Bring Home The Bread

Almost the whole of the UK has had varying amounts of snow, some areas worse than others. It meant shops were getting empty due to both panic-buying and stock deliveries not getting through. In our modern times, we have freezers, long-life cartons as well as the canned and dried products, yet we see frenzied shopping for bread which doesn’t really contain the nutrients needed for survival.

On the home side, my grandmother’s era not only churned their own butter, but without a fridge, it was kept in a bowl of water to keep it fresher longer.

Milk still had cream on top so that could be used for making butter, cheese or adding to desserts. Milk could be pasturised at home just by heating it to simmering point and letting it cool for a longer lasting milk. Bread was often made by local home bakers and had flavour which is missing from the mass-produced cotton wool bread.

We used to save all our sour milk to go in the scones (soda farls) but with the current pasturised and homogenised milk, all the live bacteria gets killed off and that’s what’s needed, so the best alternative is live yoghurt for a light, fluffy result.

I have a tendency of buying organically when possible and it’s the same with flour, I will buy it straight from the mill if I can. Not so long ago I saw large cartons of organic double cream reduced due to it being near the sell-by date. I bought some, made butter with it and when I made some oven scones, I could sit back and enjoy the home-made scones, home churned butter and home-made jam. Butter is easy to make, I put cream into a Kenwood mixer until it separates. Even the remaining whey can be used in baking but the butter needs to be washed, it’s the whey remaining in it which turns butter rancid. It probably was all done just as quickly as it would have taken to go to the supermarket to buy manufactured products but I had a smug contentment knowing what was in everything as well as every morsel being a tasty bite.

I do take shortcuts, I have made bread the way it should be made but I found it laborious and time-consuming so I succumbed to getting a bread maker. It’s not in use often but with the simple ingredients of flour, yeast, water, dried milk and oil, it’s easy to quickly add the ingredients to let the machine do all the work. So not only do I have an easy way of making bread, having a supply of dried milk is handy if the fresh milk runs out. Of course Irish soda bread is even easier, it doesn’t even need yeast and is absolutely delicious.

There are essentials we do need shops and supermarkets for but I won’t be queuing for bread or milk.

Advertisement

Stay A Little Longer

There are never many new programmes on television, plenty of reruns though. Perhaps the lack of imagination and wit of the older writers, but we seem to be stuck either in ‘Big Brother’s House’ or somewhere in a jungle. I am not a fan of reality programmes in the least, but some of the reruns from another era are interesting in comparing the way we lived, and seeing the changing world of fashion.

2017

Floral dungarees are just as much in fashion now as they were 70 years’ ago, with a few minor changes of course. I doubt however, the fashion from the period dramas are likely to be repeated.

In the world of clothing, the corset, ‘stays’ as they were originally known, have been around from the middle ages. Worn by both men and women to change the shapes of their torsos. Until the whaling industry brought in whalebone, bodices had been laced and stiffened with paste to smooth the female figure. The ‘whalebone’ is actually a keratinous material found in the upper jawbones of whales and was used to filter plankton. It’s a flexible material as well as robust and was cut into strips to be inserts into linings of outer garments.

It was during the 17th century, that stays were used as undergarments which moulded the figure into a conical or ‘V’ shape. During the 1800s, the ‘stays’ became corsets when the hour-glass figure was very much fashionable and a necessity for social standing. It did have some pitfalls though, the small waist which was desirable at the time reduced the human torso to as little as a 16 inch waistline, causing breathing problems and was no doubt the reason for the need to carry smelling salts, to relieve the feelings of faintness.

The corset never died out, although becoming less of a fashion undergarment and more of a surgical appliance. It was still used to shape the body and reduce bulges but it also became a support to prevent backache.

The roll-on girdle was liberating from laces, hooks and buckles and general ironmongery involved in getting the right shape and control, but until tights came on the scene, suspenders were still necessary to keep stockings up.

I was considered to be an ideal size for my height and taking a size 12 (UK), I thought I was too thin and wanted to put weight on! Perhaps due to fashion magazines which promote very small sizes, the shapelier female figure was replaced by a thin, shapeless, boyish figure with common sizes being as small as size six or eight (UK). With no shape to control, gradually fashion became less restrictive, it could be the hippy era which appreciated comfort, leaving the corset fashion to Burlesque, Goths and as an outer garment once again.

Cooking Up Family History

If you have an interest in family then you will know the super sleuth in you will want to investigate any information regardless of where it came from. Having both my grandmother’s recipe books, I sometimes browse through them and when a local area community hub wanted local history information and recipes, the books came out again.

As it is my paternal grandmother was born about half-a-mile away from where the community hub is located, I selected her recipes. They were handwritten in a notebook which has now seen better days but it also multi-tasked as an address book. I was familiar with one of the names mentioned, a nephew of my grandfather’s who moved to Rhodesia (as it was then) when his wife died. Other names I was not so familiar with and the little flame of  ‘curiosity’ was lit.

Of course it’s much easier with the internet in searching for lost souls and since I am already one of the older generation of the family, there is no-one left to ask except Mr Google. I soon found names in Australia which I was pretty certain were of the family I was looking for. Although they would be descendants, the names matched, but what clinched it was the name of the house, given in the record of a young man, killed in action in WW2, was the same name as our local village. Their family tree had been published on the internet and fortunately so were the contact details of it’s owner.

I had to write in the desire to find out more. Within two days, I had my reply, not a long email but enough to give me the information I needed to find out who my two mystery people were. I know now I share a 4 x great-grandfather with my contact. It showed me one thing, since our grandfathers had been second cousins once removed, they had still been in contact with each other. In the present day, many families are so far apart from each other, they have no contact with even some of their close family. It probably accounts for all the names I have in my family tree I have known about yet I was born after many of them had died.

Wha’s Like Us?

As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, there are people who are looking forward to not being shackled to Brussels and being able to get back to being a country on our own again. Being integrated with Europe has seen a loss in farming, manufacturing, fishing etc. so it’s an opportunity for rebuilding a nation hopefully with the help of younger visionaries.

Of course there are those who are still wringing their hands and wailing ‘woe, woe and thrice woe’ at the thought of Britain falling off the end of the world because we are letting go on Europe’s grip. Some of course are the ‘Doubting Thomases’, believe that nothing will work ever again regardless of what way the vote went, simply because they are afraid of change.

Before the European Union, Britain offered the world many inventions and in fact as part of the United Kingdom which was a treaty between Scotland and England, Scotland did it’s share in being a useful part of our union. Some will ask ‘what has Scotland ever done for us?’ Although I can list many things, I think the following tale is representative:

“The average Englishman in his home he calls his castle, 
slips into his national costume, a shabby raincoat, 
patented by Charles Macintosh from Glasgow Scotland. 
En route to his office he strides along the English country lane,
surfaced by John Macadam Ayr, Scotland. 
He drives an English car fitted with tyres, 
invented by John Boyd Dunlop, Dreghorn, Scotland.
At the office he receives the mail bearing adhesive stamps,
invented by John Chambers of Dundee, Scotland.
During the day he uses the telephone,
invented by Alexander Graham Bell, from Edinburgh, Scotland.
At home in the evening his daughter pedals her bicycle,
invented by Kirkpatrick Macmillan from Dumfriesshire, Scotland.
He watches the news on TV,
invented by John Logie Baird from Helensburgh, Scotland,
and hears an item about the US navy,
founded by John Paul Jones from Kirkbean, Scotland.
Nowhere can an Englishman turn to escape the ingenuity of the Scots.
He has now been reminded too much of Scotland and in desperation he 
picks up the holy Bible, only to find that the first man mentioned in the 
good book is a Scot, King James the VI who authorised its translation.
He could turn to drink,
but the Scots make the best in the world.
He could take a rifle and end it all,
but the rifle was invented by Captain Patrick Ferguson 
from Pitfours, Scotland.
If he escapes death, he could find himself on the operating table 
injected with penicillin, discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming 
of Darvel, Scotland.
And given chloroform, an anaesthetic,
discovered by Sir James Young Simpson from Bathgate, Scotland.
Out of the anaesthetic he would find no comfort in learning 
that he was as safe as the Bank of England,
founded by William Paterson from Dumfries, Scotland.
Perhaps his only remaining hope would be to get a transfusion 
of guid Scottish blood which would entitle him to say ...
WHA’S LIKE US?”

Of course we have done a lot more and add to that what England, Northern Ireland and Wales have also contributed to the building of a nation as well. Some of the Scottish/English rivalry is ‘tongue-in-cheek’, but sadly there are the extremists. 

Sometimes turning the clock back can give us time to gather strength to face the future of opportunity. One of my favourite authors is William Shakespeare, who wrote the following in  the play, ‘Julius Caesar’ 

“There is a tide in the affairs of men.
 Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
 Omitted, all the voyage of their life
 Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
 On such a full sea are we now afloat,
 And we must take the current when it serves,
 Or lose our ventures.”

 

Let It Snow

There are some years we get off lightly with snow. If we have it one day, it can be almost gone the next. What a difference from my memory of the past of it. Snow meant building snowmen, throwing snowballs and making slides. Slides were lengths of well-polished snow and the more you slid on them, the more the compacted snow had turned to ice until it was a very fast run. A bit like skiing without skis. The school playground was covered in slides of various lengths, depending on how hesitant or brave you were.

Usually by the time we got into classroom, we tried to get mittens, scarves and hats on the radiators. Hands were very painful with the cold and worse when they started to heat up. That didn’t matter in the least because as soon as the pain was gone, we were ready to go back out. It was easier at home though, there would have been some dry clothes to change into and the wet ones put in front of the fire to dry.

My early recollection of heavy snow was opening the back door and being faced with a wall of snow three to four feet deep. My mother was there with the shovel, shifting the snow to make a path outside and even then she would find time to show me how to build a snowman. Over the years the weather seems to have changed quite a bit and there has been less snow or it doesn’t lie for any length of time so today’s children miss out on a lot of fun. It was ‘children playing’ kind of fun, nothing organised for them. We weren’t allowed to throw stones but you could throw snowballs and that seemed to satisfy the rebellion in you without doing any damage other than to leave your hands cold and wet.

It was not a time to rebel at school, it was still the time of the ‘tawse’, the thick leather strap wielded by teachers to the hands of any errant child and if your icy, painful hands were the recipients of the tawse, the stinging result was sure to bring on floods of tears. 

We live in a valley so on the rare occasions it does snow, there are plenty of favourite places to go with your sledge. You don’t need a steep hill, sledges are often plastic now and light so can travel fast without having to haul a heavy sledge back up the hill. You seldom see a child looking unhappy when playing in the snow. You just need to Google a few images to see the reaction is the same in every country.

The Time Warp

I have an interest in local history as well as family history and when our local family history society decided to celebrate their 20th anniversary by holding a history fair, I was asked to take a stand at it. Me, because my interest in family history overlaps local history with a small, partly ruined kirk which has it’s own burial ground. To any budding genealogist, it is a little gem, a mine of information on the departed local residents but also giving an insight into social history.

Since the kirk dates back to 1198 there is a lot to talk about from then until the present day. We are not without myths, legends and ghosts. Not that we are aware of many but some visitors have relayed their own paranormal experiences. We must be the only ancient monument to have a ghost walk without any ghosts but it was well organised and a huge success just proving you don’t need ghosts, to be afraid of the dark!

We’ve also held a Mediaeval Fayre which was a lot of fun. We had to compromise a little bit with venison sausages replacing the spit roasted deer but nobody seemed to mind. Burial grounds at one time were the hub of the community where fairs, weaponry practice and other celebrations were held.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

As churchyards became overcrowded, cemeteries were developed. They were places you could stroll in, relax and enjoy the gardens. It is possible to enjoy life without disrespecting the dead.

The local family history event I attended recently was like walking into a time warp. The display of memorabilia on display on the tables next to the stand I was at, placed me firmly in the middle of one of my blogs!

Scottish Fayre – Stovies and Lorne Sausage

I was looking for something interesting to have for dinner. I’d spent the best part of the day pottering around the garden so was in no mood for cooking. I had already cooked breakfast of bacon, Lorne sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes and eggs and had some Lorne sausage left over, only two slices but that was enough, I was going to make stovies.

First of all Lorne sausage comes with many aliases depending on where you live but in the West of Scotland, that’s what we know it as. It’s made normally from beef and although it’s often referred to as square sausage, it’s perhaps more like trapezium sausage. It’s made in a long block, generally the bottom is wider than the top. Sliced and fried and perfect to fit between two slices of bread.

Thankfully I prefer not to join the take-away and throw-away societies, so I try to think of innovative ways of using an odd assortment of fridge contents, it’s amazing what you can make out of leftovers with just a little cream and some wine. It turns the most unappetising looking foods into a feast for a king. My two little slices of Lorne sausage had the potential to make a meal for four.

Stovies is a hotpot of meat and vegetables, cooked in a pot, stewed slowly in their own liquid. Any leftover meat can be used but I was going to make good use of the sausage. I cut it into small squares, sliced swede, carrots, onions and potatoes. I put a little oil in the pot to start with, layer the sausage (or other meat) with the vegetables, a little water, salt and pepper (not too much salt), put it on a low heat, cover with a lid and let it stew slowly until the vegetables are cooked. Stir it now and again to ensure even cooking. It doesn’t matter if the potatoes used break up easily, that’s how I like it. It doesn’t even matter what the proportions of ingredients are but potatoes, meat and onions are the essentials.

More information including the recipe for Lorne Sausage

How Clean Is Your House?

Some years ago, I became a member of a local gym. I felt that sitting in an office for long periods would speed up stiffening of joints as I raced towards retirement age. My idea of going to the gym was purely for exercise, and to lose weight or alter my shape would be a total waste of time unless I was prepared to stick to a rigid diet as well. At first I joined a private health club and paid my annual fee, thinking that it was the cheaper option than a monthly membership. It was a lovely club, quite luxurious although also small and friendly. I used to welcome my short spell on the exercise machines followed by relaxing in the jacuzzi. You felt good after the visit. Looking forward to going home from work and to a dinner of meat and two veg. but on coming out, all you wanted was a nice fresh salad. Unfortunately, I had a minor car accident resulting in a whiplash injury, so my membership came to an abrupt halt.

I always felt more comfortable in joggers and tee shirt and some others obviously felt the same. Although the local, popular gym in town was somewhat different, all lycra and make-up with the would-be Adonises competing to be Mr Universe.

Years ago, gyms were more associated with sports training. With less gadgets in the house, housework was the only exercise you needed. No fitted carpets, so whatever was on the floor had to be cleaned. Scrubbed with soap and water or if you had linoleum (no vinyl then), it had also to polished. Can you believe people pay for the same exercises we did at home for nothing and had the satisfaction of having a clean house as well?

Fitted carpets are notoriously unhygienic but we will tolerate living with the dust, grit and these monsters just for comfort.

The floors would have been covered by rugs, perhaps even one large rug, leaving a varnished wood surround or a linoleum covered one. The rugs were taken out regularly, thrown over a rope or fence and beaten well to get rid of accumulated dust and bugs.It’s still reckoned to be the best way to clean rugs, especially handmade or antique ones.

I wonder if anyone realises what modern life is doing to us?

A Little Puff Of Smoke

I found it strange that out of all of his family, only my father and one uncle smoked. My father must have started as a young man but any objections I had to living in a smoke-filled house were met by my mother’s defence of ‘it’s his only pleasure’. That was a really sad statement in my mind.

Dad did have hobbies as a young man, he fished, tied his own flies and had a motor bike and ultimately, a car. Being brought up in a corn milling family, he didn’t have much time for anything else. He started off work in the outside world as an engineer though it was some time after that, he met and married my mother. He had long hours at his work and any spare time he had after that was spent decorating their first home and making furniture for it. Although it was the habit for the family to donate furniture to young married couples, they didn’t always get all they needed. The first piece of furniture my father made was a wooden trolley. I still have it. He also made a sideboard which had added handmade inlaid handles to doors and drawers. The house we lived in was a small terraced cottage and beyond the kitchen, he had a workshop. He started making pokers with decorative, multicoloured handles made of different coloured layers of some sort of plastic which fitted in well with the contemporary colourful decor of the period.

There was nothing my father couldn’t do but I can still see him, whatever he was doing, he had a cigarette. He smoked 20 Capstan Navy Cut cigarettes a day, so it was probably modest compared with some. If he had to nip the cigarette out, it wasn’t thrown away, it was put in his pocket until he had time to smoke it again. Sometimes they were forgotten about and if he ran out of cigarettes, he could rummage through his pockets for the ‘dowts’ (cigarette butts). At that time there were no filters on the cigarettes he smoked.

One of my maternal aunts and some of her family smoked Senior Service. These packets were quite decorative and a new craft became popular, sometimes known as ‘prison craft’, it was something prison inmates could keep themselves busy with and they created picture frames and other items out of many cigarette packets. Because of the logo of the front of the packets, they provided an interesting form of art work.

I think now, considering how skilful and how capable my father was to provide us with our home, smoking was his own leisure time and would have been ‘the only pleasure’ in that respect. As work became easier and he did get more time, he added reading to that. I think that is why the smell of engines and tobacco are the ones which remind me mostly of my dad.

 

Pets To Please

I remember my maternal grandmother having two dogs, Towser the border collie followed by Towser the Alsatian. She also had two geese, Jock and Jenny and lastly a talking budgie, Joey, she wasn’t too inventive with names. We’ve had many animals as part of our household over the years and just a few years’ ago the last little guinea pig died. I know I had been saying ‘no more’, usually after the demise of each little furry, feathered or finned friend but this time, so far I have kept to my word.

I had been brought up with animals and that’s not including our farming family’s livestock, though that may have had some influence in the desire to have an animal of my very own. Personally, I’ve had mice, hamsters, budgies, fish and a dog, not all at the one time but over the years. My tendency to want a zoo was kept in check by my parents, my mother in particular, since deny it as I may, I now have to accept who cleaned out the budgie cage (not the mice or the hamsters, that was left for me). I was someone who thought caterpillars were cute, especially the hairy ones and persistently took earthworms in to show my mother.

The influence on my daughter may have been somewhat aided by family feeling towards animals in general. We walked and had picnics a lot, so a trip to the seaside, which isn’t far from us, meant welly boots and a bucket. She liked scrambling over the rocks watching the sea life in the rock pools, hence the wellies, the bucket was to allow closer examination of her finds later, when she had time to study them. Lots of shells, which were carefully researched and named, a crab claw, which I was assured at the time was ‘in good working order’ and anything live, would be returned from whence it came before we headed home.

Living in an upstairs flat at the time meant the choice of pet was limited as we felt it cruel and unsuitable to keep a cat or dog with such limited freedom to the outside world, so it began. There was Charlie, followed by Pepe, the first of the upstairs pets, they were budgies. Next to arrive was a goldfish, won at the local fair and which lived for a surprisingly long time. We must have been impressed with it, ‘it’ because we had no idea of it’s gender, was followed by a large tank of tropical fish. We liked the fish and had a large tank and two small ones, sadly we lost them due to power failure one bitterly cold weekend and the tank temperature dropped too low. For a while we made do with neighbours’ animals, doggy sitting and walking and for us it worked well.

Daughter went to university for a degree in biology of course, then ranger training college, finally getting a job in a theme park as historic and nature guide. That’s when the rabbit came in, a baby bunny to be put down because it was blind in one eye and not good for the children to see in Pet’s Corner. That was Muppet, he was gorgeous, jet black and fluffy, he was a house rabbit. We won’t forget him, we can’t, I still have half-chewed cables and furniture to remind me! We felt he was lonely, so got a guinea pig and that’s where the rabbit/guinea string of pets started. Since both of them didn’t depart this world with it’s companion, it meant they were being replaced because we didn’t want any of them to feel lonely. I can’t blame my daughter for her interest in animals, I even fostered a baby elephant for a few years though at least it did remain in a reserve in Kenya.

Russian Steppe Eagle

For a brief while, daughter became a falconer so we’ve also played nanny to a baby European Eagle Owl, amongst other raptors. He grew too big for the house, with a wing span of 4ft, he had to be rehoused in a proper place the moment he took to the wing. That’s all amongst the odd stray cats and an inherited dog we’ve had. Being a fair-weather gardener, of course I have to have a wormery – trouble is there were too many of them to name!