Notes from the Sofa
It’s odd thinking of the things people did routinely only a few years ago, which no one would dream of doing today.
My mother always whitened the front doorstep, and even the step by the gate, leaving it covered with a fine white powder. This was perfect for taking prints of the soles of shoes and boots coming in; so the step was covered with a sheet of newspaper to protect the delicate powder.
‘Mum!’ I used to cry, ‘If you’re going to cover the step with newspaper, why bother to whiten it?’ But everyone did the same. It seemed to be almost obligatory.
All metalwork on and around the front door was polished every week: the letterbox, the knocker, the brass plate over the step; even the electric bell push and the keyhole. Indoors, my dad regularly cleaned and polished the brass stair rods. Each rod had to be taken out one at a time, rubbed with Brasso, then carefully replaced. Black metalwork in the fireplaces was polished with Zebo grate polish.
Likewise shoes. Every morning, before school, I would sit on the step from the kitchen into the scullery, to blacken and polish my shoes. It was an everyday routine, as regular as cleaning my teeth.
Does anyone do this nonsense today? Prime Ministers and their confederates all have nice, shiny shoes but no doubt someone does it for them. Can you imagine Harold Macmillan bending over to polish his toe caps?
Another routine insanity was ironing trousers. I haven’t ironed my trousers since 1957. Yet I have survived and have not been arrested for appearing in public, indecently dressed. In the army, it was compulsory, of course. Not just ironed, but with a knife-edge crease. We would shave off the wool of the trousers to get down to the thinner cloth beneath it, which could be ironed into a sharper crease. Then some of the blokes would smear shaving soap along the crease on the inside of the trouser leg to make it stick to itself when ironed.
The blokes can’t be blamed. It was quite ingenious but the madness of doing it at all was caused by army training. The training is designed to destroy your common sense so that, when you are ordered to go over the top, you go. Even into a hail of bullets. Luckily, in my Catterick days, we didn’t have to worry about the bullets; just the creases.
Another more serious absurdity was the custom – which seems unbelievable today – of women, who were about to get married, having all their teeth taken out! It sounds medieval but my mother had it done in 1930. But, in those days, the teeth were probably in a deplorable state due to poverty. My mother grew up in a very small, two-up, two-down terrace house, with ten or twelve people living there. No bathroom; one cold tap in the kitchen, where my grandmother cooked on a kitchen range. Where would they keep their ten toothbrushes and mugs? They probably scarcely cleaned their teeth at all.
Thank goodness I was brought up to clean my teeth, but I was almost shocked when middle-class boys at grammar school said they cleaned their teeth twice a day! Golly, I thought I was being a good boy doing it once. But, if I want to be middle-class, better get scrubbing. Won’t worry about whitening the step though.
When I was still a student, I bought a very good, old Windsor chair for 1/6d (18 old pence, if you’re a yoof) from a Boy Scouts charity jumble sale. I used it every day for months, but then it dawned on me that there was something wrong with it. It wasn’t WHITE!
The watchword for us, the forward-thinking, liberated, swinging Sixties generation, was WHITE. Walls, ceilings, all paintwork, indoors and out. So I painted the chair in blinding white gloss. Aaargh! A few years later, I spent hours cleaning it off.