Past times

The other day, I cooked a chicken and, because I knew I wouldn’t have much time to cook the next day, I cooked twice as many potatoes, peas and carrots as we needed. Then the next day we had cold chicken with a Russian salad. It occurred to me that we hadn’t had Russian salad since I don’t know when. Then I realised that it’s a thing which has disappeared, in England anyway. I bet my kids don’t know what a Russian salad is, and I’m absolutely sure it’s not in modern cookery books. But it used to be really common; in fact, I seem to remember that Heinz actually offered small tins of it.

So that started me thinking about what else has disappeared in my lifetime. Well, there are very few independent department stores any longer. There used to be one in every reasonable sized town. The quality varied a lot, of course, but now they’re all House of Fraser or Debenhams, and they’re all more or less identical. You’ve been in one, you’ve been in them all. Woolworth’s has gone altogether, of course, but Wilkinson’s has filled the gap brilliantly.

Another thing which has changed is the casual – well, I suppose I’d call it sexual harassment nowadays.  Recently a friend and I were talking to her daughter and her daughter’s friend, and they were horrified by our tales. But even decent (ish) men used to behave badly. Lorry drivers tooted their horns as they went past; walking near a building site was bound to elicit wolf whistles and worse, even if you looked like the back end of a bus. There were plenty of men with whom you couldn’t get in a lift alone, or accept a lift in a car from, or climb on steps in front of, or sit next to; and the stationery cupboard stories we have! And curiously, we just accepted it as all part of life’s rich pattern. And if you did have to defend your honour, instead of feeling traumatised, you were cross with yourself, for being stupid enough to let yourself get in a situation where it was likely to be necessary. Now I’m not saying that there are no problems any more – of course there are, but that fairly low level, constant, groping and leering  - well, that seems to have largely stopped. Of course the harassment suffered by women who venture onto the internet is extreme, but that seems to be a toxic combination of misogyny and anonymity rather than the almost casual harassment we lived with.

Hats haven’t quite disappeared, but they have certainly changed their purpose. Nowadays, there are sunhats and woolly hats for winter, and that’s more or less it, apart from Ascot. Even for weddings,  women often wear those stupid “fascinators”  rather than proper hats. Or nothing at all on their heads.  My aunts used to go out for morning coffee in town wearing hats. (Not my mother, though; she thought sitting having coffee and gossiping while wearing a hat was a complete waste of valuable time.)  School uniform always included a hat – caps for boys and various styles for girls. My school had berets, and an uglier form of headgear is hard to find. The daring girls used to have bee hive hairdos, and stick the beret flat on the back with hair grips. It looked bizarre and used to drive the teachers nuts. Actually, that’s another thing that’s changed. We could get into trouble for things done on our way home – eating things, not standing and offering our seats on the bus, for example. I’m sure no school would try to enforce that  sort of thing now. The parents would be up in arms, defending their little darlings.

The other week we had an electrician working in the house. Phil offered him a cup of tea and he said yes please, and “leave the bag in the mug, I like it strong.” So Phil said, well, we don’t use bags, but don’t worry, it’ll be strong. So when the chap had had his tea, he said “That was lovely, how did you make it?” Phil had to demonstrate loose tea and the use of a tea pot. So how long will it be before loose, tasty, tea goes the way of Russian salad?