0800/27th June 2024 . The flowers here are at the Veterinary Hospital. They are always so beautiful and I can't have you thinking I grew them!... . Appliances. Where would we be without them? When I was a child, before we went to Asia…
The flowers here are at the Veterinary Hospital. They are always so beautiful and I can't have you thinking I grew them!...
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Appliances.
Where would we be without them?
When I was a child, before we went to Asia, my mum had very few. The major one was a Hoover.
If I heard that sound now, I would recognise it instantly. It was noisy and I didn't like it but I think it was less noisy than modern versions of that device, or perhaps I have become more intolerant.
A distinct possibility!
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All laundry was done by hand and hung outside on a line. I don't remember how long things like sheets took to dry in that climate, but I do recall that my mother had very strong hands for wringing the laundry.
We didn't even have a mangle which many women used for that purpose.
Mum's most frequently used appliance was an iron. She ironed everything.
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Of course it was an old-fashioned iron. Steam irons had not yet been invented.
Personally, I never got on with steam irons, much preferring to dampen my "ironing" with a spray bottle.
It's an appliance I no longer possess. I sleep on wrinkled sheets. Mother would be appalled.
What difference do wrinkled sheets make to a night's sleep?
No. That's not right. Her most frequently used appliance was her cooker. It was so integrated into our life, I never considered it a mere appliance.
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The one in London was a gas cooker.
It was how we heated water for hot drinks and how all our meals were prepared. Even toast.
Mum always put our dinner plates to warm on the grill above the stove because, as everyone knew, you did not serve warm food on cold plates.
The mention of which evokes an early memory. When I was very small, Mum gave me my food on a pink plastic plate. One day she forgot that it was plastic and put it to warm with the rest, the result being that my plate melted.
After that I ate off proper plates.
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In Cambodia, Mum needed to improvise quite a bit which she was very good at, but when we were first there, she was obliged to cook over a charcoal fire which somewhat restricted her capabilities, so she immediately went in search...
The item that was found came without a stand, so the tops of some old oil drums were employed for this purpose. It was powered by butane gas.
Mum had a very limited sense of smell, so one day when one of the burners somehow got turned on accidentally, she was non the wiser.
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Mum lit a match and BOOM! The cooker rose off the metal supports and came back down with a resounding crash, severely denting them.
Sai See the maid nearly had a heart attack. Mum, whose eyebrows were singed, re-seated the cooker and carried on preparing supper.
Mum had survived the blitz. It took a lot to scare her. The only time I saw her overwhelmed was when she witnessed a terrible accident that happened in front of the flat where we lived.
She had to be revived with a strong brandy.
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My only memory is that there were no ambulances in Phnom Penh in those days and the body was carted into the back of a dirty truck for removal elsewhere.
Seeing my mother so overcome was a new experience and I was curious about what could have so upset her, but of course I was not allowed to look. (I am not the sort of driver who slows down to view accidents.)
Once, a long time ago, a car flipped over in front of me. I was past it in a flash, my brain whirling. I should stop, but how could I help? I was always terrified of trying to assist and making matters worse.
But it felt cowardly.
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In Phnom Penh we had to have a fridge and thereafter Mum always had one.
My father had a short-wave transistor radio with which to get the cricket scores and the news, in that order.
Once a week both of those were pre-empted by Letter from America by Alistair Cooke. He listened to that programme every week until it ended in 2004.
The one thing I ever did that pleased my father was when I got Alistair Cooke to send him a birthday card for his 80th birthday. Mr Cooke travelled frequently from JFK and he was a lovely man.
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The Pye radio generally provoked my father into cursing "the bloody Russians" for "jamming again!" It was an imperfect source of entertainment or news. I shall always remember the sounds that came from it as Dad twiddled the dials in vain, snippets of a song or a foreign dialect, curious beeps and hissing.
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Dad had other sources of entertainment. Somewhere along the line there came a gramophone, but carting long-playing records around is most impractical.
So a Grundig tape-recorder was acquired, the problem with that being that with the humidity, the tapes tended to stick together after a while.
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In addition, Dad had a slide projector with which to view photographs that he took with his Rolleiflex camera.
And he had an Olivetti typewriter.
Dad always seemed to have more stuff that my Mum.
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In Asia, my mum was without a sewing machine, which had been almost as important to her as the cooker. I can't remember her having a sewing machine again until my parents moved to Barbados, many years later.
In the West Indies she now also acquired an electric mixer with which she made the most divine mashed potatoes.
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She still did not have a washing machine. Mum and Dad ran a small apartment complex which meant a lot of laundry, so sheets and towels were sent out.
The washing machine came when Mum and Dad moved to Florida, where they purchased a house that was the most pink thing I have ever seen!
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Even the oven door was pink. It was slightly bilious but Mum painted it, bit by bit. The house, not the oven. There was nothing to be done about that.
A lawn mower was now a requirement. Dad wanted the old-fashioned sort that had to be pushed manually. This took a lot of finding and proved useless because the grass in Florida was industrial-grade!
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The biggest shift for my parents when they arrived in the States was the purchase of a television. That item which my father had disdained and disapproved of!
Mum basically hated it, in large part because she was losing her hearing and to her, the television was just another unpleasant noise.
The controller was my father's new, on-going challenge.
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Not long after my parents moved back to England, Mum could no longer talk on the telephone because she simply could not hear the caller.
Not being able to speak to her was sad, but at least she did not have to contend with mobile phones.
After Mum died and Dad returned to the USA, at the age of 88 he purchased a computer. As well as an indecently large television.
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The latter two appliances moved with my dad to the home which was my father's ultimate residence, as he required nursing care.
The television, when he could master the controller, gave him much pleasure, as he could watch old films.
The computer I think was always a frustration, though he could send and receive emails from my brother.
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My father was a professional artist and photographer and I think of him often when I take pictures on my phone.
Dad would have been thrilled with digital photography. He would have been bemused at the idea of using a phone as a camera.
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It is quite extraordinary that one can capture an image on a phone and within moments transmit that same picture halfway around the world. Dad would have ben very impressed by that.
Why any of this would interest anyone, I can't imagine.
It was prompted by the possible demise, this morning, of our washing machine, which set me to remembering life before the advent of appliances.
It's not what I intended to write but one thing led to another....
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