we were just lucky.  It was good to see that children given half a chance will play outside and do many of the same things we did!

But of course it wasn't always possible to play outside and then we would have to think of something to do indoors.  Being an only child board games or anything that required someone else to play with were no good to me (maybe why I am not keen on card games or Scrabble or anything like that even now?)  but there were books to read - perhaps from the library at school which would lend a child a couple of books each week.  I did have some books of my own received as birthday presents and I also read some of Grandfather's books from his shelf including Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Water Babies which both had a fusty smell and pages mottled with brown spots due to age and the damp!  If I could get Grandfather to knock a few sprigs into an empty wooden cotton reel I might do French knitting and finish up with a length of cord - I am not sure what I did with it but for children back then the doing was the thing as much as the finished product!  Since my mother knitted most of my woolies there was usually enough leftover yarn to make these cords or maybe to do some cat's cradles with.  Of course I sometimes put on my mac (who remembers the navy gaberdine macs we wore to school back then?) and set off to walk to a friend's house to play inside with her and then the range of activities was much wider of course.

One of my favourite indoor games was Bayco - a current day health and safety inspector's nightmare as it involved putting wire rods into a grid of holes on a plastic base and then slotting the "bricks" between these wires to build houses - I never heard of anyone having their eye out with these wires though!  Nor with the lethal wire eyes that our teddies used to have - just the eye on a long wire poked into the teddy's face and liable to come out if pulled!!

We knew nothing of computers and televisions nor did we know about the present day dangers and although we lacked many shop bought playthings - post war nobody had much - I think we were happy making up our own games and playing with what we had.  Happy days and yes many more than 3 hours a week spent outside!

Communication II

I didn't realise what a rich seam I was mining when I wrote my previous post about letter writing!  It seems I am not alone in wishing that just occasionally the postman might bring a real letter for me. Thank you all so much for your kind and interesting comments - all read carefully and much appreciated.

Last week I received not one but two hand written missives from bloggers who knew my postal address.  Of course a handwritten letter or notecard requires a hand written reply and those have now gone in the post to Simone and Lesley.  I realised however that since I rarely write real letters I didn't have any "proper" writing paper so apologies for that but I did write them both using a fountain pen and ink.  I also discovered how much easier it is to write using a keyboard - being a touch typist I can more easily get my thoughts down as fast as I think them whereas with the pen I was lagging behind as it were and my writing was getting worse as I went along!

Lesley mentioned coloured inks and the etiquette surrounding this.  I did remember learning that it was "correct" to use blue or black ink but not coloured ink but couldn't remember the details.  Some research on the internet unearthed a website which said that apparently red ink can be seen as aggressive and should not be used and in some cases it is believed to foretell death!  I hadn't realised that there were so many different inks available - on line of course as in the town shops when I wanted some there was Quink or nothing!!  See this web page for some of the different types available - ink is obviously alive and kicking still!

Then of course there are the pens available to use.  If you plan to write in ink you need a fountain pen or a dip pen (who remembers those from school?)  I still have the pen my aunt gave me on my passing the 11+ exam - it had been given to her by her Canadian Air Force boyfriend so was a treasured gift!  It needs repairing now though as the rubber inside seems to have perished with age so I am currently using a Shaefer fountain pen which my husband gave me.  See my propelling pencil and pen still in the little bag I made for it nearly 60 years ago still with ink on it from back then!

As well as pens and ink there were other accoutrements required such as blotters - my writing case has a blotter seen above.  Blotting paper came in various colours and qualities - I remember pink and green as well as white which is what I have here. Again who remembers blotting paper being stuffed into the ink wells at school so that it might be used as a missile when flicked with a nice bendy ruler when nobody was looking?!)  Then there were pen wipers which were used to wipe the nibs of dip pens to prevent them going rusty and also of fountain pens to clear any excess ink after filling them. I came across this web site for all things to do with pens and ink etc - do check it out it's fascinating there are Sevres porcelain ink wells, blotters, leather cases for pens etc.

You may remember me showing you this book ages ago?  Well I got it from the library again recently and have been enjoying reading it - in it the author speaks of writing letters and of having to cut quills to use as pens and making ink using elderberries (not too successful apparently as it was too pale) and oak apples cooked in a rusty iron pot - thank goodness we don't have to do that these days.

One last tid bit - I read recently that using plastic throw away biros is very ungreen both in their manufacture and disposal - I guess reusable is always going to be beter in the eco stakes.

A subject which would produce enough "stuff" for a small book - you'll be glad to know I won't be writing one though and certainly not here!

On a different note - remember this photo taken from the bus to London?

 Well when I looked at it again I thought that it would make a good tapestry or maybe even a small piece of felt.  I searched my stash of fleece and yarns and could find no red so poppy fields were out unless I bought some but then I wondered if I could do a crazy patchwork of it.

 I sat in the sun and finished embellishing this piece yesterday whilst DH sat watching the Tour de France (how wonderful is that that in Jubilee year and the year that London hosts the Olympics we have a British winner?) I don't really know what to do with it now though other than toss it in the back of the cupboard and found it difficult to get effect I had in mind.  I had no suitable ribbon to do the hedge as I knew it was neither black nor green so I used narrow cut strips of fabric - what a lot of misapplied labour I thought last night when I had had enough of it! Without the photo you'd never guess what it was meant to be would you but hey I enjoyed my couple of hours in the garden under the umbrella (yes it was so sunny we needed to have some shade).

I'll stop waffling on now and if you are still with me - thanks and congratulations you deserve a medal!

Peas in a pod.

Bigger, easier, more, faster, cheaper ... why are we seduced by these words? Does size matter or the speed with which we reach a goal?

I was podding some peas for dinner last night and whilst I did my mind turned to thoughts on the above subject.  It would have been so much quicker and easier to open a packet of frozen peas but would that necessarily have been better?  Whilst podding the peas I was transported back to sunny childhood days when I would sit with my mother on the step and "help" her to prepare peas for a meal.  I am not sure quite how many peas I actually contributed to the colander back then as many went straight into my mouth but the sound of the pods popping ( who remembers that jingle "Sweet as the moment when the pod went pop"?) last night took me right back to those happy days.  Though it took longer to produce the required amount of peas I had time to think something I would not have done had I opened a packet.

Image from Google

Then my mind wandered off to other things such as why is bigger often presumed to be better?  Bigger houses, cars, bigger carrots, bank balances and bigger portions of food.  Maybe you saw that programme on TV last week "The men who made you Fat"?  In which the thinking was that the man who introduced bigger portions of popcorn at the cinema in the USA and who was followed by others who provided "extra value" by offering super sized portions for less than double the price were tapping into the psychology which says that we will always enjoy getting a bargain, even though the smaller size was sufficient, and having bought it we will eat it.  This is apparently one of the reasons there are so many obese people in the world so obviously not a good thing unless you happen to be the executives at the top of the enterprises offering these huge portions.  Are larger vegetables better than small ones?  What about taste?  Is a bigger car better than a small one?  What about fuel consumption? As I was researching for images for this paragraph I came across this article  on why container ships may need to downsize which I found interesting - click on the link if you want to read it too.  Bigger is obviously not always better.

Cow parsley at the Chalice Gardens

Similarly is there more to life than increasing its speed?  Is the fastest way to get somewhere necessarily the best?  I am lucky enough to have a choice when travelling to some place I wish to visit.  I can use the car or I can use my bus pass for local trips and I can use the train instead of flying if I want to go to Europe (long haul might be difficult but that is a whole other story which I won't go into here!).  Now it isn't always possible to go by public transport and without the bus pass it would be expensive but for me a bus ride is so much more enjoyable than taking the car.

Chalice Gardens - spring

  I recently went to visit the Chalice Gardens at Gastonbury - a 35 minute drive in the car or over an hour on the bus.  I took the bus.  I was able to see over the hedgetops and to notice the countryside as we passed, the banks were clothed with cow parsley and the fields gilded with yellow buttercups.  The horse chestnut trees were decorated with blossom like so many pink or cream coloured candles.  The route went through villages I had never seen before where cottages with thatched roofs hugged close to the road their gardens filled with flowers - thatchers were working on one house (not often one sees that on the main road). Then again on my bus ride to London last week I was aware of sheets of moon daisies spread on the wide verges like washing laid out to dry, hedges clotted with creamy elder blossom and plenty of pale pink dog roses, the soft greenery of spring giving way to the darker, denser green of summer and somewhere along the route we passed a field of poppies looking like a great Oriental carpet spread over the field - an amazing sight I would not have seen had I been speeding along the A303 in a car.

Steps at Chalice Gardens

It is easy for me to say these things - I am not a working mother with a family to feed and only 24 hours in each day but I do wonder whether we are not missing the point sometimes?

Now for something completely different:  In our garden we have a seat just outside the back door where we sit with our cups of tea - weather permitting - or sometimes I just sit whilst waiting for the potatoes to boil or whatever.  Our garden is on a slope and there is a retaining wall, alongside some steps next to the seat, which has a couple of pipes inserted at the bottom presumably for drainage.  Sitting with my cup of tea I have noticed bees (I got my binoculars out to check what they looked like and they seem to be the furry kind - see how little I know about bees?!) going in and out of the right hand pipe (if you click on the photo to enlarge it you can clearly see the hole).  Indeed during the course of drinking one cup of tea there must have been dozens of them coming and going reminding me of planes circling above Heathrow and coming in to land (another blog post there perhaps?!).  I wonder what they are doing in there.  The pipe can't be that long and I am guessing it goes into the damp earth at the back of the brickwork so why would they be attracted to it especially this summer when it has been so wet - it must be horribly damp in there.  Any ideas?

 

Yesterday there was an Air Day at nearby Yeovilton and we saw these planes over our garden - the previous evening they had been practising and the sky was clearer but I didn't have my camera to hand! You will see them more clearly if you click on the photo.I am not sure if they are the Red Arrows perhaps.

If you are still with me - thanks for listening to me going on and on - it seems that I either have too much to say or can't think of anything at all - sorry!  Thank you too for all your lovely comments on my previous posts and to those of you who have decided to follow my blog - welcome.

Looking Back

It's a dismal grey and damp day here today and we are in the throes of having the kitchen floor tiles professionally cleaned and sealed so have no access to the kitchen and I am reduced to an electric kettle and the tea things in the conservatory and to washing up the cups in the cloakroom and as I was doing just this earlier today I thought that in spite of it being somewhat difficult it was a whole lot easier than our everyday life at Grandfather's where we didn't have the luxury of an indoor tap nor of electricity to boil the kettle. I thought it's been a while since I published any of my memories and that you might perhaps like to read a piece I wrote about our day to day living back in the 1950's whilst living with my grandfather especially if you too are having a dull dismal day with not a lot to do?  If so read on.....  Since I don't have any photos taken at the time I have illustrated this piece with some of the flowers I remember from childhood days.

Even everyday living was different at Grandfather’s. For a start we didn’t just get up, make a cup of tea and have a shower and eat breakfast. Before either a wash or a drink was possible the fire needed to be got going again – it would have been banked up overnight with small coal and maybe potato peelings or something like that. There was an art to banking up a fire – too much and it went out and too little and it burned through during the night and again went out both of which would mean waking up to a cold house and the necessity of starting a new fire from scratch. It takes time to get a fire going sufficiently well to boil a kettle so the last thing one wanted was for the fire to go out overnight! Then there were the ashes to be riddled out and disposed of – I think these went on the garden and the cinders were used on the path which wound behind the house to the toilet.

This range which I photographed at Sherborne Garden centre is similar to Grandfather's

Then of course there was no filling the kettle at the tap over the sink as we do without thinking these days. The big black kettle had to be filled with a jug from the bucket of clean drinking water and would have been refilled before going to bed and left on the hob at the side of the fire ready for the morning. Once the kettle had been put over the fire and had boiled and the tea made it could be refilled and boiled again before washing could begin. With no separate bathroom it was difficult to arrange for any privacy whilst washing. No showers then but a wash down with some of the hot water from the kettle topped up with some cold from the bucket on the table – being careful not to use too much or there wouldn’t be enough hot left for the next person. I remember Camay soap, Knight's Castille, there was Imperial Leather with its little rectangular metallic label or sometimes Pears since I was “preparing to be a beautiful lady” as their ads used to say!. For washing of hands during the day, in the bowl of cold water left for that purpose and probably the leftovers from somebody’s wash, a bar of carbolic soap would be used maybe Wright’s Coal Tar a deep yellow bar with a strong pungent smell or even a block of washing soap such as yellow Sunlight or green Fairy which could also be used for the weekly wash.

Bath night (usually only attempted once a week and on an evening when grandfather had taken himself off to the Royal Oak!) was a real ritual since it required that the tin bath be brought into the house from the shed and its complement of insects evacuated. The bath would then be placed on the mat in front of the fire especially in winter but even in summer since the hot water would be from the kettle on the fire so the shortest distance from the fire was sensible. Hot water would be added to a bucketful of cold in the bath and then we took turns at having a stand up wash in it. It wasn’t big enough for an adult to sit in but I was able to wash top down and then bottom up and finally to sit in the water with my legs over the side but Mother and my aunt had to make do with washing whilst standing in the shallow water. I am not sure when or how grandfather bathed – I certainly never saw him doing it!

Hair washing was no simple matter either and involved pouring water from a jug over your head whilst leaning over a bowl! The water was then scooped back into the jug and poured over again and again. I seem to remember a shampoo called Drene was the preferred one then. The only difference here was that the water used was often rainwater from the water butt as this was meant to be better for the hair and it was heated in a saucepan and not the kettle, which was kept solely for drinking water from the tap. It was obviously necessary to replace the water in the bowl at least once during all this procedure as there is not much point trying to rinse soap out of your hair with soapy water! The change of water usually meant that your soaking wet hair dripped all over everywhere as you attempted to pour the used water into the slop bucket and to refill the bowl with more clean hot water from the pan and add cold! You can see why hair was washed no oftener than once a week!!

After bathing or washing of hair the used water had then to be got rid of – no sink with plughole of course. Nor any drains down which it could be tipped. It had to be tipped into the slop bucket – usually several bucketsful and taken to the toilet for disposal or flung over the garden so again not something to be relished after a nice bath in front of the fire especially if it was cold and raining!

The only heat in winter was from the range in the kitchen so everything happened there and getting dressed or undressed at the end of the day was usually done in front of the fire where one’s clothes or pyjamas had been warming in readiness. In winter our beds were warmed with a hot water bottle – grandfather still had a couple of those old fashioned stoneware ones which were heavy as lead when filled and boy did they hurt if you accidentally stubbed your toe on one in the bed! Beds were thus warm as toast in a small area and like ice everywhere else! With no electric lighting moving from one room to another was also not straightforward since it involved lighting a candle and taking it with you care being taken not to move too quickly in case it went out in the draught nor to allow spots of wax to fall on the furniture or floor and not to let it catch light to anything en route. Just as well perhaps there were only 2 rooms up and 2 down then. When you are used to just flicking a switch at the doorway you cannot imagine how complicated it all was and how little light one candle gives!

There was of course no television and grandfather didn’t have a radio either since they required electricity too – portable transistor radios came in later in the 60s I think. We did however rent a radio in time for the coronation and this was powered by an accumulator – a big heavy type of battery made of glass which needed to be recharged at the shop regularly. Imagine carrying a small car battery to the shops every Saturday and you get the picture. So we did hear the news of Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tensing’s conquest of Everest on 3 June 1953 before going to a neighbour’s to watch the coronation on their television!

Cooking was done on the range and it was a real art since there was no temperature control – the temperature of the oven depended on the state of the fire which In turn depended on the direction of the wind and on what was being burned at the time, maybe best quality coal but more likely the cheaper nutty slack or even bits of old wood or rubbish. So making anything for which the temperature was critical, such as soufflés (fat chance!), was out – my mother used to make what she called a “rub up cake” or rock buns rather than a sponge cake for example. Casseroles and milk puddings which needed a lower temperature were easier than pastry although my Aunt Win’s pastry was legendary. Occasionally I find these days that the menu I have planned requires 4 saucepans to be in use on the hob at the same time – that would never have been possible since there was room on the fire for one and on the hob alongside for another and that was all. The oven was tiny – perhaps 12 inches square so no turkeys ever got cooked in it – not that turkeys were affordable or available anyway! I cannot imagine how my grandmother managed to bring up 6 children and feed them all with such primitive equipment.
Washing must have been a nightmare for my mother and aunt – no bunging it in the machine of course - it was all done by hand in the bath, the same one we used for bath night, using Sunlight soap or perhaps Omo or Tide washing powder and the whites were usually given a dose of Reckitts blue in the final rinsing water in an attempt to keep them white. There was a boiler in the lean to next door but that needed a fire lit under it and I don’t recall my mother or aunt using that. Mangles were in use then but I don’t think Grandfather had one so the washing was wrung out by hand – my mother had an incredibly strong twist - and was then hung on the line outside or spread over the bushes to dry. I don’t remember what happened in winter – I suspect large items like sheets and towels were not washed as often as would be the case now and then only if it was a good drying day as they would otherwise have had to be hung indoors and would have been in the way not to mention making the whole house damper than it already was.

Elderflowers were collected, dried and used to make a herbal tea by Grandfather which served as a cure-all!
Having got the clothes washed and dried – no mean undertaking as you can see - ironing was done using a flat iron heated on the range. No ironing board but a folded blanket on the end of the table, although this was my mother’s preferred option even when an ironing board was available to her later. Man-made fabrics were not in common use then so most of the items would have been made of cotton or wool and would have taken ages to dry and most would have needed ironing. Two irons were needed, one heating on the stove and the other in use. And unlike today when I normally start off ironing on a lower temperature and increase it as I go along then it would have been necessary to do the things that needed a hot iron first as the iron would get gradually cooler. I think one tested the temperature by spitting on the iron and if the tiny blob of spittle danced over its surface and disappeared it was hot enough! Very technical!

At least with no fitted carpets or rugs there was no need for a vacuum cleaner – just as well with no electricity! Carpet sweepers were often used by those who had carpets and when I was first married in 1972 we had one until we got a Hoover later. The flagstone floors were swept daily and washed regularly too although in winter they’d have taken an age to dry what with the damp in the atmosphere and the damp coming up from below due to the flagstones being set on the bare earth with no damp course beneath. With the only entrance to the house opening straight into the front room wet footprints must have been a constant problem during winter months but at least there were no carpets to worry about!

The range was black leaded regularly using Zebo polish – although as the fire was hardly ever allowed to go out I don’t know quite how this worked. With the coal fire and the need for everything to be carried through the house there must have been an enormous amount of dust and dirt and cleaning and housework must have taken up a great deal of time. And since all the other chores took much longer then without modern equipment it’s not surprising that women at the beginning of the 20th century didn’t usually go out to work!!

Spring cleaning – spread over a week or more - was a major undertaking and you can perhaps see why since winter cleaning was so difficult. First of all the chimney was swept with a long brush the fire having been allowed to go out of course. Then a bright windy day usually in March or April would be chosen and blankets would be washed and hung out to dry. Woollen blankets were used on the beds along with eiderdowns if available since duvets had not yet been introduced – I imagine they came in after holidays to Europe became more common. The floors were scrubbed and the wooden ones given a coat of something called permanganate of potash – whatever that is or was. I only know it was some sort of crystals dissolved in water and then sloshed over the wood and it gave it all a dark stain.  (I checked this out on the internet and apparently it is used as an antiseptic as well as giving wood and other materials a stain) The walls were treated to a coat of distemper – mixed in a bucket and painted on with a wide brush. Sometimes we might be able to rise to a roll or two of border paper and then the walls would have a strip of this pasted about a foot from the ceiling to finish off the look. I remember one year we went very avant garde and painted the kitchen walls eau de nil which was a pretty soft green as a change from the usual whitewash. The woodwork was varnished so didn’t need doing every year. Curtains were washed, ironed and rehung and all the spiders who had been hiding in corners here and there were evicted! Pillows were taken outside into the garden and emptied onto a sheet spread out on the grass – obviously a fine day without wind was chosen for this chore and the feathers allowed to air in the sun whilst their cases were washed and dried and later restuffed with the now fresh smelling feathers. Presumably the sun was considered to act as a disinfectant in some way. Windows were opened as wide as possible and the front door stood open all day and there was a general feeling of thanksgiving for having survived the winter and an anticipation of easier days to come with the arrival of the warmer weather.

If you are still with me well done and congratulations on your stamina. Thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings.  I know how many of you enjoyed my recent post about things remembered from the past so hope that some of you will have liked this post too.  I promise my next one will be less verbose!



Times past

Yesterday I read a post on projectforty which spoke about Things gone by which made me think of my own list of things.  Who remembers Spangles?  Or sweets being rationed?  I was 8 when I won a prize in a fancy dress competition as "Off the Ration" with my dress covered with sweetie papers!! then there were licquorice comfits at 3d for 2 ounces in a little paper bag twisted at the corners, toffee which the shop keeper broke with a hammer,sherbert dips which had a licquorice straw through which to suck it and which choked you if you sucked too hard.....

Toothpaste coming in a tablet in a tin like this one - horrid taste but there was a choice of blue, green or red tin!!

Liberty bodices with their horrid rubbery buttons - what was their purpose I wonder?  And navy knickers - the add in the photo says that they wear like iron - who'd want knickers that wore like iron - not me!!

Waists - we all had one back then!  Notice how tiny the waists always look in 50's fashion pictures made all the more so by the full skirts which brings me on to full net petticoats (mine was pink!)

Junket - I seem to remember it being a regular dessert and when I discovered some vegetarian rennet in Waitrose  recently I bought a bottle and made some - it was delicious and just as I remember it especially served with a few raspberries!

Then there were milk jellies, spotted Dick, tapioca (glad that died out I must admit!) stewed fruit, treacle tart ........ and so on.

Other things I would add to my list include:

Steam trains with heavy leather straps to open the windows and smuts all over you at the end of the journey!
Fountain pens - no biros permitted at school so if you didn't have a fountain pen it was a dip pen and the inkwell usually filled with blotting paper by some boy to make pellets to be shot with a ruler!
Chilblains - treated with a Snowfire tablet (apparently still available but now in a stick form)
Telephone boxes with buttons A and B
School milk - horrid when tepid during summer and in winter frozen solid
Pixie hoods and scarves tied across the chest and pinned in place - people seemed to be so afraid of children's chests getting cold but never gave a thought to our legs in short socks!
Postal orders for 2/6 for your birthday - that would be 12 and a half pence these days!
Knitted bathing costumes!

I could go on and on but perhaps you've had enough by now!

Sweet peas are doing well though now very short in the stem - no prizes would be won by these little dears but they smell divine.

  

To those of you who think we are lucky to have badgers to visit our garden this is what we have been greeted with outside our backdoor every morning this week - good job we are not keen on striped lawns eh?!!