Slurping tea from the saucer, sticking a poker in ale and other oddities from the olden days

WHAT odd little habits will our children and grandchildren remember when we’re gone? The thought struck me as I delved into the world of tea in saucers and hot pokers in beer.

It started with a post on a local Facebook page, when someone said: “My grandad used to drink his tea from the saucer. He would have a regular cupful, but pour some of it into the saucer and drink. Gran used to say ‘gie o’er slorruping it’ when he slurped it up! Was it a thing colliers and other manual workers did to cool the tea down quickly because they were thirsty?”

The responses flooded in and it was clear that this was a practice common among manual workers – and miners in particular.

“My grandad did this, too,” said another reader. “After pouring some into his saucer and drinking that at breakfast, he would break up dried bread or toasted bread, no butter, etc, and put that in the cup and eat it with a spoon. Called it soaky.

“Maybe did this as bread was stale. He was a miner. Maybe he did this underground – stop the rats getting to it?”

Another suggested: “Many jobs had a 10 or 15-minute tea break.

“You had to leave your place of work, acquire your tea, drink it and be back at your a desk/bench etc.

“Pouring it into a saucer made it drinkable within that time frame.”

I asked a few elderly friends if they could remember similar delights that would be frowned on nowadays.

“My dad until recently sometimes finished the gravy by putting the plate in his mouth,” said one.

Another recalled: “Miners used to have a raw egg and sherry in a saucer for breakfast before going down pit.”

A woman in her 80s recalled her parents straining sour milk through a muslin cloth to make cottage cheese. And when her dad finished his afternoon shift down the pit, he would heat up a poker on his blackened old range and plunge it into a pint of ale – “something to do with the iron taste from the poker”.

My father did the same when we kids had a bad cold, ostensibly to help us sweat it out, although it was probably just the prospect of boozing that lifted young spirits.

A friend’s parents went one better, prescribing honey, lemon and whisky with half a crushed aspirin.

Strange sayings favoured by our elders are another world entirely and, perhaps with your help, the subject of a future column.

A friend’s father, for instance, was adamant that eating pomegranates caused appendicitis.

As for my generation’s oddities, will those who’ve followed look back and laugh at our habit of mispronouncing simple words – such as “pignic” instead of “picnic” and “obstropolous” for “obstreperous”?

Or reciting the phone number when we’ve answered the landline? Or turning the telly down only after we’ve answered a phone call?

Then there are those things we say to sound “with it”, like “hanging out”, “good vibe” and “chill pill”.

“Is it all mums that get movie titles wrong?” one man asked.

“Either they can’t remember the name completely, or they come up with their own titles for popular movies.”

I’ll leave the last word to my nineyear-old grandson.

“What things do older people do that annoy you?” I asked. Quick as a flash, he replied: “Trying to be funny when they’re not.”

A friend’s father was adamant that eating pomegranates caused appendicitis