I don’t
write this blog to be read, really. But
a couple of people actually read the post on things that have vanished in my
lifetime, and remarked on things that they missed. So here’s a second
instalment.
First: the
milkman. It was number two son who pointed out that he remembered the milkman
delivering really clearly, and now they just don’t exist. It’s a shame really, because it was an
eco-friendly system, and also milkmen used to check up on old and isolated people. For those of you who are
too young, the milk was delivered by milkmen with electric “floats” at some
ungodly hour in the morning. In fact I
actually remember horse drawn milk floats. The horse was so steady and had done
the round so often that it would plod round while the milkman went up and down
front garden paths, pausing occasionally for its driver to catch up!
You had an
order, but most people had a carrying rack with an indicator so that you could
change your order more or less daily if you wished. Once a week you’d leave an
envelope with the money due, and every day you’d leave the empty glass bottles,
rinsed out. You also needed a cover for the tops of the bottles, as blue tits
pecked through the foil covers and drank the top of the milk. If you had a very
late night out, you could “arrive home with the milkman”. It’s sad. Plastic supermarket bottles are so
boring in comparison.
Food
shopping was altogether harder work. Cheese, butter and lard came in huge
barrels and had to be cut to weight for the customer. Biscuits came in large
tins and you bought a pound or half pound in a paper bag. It seems a strange
way of selling them, they must always
have been soft or broken. In fact you could buy broken biscuits by the pound.
No one ate
anything but white bread. I think our parents had consumed enough of the “national
loaf” under war time rationing, to reject anything brown.
Crisps came
in one flavour (potato) and included a little twist of blue paper containing
salt. I seem to remember a crisp manufacturer trying to bring back the blue
twist of salt, but it didn’t catch on.
Almost
every proper meal included mashed potato. I used to be sent to the greengrocer
to buy two stones of potatoes. I remember being quite puzzled in Kentucky, when
menus presented mashed potato as a special treat. But only a few years later, a
similar thing is happening in England. I even saw a “scientific” study which
claimed that eating potato four times a week was bad for your health. Tell that
to our parent’s generation, who ate potato a minimum of seven times a week and
lived into their nineties.
Smoking
really is bad for you, but practically everyone of our parent’s generation
smoked. Often the women seemed to regard smoking as a bit of a treat to be
indulged in at parties and Christmas. My parents used to buy a very large box
of Balkan Sobranie cigarettes for the ladies at Christmas. They came in a
variety of pretty pastel shades, and I remember them smelling lovely. Whether I
would think they smell nice now, I rather doubt. Which has led me off at a
tangent. E cigarettes smell disgusting, almost worse than the real things. And
at least the real things could look cool – think of the David Bailey portrait
of Michael Caine – whereas an e cigarette makes anyone look a prat.
No one
smokes a pipe. When we went to the Kentucky State Fair (you get a bit desperate
with teenage boys to entertain for six weeks in Louisville, where they know no
one, and anyway everyone looks sideways at long hair and death metal T shirts)
there was a pipe smoking competition. The competitors got a measured amount of
tobacco and one match. The winner was the man who could keep his pipe alight
longest. I don’t know who won. In the end the excitement got too much for us
and we went off to see the pig races. Actually, it was a good day out, the boys really enjoyed themselves and I didn't have to keep telling them not to gawp. You were allowed to gawp at things, and there were no signs telling you not to carry concealed weapons. I could not stop the boys doubling over in hilarity at those.
I did wonder about the effects on my mood of this sort of nostalgia. But mostly, it makes me realise that life is better nowadays. I would like the milkman back though.
