Stories
RECYCLING – TELL US ABOUT IT!
These days, I drive my daughters up the wall! It’s a case of minimalists
versus hoarders.
The hoarding habit is in-built, a legacy of the times in which I was
born,
during a blackout, in war torn Glasgow, Nineteen Forty.
Every scrap of material was a prisoner. Aunties and grannies ripped out
worn pullovers to make smaller garments for the children. Threadbare
sleeves were doubled, sewn together and soft dusting mitts were born.
Collars were unpicked, turned, then a shirt or blouse had a new lease of
life.
Once they were really done the buttons, hooks and eyes, or press studs
were carefully saved for re-use.
Home dressmakers were innovative, keeping brown paper bags for
everything from zips to squares of cloth which would make a patchwork
quilt or cushion cover. Prized pieces of velvet, satin or brocade
emerged from another chrysalis as a soft, attractive bag. They made a
personal gift to house a lawn handkerchief, makeup or those precious,
much sought after sheer nylons’s.
Brown paper, string, elastic and paper pokes were saved with care.
Every Saturday we dared air attacks to travel across the city, taking
the underground to Govan Cross then another bus, to visit granny.
We always left with something special. A small jar of home made jam
(mind and save the jar now!), a few dusters recycled from a soft piece
of flannel nightgown or a new V necked pullover, to keep us warm.
We played in the street, drawing chalk lines for peever. It was our job,
as kids, to take potato peelings and scrapings to the pigswill bin which
was an integral part of every street.
Sometimes we collected horse manure from the road, competing to get it
before it stopped steaming!
This was highly prized for the gardens where potatoes were grown in the
promotion to
"dig for victory".
Even the mound of earth that covered the Anderson shelter had something
edible growing over it!
The journey back to Milton Street from grannys was scary. No lights to
help you actually see the bus, just good use of your ears. The subway
always had its complement of drunken men, their jacket weighted down one
side with the "carry out" bottle of whisky.
Why was it always me that was crushed into the tiny space beside a very
large lady?
They always had a distinctive smell, one you never notice nowadays.
My memory bank brings it to mind in parallel with my beloved aroma of
the subway.
It makes me smile to remember the way I used to stand at the entrance to
Partick Cross underground and simply take in lung-fulls of Glasgow’s
inimitable stamp.
In my head I see the grown-ups gathered round the kitchen window at
grannys. The men, my father and granddad are shaking fists, my grannie
and mother crying. I tug at my father’s trouser leg and lift my arms. I
want to see what is outside the window. What are all the lights,
criss crossing in the sky?
Many years later I read that it was the Clydebank blitz; that first
memory was just
before my first birthday.
Later on I see my mother telling me I am dreaming, that it wasn’t a rat
from the canal that ran across the bottom of my bed.
The pictures shift to a group of us playing "dare" in the street. It was
my turn.
They nodded to a tall thin man with a wrinkled, too old face and spaced
out eyes.
"Any gum chum?" I enquired.
His face creased, etching deep lines of utter weariness. Simply
shouldering a large kitbag, he straightened his sailors cap and walked
on.
We were taught by a cruel martinet of a woman. Her long skirted maroon
suit, grey,
wispy bun and expertise with a ruler when you wrote off the lines form
my first memories of school.
It took two hospital visits and an operation to rid my hand of the
ganglion she bequeathed me.
Many of us had dreams about the grotesque Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck
gas masks which
smelled of old rubber tyres. We dreaded the "gas mask" drill and some of
us
had to be "encouraged" to wear them, for our own good.
Brownies were great; you could let off steam in the church hall, stand
proudly when you earned your tenderfoot badge, and they always saw you
home through, shadowy unlit streets.
As for food, we made marzipan potatoes with almond essence to flavour
the concoction and cocoa powder to dust the outside, resembling a
potato.
There were entire cookery columns telling you how to get the best use
out of dried egg substitute.
One of my favourite dinners was a large cooked potato in the middle of a
soup bowl, surrounded by a lake of dissolved Oxo cube. You took a
spoonful of potato and dipped it into the gravy.
A tea plate of chips along with bread and margarine was a common supper,
much preferable to
school fish pie. But of course, if you didn’t eat it all, there was no
sago pudding for afters!
I don’t remember missing sweets because they were not available.
Christmas was a three- quarter sock which housed an apple, a tangerine
in silver paper if they could be obtained, a book and a sixpence.
In the evenings we read by gas mantle, played Snakes and Ladders or
wrote lines of spelling with the right hand. Being left handed was not
acceptable at school.
Even the click of knitting needles ceased when the news came over the
wireless.
Listening to "Winnie" was carried out in complete silence.
For us, the children of the time, life was simple. We were fed, dressed,
educated in spite of the war. Who knew what was just around the corner,
that the great ideals of The National Health Service, free milk and
orange juice, school meals and education for all were just about to rise
from the ashes.
I still maintain that I have lived in the greatest era of all.
by Gladys Taylor