IDLE HANDS BY PAT WHALLEY

As children, my generation learned never to say we were bored. If this lament was ever heard, the adults in your home would find something for you to do.

One of my grandma’s favourite sayings was “the devil finds work for idle hands” and, if she thought I was spending too much time daydreaming, she made sure that my hands were not idle for long.

Grandma had a long list of chores which she thought were ideal for filling time, one of these was dusting the banisters. The long staircase connecting the upper and lower floors consisted of a broad piece of carved handrail supported by many carved uprights.

Dust used to find it’s way into the crevasses of the curvy uprights and these were the bane of my existence. Grandma found any excuse for keeping me busy at this, seemingly endless, task. First part of this job was to dab on Mansion Polish, which was the creamy polish that made most of Lancashire’s woodwork shine.

The polish was applied with a soft duster and smeared all over the woodwork. Next would come the real part of the job. A clean duster, usually a piece of old nightie or similar, was wrapped round the back of the rail and, by grasping the ends of the rag and pulling back and forth for several minutes, a quick polishing action was made. The rag would be worked from the top of the rail, to the bottom and then reversed, so all sides of the rail were gleaming.

There were about twenty railings, working their way up the staircase and along the top landing and, by the end of the task, I was a sweaty mess and too tired for the devil to put my hands to any further use.

The only chore worse than the banisters was cleaning the black lead range. This big iron structure stood about eight feet long and six feet high. It was topped by a big wooden mantlepiece, on which stood the clock. On the left hand side of the range was an open coal fire, this had two iron hobs, one at each side, that could be swung back and forth to be placed over the coals or kept at the edge of the fireplace, to keep the kettle at simmering heat. On the right hand side was the oven where grandma did all her bread baking, also general roasting and baking. Above this was a smaller, warming oven. This area was for keeping food hot, without overcooking it. However, this is where grandma stored kindling and also our nighties. If care wasn’t taken to shake out your nightie, you spent an uncomfortable night fighting splinters.

Cleaning the black leaded range was awful. Grandma would apply the black gunk and I would be given a couple of big cloths to polish the surface. This was one of the only times that the fire was allowed to go out as, it not only was the only source of heat but also the only way to get hot water. There was a boiler at the back of the fire where the water got hot with the heat of the fire.

No matter how much I rubbed, I managed to get smears instead of shine and grandma would finish off by buffing it like a dervish. The fire would then be carefully built up again with twisted newspapers then kindling would be carefully stacked on the paper, finally small pieces of coal would be laid on top of the wood. A match would be put to the paper and, once the paper ignited, grandma would put a steel “blazer” against the fire. This would cause the draught to concentrate on the fire below while drawing air up the chimney.

Everyone in our neighbourhood used this method of fire lighting. If you did not have a “blazer” then the coal shovel would be sat in the open fireplace while a big sheet of newspaper was placed against it, to create the necessary draught. This was rather tricky as the newspaper could singe and catch fire, if you were not watching closely and many people had coal shovels that were badly burned at the base of the handle, where it has spent too long near the flames.

Grandma had what was called an all night burner. This was a type of fireplace that you could keep going all night by the proper use of “putting the fire to bed”. Before bed, all the peelings from vegetables, plus the wet tea leaves that had been used through the day, were put onto the fire. On top of this would be put slack, which was really just coal dust with tiny pieces of coal in it. This would not let much air reach the fire so it would burn, really slowly, all night and just need a bit of stirring up in the morning. This meant that the living room was always warm and it didn’t take long to boil water for tea and to make the morning porridge.

Grandma made good porridge, thick and slightly salty. She would pour the cream, from the top of the milk jug, onto our porridge and it was delicious. I still eat it the same way today, no sugar required, just the simple slightly salty taste. Milk was delivered straight from the farm, by horse and cart and ladled out into each customers’ milk jug. There would be little crocheted covers with beaded edges, to cover the milk. The beads weighted down the cover to keep the birds out of the milk.

My mom delivered morning milk as part of her job on a farm and, when I was old enough, I would go with her on the weekends. Here I would run to each house and bring the jug or whatever container the customer used, my mom would ladle out the milk and I would return it to the doorstep. The milk on the cart was in big steel churns called “kits” and each had a big metal separator, which she moved up and down in the kits, to separate the cream, otherwise it sat on the top of the milk.

My favourite part of this job was watching the horse urinate. He was a big shire horse with huge hooves, covered by beautiful feathery hair. Halfway round the route my mom gave him a bucket of water and he nearly always passed it straight through. Watching the process of the horse relieving himself fascinated me. He would very deliberately spread out his feet and then the amazing view of his built in hose pipe would appear. I was maybe six or seven and knew nothing about the working of the male anatomy, so it was quite an amazing sight for me. Most of the kids in the street would play at jumping over the resulting river as it ran away from the horse. What the horse thought about our performance, he kept to himself.

On alternate days grandma would make different hot cereal, cream of wheat was tolerated but pobs was a definite no-no for me. Pobs or pobbies was a disgusting concoction of hot milk poured over cubes of bread and butter. Whenever various cousins stayed at grandma’s house, which happened quite often, they seemed to love this soggy bread mixture but it made me want to vomit.

Whenever grandma cooked green vegetables , she used to put a crust of bread on top of the vegetables. She thought this would absorb the smell of the boiling veg. When it was time to serve the veggies, she would remove the green, swollen piece of bread and discard it but the sight of it used to turn my stomach. To this day I cannot eat bread pudding or any other wet bread. So the pobs were definitely off the menu for me. I was quite happy with just a piece of bread and butter, so would eat this while trying not to look at the others sitting round the table, tucking into their disgusting pobs. UHHHGGG!!!!! Just the thought gives me goosebumps.

This same awful mixture was sometimes used if you were sick, but the bread would be spread with beef fat, that was saved from whatever joint of meat that had been cooked for Sunday dinner. The bread mixture would then be liberally sprinkled with salt and pepper and boiling water poured over top. The hot water and beef fat would create a kind of thin gravy or “beef tea”, as it was called.

This beef fat or dripping, as it was generally known would also make a spread for toast and was very popular for breakfast or packed lunches. This I found quite nice as it would be spread on gran’s home made bread that had been toasted. Gran made good bread and never used margarine, no matter how short of money she was.

One of my jobs would be to go to the grocers, with gran’s list. This was a very enjoyable chore as most of the shopkeepers were nice. At the grocery store I would watch as a man, in a big striped apron, cut off a chunk of butter from out of a big barrel. The piece he had broken off would be put on a marble slab and be patted and slapped into shape with two wooden paddles. These would frequently be dipped in cold water, to keep them from sticking to the butter. The man would make the butter into a perfectly smooth rectangle then wrap it in brown paper.

A lady in a similar apron weighed out the broken biscuits that grandma ordered, she would always give me a couple of pieces for a treat. The same lady would then weigh out rice, sugar and lentils, all of which were put into identical blue paper bags, which had a see through cellophane strip on the front, so you could tell what was inside.

Next store on the list was the green grocer/ He would weigh out the potatoes and put them on the bottom of gran’s vegetable basket. On top would go onions. cabbage, carrots and cauliflower greens. Gran never bought actual cauliflower but she made do with the greens that the grocer would cut away. These had all the flavour of the actual vegetable but only cost a couple of pennies.

The butcher’s shop was visited by grandma herself, with me in tow. She preferred to pick and choose her own stuff and would argue with the butcher until her would give her a big bundle of bones, for soup. He was very kind and often put very meaty bones in the parcel, these could be scraped to get off enough meat for a meal. Some days gran would be lucky and get a big ham bone. He sold boiled ham which he sliced off the bone, as required. If he had just carved the last ham off the bone when we arrived, gran would claim the prize and we would get really good pea soup that week.

Grandma was very thrifty but every once in a while she would splurge and when the ice cream man came round, she would send me with sixpence and a bowl and we would get the lovely home made ice cream that was made in our town. Gran would slice up a banana and the two of us would scrape up every last dab of the delicious treat. At the end of a busy day it was so nice to sit and enjoy our reward, living with my gran was great