We’ve lost more than we’ve gained since granny’s day

By Derek Lord

Published:

A NEIGHBOUR woman stopped Herself (the present Mrs Lord) in the street the other day to tell her that she was most grateful to Gordon Brown for berating the nation for wasting so much food.

Now, this same woman, as a lifelong Tory supporter, does not usually have a lot of time for the current prime minister’s musings, but she went on to explain that, with the alarming downturn in the world’s stock markets, her husband’s shares were not yielding quite as much wealth as they have in the past and she felt the need for a little belt-tightening.

Prompted by Prudence Brown’s reflections on the profligacy of the nation, she delved into the bowels of her fridge-freezer and, to her delight, found that she had the makings of an entire meal.

She did not elaborate on the contents of the said meal, but she said that it was extremely palatable.

Herself was not impressed. She has a deep-seated belief that there are things lurking in our fridge whose entire raison d’etre is focused on landing us all in the intensive care unit of the nearest hospital. She scrutinises the use-by dates on every single item. Anything that is even close to that date is consigned to the bin.

For more years than I care to remember, I have tried to explain that the act of cooking a rasher of bacon will destroy any bacteria that might have taken up residence thereon, but she has yet to be persuaded by this argument. Instead, she rounds on me for displaying my typical Ulster Scots meanness and slings out another packet of bacon.

But then, in her defence, she knows nothing of the frugality of our grandparents’ generation. Her own grandparents were long deceased before she entered this vale of tears. I, on the other hand, had a full set of grandparents right through my childhood and was able to observe how that doughty breed made the most of their meagre incomes.

Waste was not part of their vocabulary. There were no such things as supermarkets with their buy-one-get-one-free offers. If Granny Lord was planning to have liver and onions for that night’s dinner, she would walk a few yards to the butcher’s shop for the liver and then nip across the street to the greengrocer’s for an onion and a few potatoes.

Steak, lamb or pork were never on the menu. Offal was the order of the day, every day.

On special occasions, she would buy a chicken, but one with the head on and all the feathers intact. I still shudder at the sight of her lopping a chicken’s head off and disembowelling it – putting the entrails to one side for soup. Nothing was wasted.

I suspect she kept the feathers for making cushions and pillows.

Since this chicken treat was only ever served up on Sundays when all the shops were shut for the Sabbath, the chicken would be stored in the meat safe in the back yard. This consisted of a wooden box with a piece of wire mesh to let the cold air in and keep the flies out – none of your fancy white goods in those days.

Next to the meat safe was a massive mangle for wringing the clothes out, which probably explained why Granny Lord had arms like tree trunks.

So she was not only saving electricity, the mangle doubled as a home gymnasium. Both her sons went on to be amateur boxing champions after years of turning that great wheel on wash days.

She never bought anything as fancy as washing powder since she didn’t have a washing-machine. She had a tin bath, a washboard and a block of carbolic soap. This block of soap cleaned the clothes, the dishes and the bodies of the entire family, so deodorants, if they had existed, would have been totally unnecessary.

Everybody and everything in Granny Lord’s house smelled of carbolic. What she would make of today’s housewives squandering their money on shower gels and air fresheners I hate to think.

But then I think she would have a pretty low opinion of modern society in general. In her day, to be in debt was something to be ashamed of. If you needed something, you saved up until you could buy it. The whole concept of hire purchase and credit cards would have been anathema to her generation.

And there was no end to her skills. Not only could she sew, knit and darn, but she was a master decorator who could paint and hang wallpaper with the best of them.

If shirt cuffs were frayed, she would turn them and get another year or two out of the garment.

When I was a toddler, she didn’t have any video games or PlayStations to keep me amused when my parents dropped me off at her house, but she had something much better – a tallboy laden down with years of bric-a-brac.

She would just pull out one of the drawers and let me loose on its contents. Those drawers kept me happy for hours, although today’s health and safety monitors would probably have seen to it that she was prosecuted for endangering my life and limbs with her collection of brooches, hat pins and hundreds of different-sized buttons with which to stab myself or choke on.

My grandfather was no slouch when it came to money-saving, either. Like most men of his generation, he was an expert cobbler and carpenter, so tradesmen were never required.

And the daily newspaper was to be found cut into squares and impaled on a nail in the outside toilet. As I said, nothing was wasted in those days.

He had a cut-throat razor that he sharpened on a strop, so he never had to buy razor blades. He would be astonished to see anything as wasteful as the modern disposable razor.

Herself, however, takes the “disposable” bit even further than the manufacturers intended. If I’m foolish enough to leave a new one in sight, she has it binned before I can turn round. But then she’s a child of the consumer society – a society that may have lost more than it has gained.