Here's the second part of your Grandparent project...
For Papa, life on a daily basis began at 5.00am to prepare to deliver fresh rolls to his many customers. The person who owned the bakery who made the rolls delivered the rolls to Papa's house even earlier than 5.00am so that they would be there when Papa woke up.
Once Papa had woken up and dressed, he would go to his front door and bring in the rolls to prepare them for delivery. Part of this preparation was to look at his list of customers and see how many rolls each person had ordered. Each order was then placed into paper bags that Papa had previously bought for this purpose.
Then it was on to his bike with his rolls and off to deliver them.
A final part of this job of Papa's was to visit all his customers on Friday afternoon to collect the money for the rolls he had delivered through the week.
After delivering his rolls, it was time to race home, change into his school clothes and have breakfast.
For breakfast Papa had either porridge or cornflakes. Cornflakes was a fairly new type of cereal when Papa was a boy. He could remember when it first came on to the shelves in the grocery store.
Everyone thought the product was amazing because there was no cooking involved. Papa also had porridge for breakfast. Not on the same day of course. On both cornflakes and porridge, Papa added lots of sugar. This was quite an unusual thing to do in Scotland. Most people never put sugar on their cereal, especially not on porridge. If you were ever seen to put sugar on your porridge, you were called a Sassenach which is derived from the Scottish Gaelic word Sassunach, which literally means Saxon. This word was used in a derogatory way to mean 'English'. Whenever Papa pulled the sugar bowl towards his porridge, his father would be heard to say "Ach ye're a Sassenach!"
After school, Papa travelled home by the school bus.
The first chore Papa had to do was light the fire. This chore had a number of stages. The first stage involved rolling up his sleeves, and raking the cold ash from the night before into the tray that lay beneath the grate. After all the ash was raked, the tray was pulled out and taken outside. Papa said that the ash was then put on the various paths around his home. The next stage involved making paper sticks. To do this he rolled up the sheets of the previous day's newspaper into a long roll. He then twisted this roll into a pretzel-type shape and threw it on the grate. Once he had made a number of paper sticks, he would very carefully lay small pieces of coal on top of the paper, making sure there was room for plenty of air to help the fire take hold. The coal was kept in a shed out in the garden and every couple of weeks, the coal-man would make a delivery of coal.
Next stage was to light the fire and stay nearby until Papa felt it was time to put another piece of coal on the fire. Once the fire was going well, Papa would put more pieces of coal on the fire, give the fire surround a good brush and tidy and put the fire-guard in front of the fire.
The fire-guard was a safety measure in case of any sparks that might jump out of the fire on to the rug.
Actually, once Papa's mother (your great-grandmother) put some clothes on a close-horse in front of the fire to dry. Unfortunately Great Grandmother Mary didn't use any safety measures and whilst everyone was out of the room, the clothes caught fire. Apparently there was quite a to-do with buckets of water being thrown around the place, clothes eventually rescued and carried off in a bucket, never to be seen again.
Once Great Grandmother Mary arrived home from work, Papa was usually given a shopping list. Great Grandmother Mary would say in her lovely soft Scottish voice, "Oh David! Would you take this list down to the village and get me some messages."
That was the word that was used for shopping, messages. Papa used to love going to the village. He would pick up the shopping bag and off he would go. There was a fairly straight road to the village, but Papa preferred to go to the village by way of the River Allander which was known by everyone as "The Burn."
Sometimes after Papa had arrived home with the messages, his mother would say, "Oh dear! David! I forgot to put some milk on the list." and off he would go again.
One of the items Papa would buy two or three times a week was paraffin. This was an oil used for heating. The oil came in a can and was brought from a store called the Ironmongers. The Ironmonger sold all sorts of things for the garden and home.
The paraffin came in a container like this.
The heater that the paraffin was put into was one just like this one.
As you can see there is a lovely design on the top. When the heater was lit, the design on the top would shine on the ceiling and Papa said it was very comforting to watch the design on his ceiling as he was lying in bed.
With all the messages done, Papa would settle down to do his homework for school at the dining table and while he worked on his schoolwork, his mother would begin to prepare dinner. Papa's favourite dinner was fish and chips which was usually eaten on a Saturday. The village that Papa lived in had a fishmonger which sold fresh fish.
Another of Papa's favourite meals was a Scottish dish called Stovies. Here's an excerpt from the Internet describing what Stovies is.
Stovies is a Scottish dish based on potatoes and meat. Recipes and ingredients vary widely, but the dish always contains potatoes, onions, other vegetables, sausages, roast beef, minced beef or other meat.[1] Stovies is thus a dish intended to use left-over food.
The potatoes are cooked by slow stewing in
a closed pot with fat
and stock. Lard, beef dripping or butter may be used as the fat. It
is also common to stew the potatoes in water alone with onion before adding the
other ingredients. Stovies may be accompanied by oatcakes.
"To stove" means "to stew" in Scots.
The term seems to derive from the French adjective "étuvée"
which may be translated as "steamed" or braised
This is a picture of stovies but in Papa's day they never had plastic containers like this. The stovies was cooked and placed on a PLATE!
Papa has a sister Margaret who is two years older than Papa and Papa said that when they were young he would often tease her. One day while Margaret was sunning herself in the garden, Papa crept up very quietly and placed a real live frog on her. You can imagine the screams that came from Margaret. Papa thought this was hilarious. Although Papa sometimes teased his sister, he was also very protective of her.
Papa's Father usually arrived home around dinner time. He worked in Glasgow which was about 6 miles from the village Papa and his family lived in. Papa's family didn't own a car so Great Grandfather William came home by bus.
After dinner, dishes were cleared Papa and Margaret would do the dishes. It was Papa's job to dry the dishes.
Now the evening was drawing in, it was time to close the curtains, turn on the lamp and prepare for bed. In Papa's day, no-one had showers in their home and not everyone even had baths. Some people had to go to the 'public baths' for their weekly bath.
This is a photograph of public baths. At the bottom of the photograph you can just about see the pool where everyone was allowed to swim in. Up in the balcony area, there are lots of doors and through each door is a bath where a person could have a bath privately.
There, they would pay some money, be given a towel and some soap and directed to a bathing cubicle for their weekly bath.
Papa's house did have a bath though and once a week the family would have their baths. When it wasn't a bath night, the family would give themselves a good wash, especially behind the ears, get into their pyjamas and jump into bed. I'm not sure why you had to wash especially behind the ears, but that is what our mothers would always say when we went to wash our hands and faces.
Once in bed, Papa read for a bit before turning out his light, turning over and going to sleep in readiness for his alarm clock ringing again at 5.00am.
No comments:
Post a Comment