Porridge

I'm currently enjoying a bowl of porridge, being no masochist, it's been sprinkled with cinnamon and a pinch of brown sugar rather than the more edgy alternative of salt. Porridge is another dish that reminds me of childhood, when we were little we often had it for breakfast, it was my brother's favourite meal. It reminds me of cold winds and kite flying and using the old sofa as a climbing frame and trampoline.



A lot of my childhood memories from Scotland are of the winter, darkness and cold outside, warmth indoors and the black and white tellies. I remember envying the bigger girls who had platforms and flares, now I'm deeply glad my mum said no. I think the cliché is "We were poor but 'appy", well we weren't actually dirt poor we lived in a biggish house, (probably where I got my love of high ceilings) but the mortgage was at the edge if not slightly beyond what could be afforded thanks to the oil crisis. But we were certainly happy and very loved.

I suppose everyone thinks that their childhood is "normal" until they talk to others, one of my old bosses used to cheerfully tell the office stories of her childhood that would leave the rest of us dumbfounded at the casual, thoughtless cruelty of her parents towards her and her sister. She didn't seem to realise that their behaviour as she described it was sometimes beyond the boundaries of what was acceptable even then, let alone now, she saw it as normal for her childhood.

It's only as an adult that I've begun to truly appreciate how great being loved and cherished is.

It Really Doesn't Matter If It's Raining Or If It's Fine...

Wyndham the Triffid has been exposed to the horrors of modern programming for small children. He's had a rough time of it, but these are the slings and arrows a modern father must face!

As I was reading his post, the natural cry of a media aware modern 30 something was to cry "Ah we had much better children's telly in my day" but the words got stuck in my throat. We didn't have better telly, not really and there was a lot less of it on the television as well. The cartoons were great Mr Benn, The Clangers, Ivor the Engine. Well I thought they were great and they probably are but I've seen them all so many times I think it is now impossible for me to be critically objective about them.

But there was a lot of rubbish on for children. First up most of the time we had to put up with this.


picture from meldrum.co.uk

There wasn't the daytime telly apart from schools programmes and the lunch time programmes so what we had was limited.

The live action programmes for small children were fairly dire two prime examples were Rainbow and Playschool.

Rainbow is crap, was crap. Being all post modern and ironic about it (a nasty habit which seems to have been invented just round about the time I was a student) isn't going to hide that it was poor, slightly creepy and unfunny. I didn't like it as a child - zippy was too cruel and I really didn't like the singers.

On the BBC you had Playschool Never liked it, too preachy and "nice children play like this" for me. I loathed and detested Hamble the doll don't know why now but I did.

However there was one programme that I loved, Playaway presented by Brian Cant it had guest stars on it, silly songs bad jokes and it looked like a lot of fun. Brian Cant was a one man entertainment system for the under 8s of Britain during the 60's 70's and the 80's.

Beer Cans for Table Tennis Nets

As I’ve said before used to I live in Edinburgh. We had an old house that needed much work doing on it as it hadn't been touched since the 20's. As I was about 3 when we moved in and much of the work was done I only have vague memories. Although I do remember lead piping on the front lawn and big men who had paint splashed on their trousers.

This was also the period of when we were so poor... so work got done as and when it could be afforded. When I was about 7 or 8 it was time for the pantry to be sorted out, my father decided to put down a new floor down in it. Chipboard was purchased, cut to size then the family decided that were coming to us for Christmas, all of them; my Grandma, my father's brothers and family and my Granddad. My father also had a PhD student who would not be able to go home for Christmas, so my parents had invited him over as well. This would be a sit down for dinner of 12 maybe even more.

We did not have a table big enough, we couldn't afford to buy such a table. It was at this point the chipboard was looked at with narrowed eyes, the words "legs" "coat of varnish" were tersely muttered and low and behold we had a new dining room table. Practically all the chairs in the house were pressed into service and a make shift bench was constructed

To me the table was huge, it was certainly big enough to play shove ha'penny football on. Then from somewhere (I suspect a skip) two slightly tatty ping pong bats appeared and a ping pong ball, no net unfortunately but in the spirit of make do that we had. empty beer cans were used instead. They were about the right height and we had enough of them because it was Christmas.

So equipped I learnt to play table tennis. A few weeks later we, my mum, my brother and I were walking back home when Patrick spied an old table tennis set lying on top of some bins along with other old toys. It wasn’t complete but there were a couple of bats and a table tennis net. It fitted perfectly on the table, the cans could be thrown away.

We'd have become expert table tennis players, if Dad hadn't eventually decided that our table should really be put to it's intended use, pantry flooring!

We were so poor that we had to burn the telly one Christmas to keep warm.

When I was young we were poor, not grindingly poor but cash wasn't plentiful and had to be watched with a keen eye. Mend and make do was the name of the game. My mum went to jumble sales and charity shops, hand me downs were gratefully accepted.

However that is not how we (my brother and I) usually put it...

Eee we were so poor that we had to burn the telly one Christmas to keep warm. Well a slight exaggeration but until about 1978 we had a succession of black and white televisions that predated transistors. So they were stuffed full of thermonic valves. We had to turn the telly on 5 minutes before the programme we wanted to watch started to allow the valves to warm up. They also were constantly failing so Dad amassed a collection of old tellies which he stripped for working valves. Eventually this source dried up and my parents were forced to buy a new telly.

It was a Ferguson. It was in colour It didn't have to be laid on it's side to make the vertical hold work.

We loved it.

Because the old tellies had solid wood cases Dad chopped them up for firewood. He also took an axe to one of the cathode ray tubes because, as he said, he had always wanted to see an implosion. It was very impressive.

Image from The University of Aberdeen