The Rat in the Python #Fifties #Memoirs #Humour #FridayReads #WeekendReads
Some of you may remember Trish’s dip into the past. Trish is one of my many talented students that I’m privileged to tutor each week. And I'll let you into a secret about her later in this post. I hope you'll enjoy this as much as I did when I first read it. For some of you it’s a small history lesson, for others, a memory. I'm still not saying which group I belong to!!
The following words belong to Trish…
The Bathroom
To us rats in the python it comes as little surprise that a Ministry of Works survey produced in March 1950 found that “only 46 per cent of households had bathrooms. Eight per cent shared one, 31 per cent had a portable bath, and 12 per cent had no bath.”
The proportion of homes without an indoor toilet was higher. We were blessed with both and I write from that perspective. However, I’m also familiar with the trudge down the path in the dark with a torch to a spidery outdoor loo and I can only imagine what it must have been like for someone with an upset stomach.
As a child I felt vulnerable sitting outside where insects scuttled over the floor and walls but it must have been truly uncomfortable for the arthritic and for frail, elderly members of the family having to face such a slog in all weathers. Most homes without indoor facilities had a chamber pot, or jerry, under the bed. This meant you didn’t have to make the trek in the dead of a rain-soaked night but could use the jerry and empty it in the cold but clear light of day. There were several downsides to this, one was the inevitable foul odour that permeated the room and its contents, the other was the unpleasant task of carefully carrying the full one downstairs and out to the privy.
Flushing toilets, then, consisted of a large cistern standing more than head-height above the loo.
Pipes came down from this, often wrapped in brown sacking as a protection against frost. A lever stuck out at the top under the lid of the cistern and dangling down from that was a long chain with a handle on the end. It was usually a wooden handle and you had to pull hard on this to make the system flush. Different systems developed their own idiosyncrasies which demanded special yanks and twists. Most were a combination of long and short pulls but some required the refinement of pulling the chain out at an angle for success to be achieved.
The other memorable aspect of a visit to the loo was the paper itself.
This is, of course, aeons before the Andrex puppy bounded onto the scene with its soft, long paper in a variety of colours and textures. Us rats have all experienced the cut-up squares of newspaper and RadioTimes, threaded through with string in one pierced corner and suspended on a hook. It was as unpleasant as it sounds and it left newsprint on your hands (and doubtless, elsewhere), to boot. However, shop-bought toilet paper was little better. Commercial toilet paper then was made by companies such as Izal and consisted of what looked like small sheets of greaseproof paper. They behaved like greaseproof paper, too, as they were shinily unabsorbent. Absorbency, in today’s enlightened era, seems like a vital attribute for a toilet paper.
The bathroom has, perhaps, changed the least of all the rooms in the house. Most of them are barely big enough for a bath and that is probably what determines their consistency of design. Our bath was enamelled with the inevitable green stain under the dripping tap. There was also a row of black tiles and a sink with a mirror behind it. I do remember that towels – without the benefit of tumble driers or fabric conditioner – were excellent exfoliators.
One superficial difference was in the form of bathroom accessories.
We had a wire rack, with cracked and splitting rubber handles, that spanned the bath and in one end was a bar of soap. I loved the smell of Wrights coal tar soap and its lovely clear, burnt orange colour that turned to a less attractive white mush if left in the water. My mother, on the other hand, was seduced by the advertisements that promised instant adoration if she used their products and so it was generally a perfumed bar of Camay that sat in this rack.
There was also a scratchy flannel. On the sink was a tube of toothpaste, a discoloured plastic beaker and a set of toothbrushes with splayed bristles.
And that was it.
My father’s shaving brush, soap and a razor were lined up in the cabinet along with some green Vosene shampoo. Sometimes there would be bath cubes and salts that my mother had been given as a gift. Bath cubes were offensively-scented blocks of compressed white powder that you crumbled into the water so that you, too, could reek of ‘Gardenias’ or ‘Lily of the Valley’ or some other inoffensive flower whose name had been hijacked. Bath salts came in a glass jar with a pastel ribbon tied round the neck and were equally unnatural. Oh, and there were the gelatinous balls of bubble bath that were also given at Christmas or for birthdays. If the advertisements were to be believed, dropping a couple of these into the water would create a bath full of foaming bubbles that would cover you modestly right up to your neck. The reality was a crushing disappointment. You could put the whole lot in and you’d get a froth of bubbles at the tap end which collapsed into nothing before the water had started to cool.
Hair was washed infrequently, certainly not more than once a week. It was the norm to have it washed over the sink and I can remember standing on a chair, bent double, whilst someone tipped water over my scalp before applying shampoo with a vigour that bumped my head against the taps. No one had come up with the concept of a child-friendly shampoo then and it had a vicious sting when it got into your eyes. Soapy water from the sink was then recycled as a semi-rinse before more shampoo was applied. Then the plug would be removed, the soapy water would slowly drain out and fresh would take its place. The rinsing process seemed endless and the water temperature vacillated between shockingly cold and scalding. I am a wimp and I made such a fuss that my parents gave in and bought me a shampoo protector.
It was shaped like a flat Polo mint. The outer circumference was made of wire and the inner, the bit that gripped your head, was elasticated. A vinyl material was stretched between the two edges and when you put it on you looked like a trimmed Little Weed. I was so full of hope the first time I wore it. It didn’t work.
When I was eleven, my mother bought a pink rubber hose the ends of which you battled to fit over the taps. The hose joined into one tube and at the other end formed an attachment with holes in it. We had a shower attachment! It was amazing. But I still got soap in my eyes.
When I look at our bathroom today the accessories are overwhelming. We have two daughters and a son and their hair products alone are comfortably into high double figures.
They are reliant upon shampoos that must be used daily and which give body and bounce or shine or silkiness. Then there are the accompanying conditioners, serums, waxes, gels, mousses, anti-frizz treatments plus other potions bearing labels announcing the addition of quasi scientific ingredients. Any spaces left by these are filled with bath and shower products including fruity body butters, grinding pastes and eye-watering bath bombs and melts. In place of the humble flannel we have scrunched-up bits of net, bath gloves and mitts. A teenager’s bathing routine nowadays is incomplete without an array of candles or underwater lights. I won’t even attempt to describe the après-bath products.
Our toothbrushes now are electric ones and vie for the charger with three others. We have an array of ordinary brushes lined up by the basin as spares and these have been recently joined by battery-operated models that play music inside your head whilst promising a healthy, dazzling smile.
The following words belong to Trish…
The Bathroom
To us rats in the python it comes as little surprise that a Ministry of Works survey produced in March 1950 found that “only 46 per cent of households had bathrooms. Eight per cent shared one, 31 per cent had a portable bath, and 12 per cent had no bath.”
The proportion of homes without an indoor toilet was higher. We were blessed with both and I write from that perspective. However, I’m also familiar with the trudge down the path in the dark with a torch to a spidery outdoor loo and I can only imagine what it must have been like for someone with an upset stomach.
As a child I felt vulnerable sitting outside where insects scuttled over the floor and walls but it must have been truly uncomfortable for the arthritic and for frail, elderly members of the family having to face such a slog in all weathers. Most homes without indoor facilities had a chamber pot, or jerry, under the bed. This meant you didn’t have to make the trek in the dead of a rain-soaked night but could use the jerry and empty it in the cold but clear light of day. There were several downsides to this, one was the inevitable foul odour that permeated the room and its contents, the other was the unpleasant task of carefully carrying the full one downstairs and out to the privy.
Flushing toilets, then, consisted of a large cistern standing more than head-height above the loo.
Pipes came down from this, often wrapped in brown sacking as a protection against frost. A lever stuck out at the top under the lid of the cistern and dangling down from that was a long chain with a handle on the end. It was usually a wooden handle and you had to pull hard on this to make the system flush. Different systems developed their own idiosyncrasies which demanded special yanks and twists. Most were a combination of long and short pulls but some required the refinement of pulling the chain out at an angle for success to be achieved.
The other memorable aspect of a visit to the loo was the paper itself.
This is, of course, aeons before the Andrex puppy bounded onto the scene with its soft, long paper in a variety of colours and textures. Us rats have all experienced the cut-up squares of newspaper and RadioTimes, threaded through with string in one pierced corner and suspended on a hook. It was as unpleasant as it sounds and it left newsprint on your hands (and doubtless, elsewhere), to boot. However, shop-bought toilet paper was little better. Commercial toilet paper then was made by companies such as Izal and consisted of what looked like small sheets of greaseproof paper. They behaved like greaseproof paper, too, as they were shinily unabsorbent. Absorbency, in today’s enlightened era, seems like a vital attribute for a toilet paper.
The bathroom has, perhaps, changed the least of all the rooms in the house. Most of them are barely big enough for a bath and that is probably what determines their consistency of design. Our bath was enamelled with the inevitable green stain under the dripping tap. There was also a row of black tiles and a sink with a mirror behind it. I do remember that towels – without the benefit of tumble driers or fabric conditioner – were excellent exfoliators.
One superficial difference was in the form of bathroom accessories.
We had a wire rack, with cracked and splitting rubber handles, that spanned the bath and in one end was a bar of soap. I loved the smell of Wrights coal tar soap and its lovely clear, burnt orange colour that turned to a less attractive white mush if left in the water. My mother, on the other hand, was seduced by the advertisements that promised instant adoration if she used their products and so it was generally a perfumed bar of Camay that sat in this rack.
And that was it.
My father’s shaving brush, soap and a razor were lined up in the cabinet along with some green Vosene shampoo. Sometimes there would be bath cubes and salts that my mother had been given as a gift. Bath cubes were offensively-scented blocks of compressed white powder that you crumbled into the water so that you, too, could reek of ‘Gardenias’ or ‘Lily of the Valley’ or some other inoffensive flower whose name had been hijacked. Bath salts came in a glass jar with a pastel ribbon tied round the neck and were equally unnatural. Oh, and there were the gelatinous balls of bubble bath that were also given at Christmas or for birthdays. If the advertisements were to be believed, dropping a couple of these into the water would create a bath full of foaming bubbles that would cover you modestly right up to your neck. The reality was a crushing disappointment. You could put the whole lot in and you’d get a froth of bubbles at the tap end which collapsed into nothing before the water had started to cool.
Hair was washed infrequently, certainly not more than once a week. It was the norm to have it washed over the sink and I can remember standing on a chair, bent double, whilst someone tipped water over my scalp before applying shampoo with a vigour that bumped my head against the taps. No one had come up with the concept of a child-friendly shampoo then and it had a vicious sting when it got into your eyes. Soapy water from the sink was then recycled as a semi-rinse before more shampoo was applied. Then the plug would be removed, the soapy water would slowly drain out and fresh would take its place. The rinsing process seemed endless and the water temperature vacillated between shockingly cold and scalding. I am a wimp and I made such a fuss that my parents gave in and bought me a shampoo protector.
It was shaped like a flat Polo mint. The outer circumference was made of wire and the inner, the bit that gripped your head, was elasticated. A vinyl material was stretched between the two edges and when you put it on you looked like a trimmed Little Weed. I was so full of hope the first time I wore it. It didn’t work.
When I was eleven, my mother bought a pink rubber hose the ends of which you battled to fit over the taps. The hose joined into one tube and at the other end formed an attachment with holes in it. We had a shower attachment! It was amazing. But I still got soap in my eyes.
When I look at our bathroom today the accessories are overwhelming. We have two daughters and a son and their hair products alone are comfortably into high double figures.
They are reliant upon shampoos that must be used daily and which give body and bounce or shine or silkiness. Then there are the accompanying conditioners, serums, waxes, gels, mousses, anti-frizz treatments plus other potions bearing labels announcing the addition of quasi scientific ingredients. Any spaces left by these are filled with bath and shower products including fruity body butters, grinding pastes and eye-watering bath bombs and melts. In place of the humble flannel we have scrunched-up bits of net, bath gloves and mitts. A teenager’s bathing routine nowadays is incomplete without an array of candles or underwater lights. I won’t even attempt to describe the après-bath products.
Our toothbrushes now are electric ones and vie for the charger with three others. We have an array of ordinary brushes lined up by the basin as spares and these have been recently joined by battery-operated models that play music inside your head whilst promising a healthy, dazzling smile.
A word from me about Trish. She actually writes as Alex Craigie. This is her link to her: Goodreads page where she writes a little about herself. Her book: Someone Close to Home is on a Kindle Deal:
Amazon.co.uk:https://amzn.to/2P6VfCv
Amazon.com:https://amzn.to/2SfHovC
https://amzn.to/2qZAwH4
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