I spent a whole afternoon vacuuming and sweeping floors, and found myself thing back 60 years to my childhood in Bishops Stortford.
Between the ages of 5 and 7½, I often spent Wednesday with Mrs-Lakey-Next-Door while my Mum was busy at the Church Ladies' Meeting.
Between the ages of 5 and 7½, I often spent Wednesday with Mrs-Lakey-Next-Door while my Mum was busy at the Church Ladies' Meeting.
Mrs L was a very kind neighbour - she fed me chocolate cake, juicy tangerines, and bags of Smith Crisps [with a blue paper screw of salt] I stayed in a room at the front of the house. Her three sons were late teens, still living at home. The room held their billiard table, and lots of bookshelves. I remember sitting on the carpet under the table, happily reading. 
I was an early reader, and worked through the boys' books. Wind in the Willows, the Dr Doolittle series, and also Treasure Island, Biggles and John Buchan's Hannay stories. I'm sure Mrs L didn't realise I was reading these slightly more complex tomes - but I was quiet and she left me alone. 
My four memories of that room - the table, the books, the snacks - and the square of carpet surrounded by parquet flooring. I was mesmerised by the herringbone pattern made by the wooden blocks. I thought it was wonderful. Mum said you needed a lot of money to have a floor like that. We had lino [linoleum] with small 'area' rugs. 
Most people I knew had flooring like that. Fifteen years later, when I got my first flat, things were very different. Kitchens had vinyl flooring [I found this picture of the exact pattern I had in my flat in 1977] and people were buying wall to wall fitted carpets. 
Ten years later, people started opting for laminate flooring - a product developed in Sweden - hygienic, easy-to-clean, and back to "area rugs" again to soften things up. Made in the traditional way with linen and oil [linum = flax, oleum - oil] it has many advantages over PVC/plasticised floors. It doesn't melt, it is anti static and anti-microbial, made from all natural, renewable products. It will last up to 40 years, but then can be put outside where it will degrade completely safely with no 'off-gases'
I'm happy with our current flooring - but still remember Mrs Lakey's Parquet and the lovely smell of polish. One other memory from that era
She explained to me that 'putting up the chairs' was a sign that the schoolday had ended, and we could go home, and next morning, lifting them down was a sign we should concentrate and start learning again. It was about three years before I realised it was just a way of making it easier for the cleaner to sweep the floor of the classroom!
Happy memories...
I grew up in a house built in the late 1880's.
ReplyDeleteThe solid wooden front door led into the Vestibule, from where there was a door into the hall. This door had a beautiful stained glass panel, blue, green and gold coloured.
Every room on the ground floor had Minton tiles, but the living room, dining room and parlour had squares of carpet in the centre of the rooms, so the tiles were mostly covered up, and the kitchen and scullery had blue and green Lino'.
Upstairs we had Lino', with 'area' rugs, it makes me laugh to see how many people today want polished floorboards in their bedrooms, we hid them away!
In this bungalow, we have 'proper' Linoleum in the kitchen and bathroom (it's expensive, but expected to last for ages, and warm underfoot), but everywhere else is carpeted. We have a long runner in the porch to catch muck from shoes, but the runner 'creeps' and we seem to spend our lives dragging it back into position!
At our grandson's school, they still lift the chairs onto tables at the end of the day, I wonder whether that would be classed as child labour these days? X
"New"lino seems much nicer than the linoleum of my childhood. We have a 'nonslip' strip underneath the hall runner. It seems to reduce the amount of 'creep'. Many schools where I did supply had changed their chairs for huge polypropylene things (supposedly to stop children rocking back on them and falling over) They were too big to balance on the tables, so children had to put them in stacks in the corner. Definitely child labour!!!
DeleteI often wonder why we don't put the chairs on the tables at our school for the cleaners but I guess because the rooms are small, they might knock them off.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how you remember people who looked after you. I used to stay with a lady called Sue before I was 5 and I associate her with Umbongo juice cartons. I used to stay with a lady called Joan, whose daughter Lindsay swapped from learning violin to oboe. Her husband was later a minister. I just remember how brown the furniture was in their house!
Memory is a strange thing! We recall the oddest details from our childhood & but cannot remember where we put our keys this morning!!
DeleteMy favorite flooring is hardwood with some area rugs. However, as you know, when you live in a parsonage (manse) you "get what you get and don't get upset!" lol We have wall to wall carpeting here which is soft but a pain to clean and terrible for my son's dust mite allergies. Love your memories!
ReplyDeleteOh yes, I understand the Manse thing. We lived in one where the dining room flooring was patchworked offcuts from a deacon’s L-shaped lounge carpet. But mostly it's been ok.
DeleteHa! I remember the bag of crisps that came with the twist of salt, though I don't think I ever tipped it into the bag. Mary
ReplyDeleteIt was the excitement of occasionally getting TWO little twists!!
DeleteI remember putting chairs on the desks, too. We finally had our wall to wall carpet in the living and dining rooms taken up and we are quite happy with the look of our laminate flooring. Genuine hardwood would have been a problem as the house temperature and humidity varies so much over the year. Even the wooden jellybean dispenser that our son made for his dad, will stick in winter but work fine in summer.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't considered the problem of humidity. We had carpet mites in Dorset, and the church promptly replaced the flooring with laminate which I much preferred.
DeleteInteresting memories of flooring! My childhood home had red stained cement floors which were polished with floor wax. There was a large carpet in the living room which was rolled up during the day and rolled out in the evenings. Later, we moved to an apartment where there was parquet flooring in the living room. My current house has hardwood flooring, throughout, although when I bought the house, there was wall to wall carpeting and some type of linoleum or vinyl flooring in the kitchen. I've removed the carpeting and refinished the floors, but, I have vinyl tiles in the kitchen.
ReplyDeleteKitchen flooring needs to be easy clean. I do remember living in a house with a red front doorstep, which Mum polished with Card
DeleteOne of the houses we moved to had mustard coloured shaggy pile in the kitchen diner... it was pristine. A young couple lived there, presumably on shop bought cakes and fish and chips?
DeleteIt sounds gross
DeleteGosh yes, we used to lift up and lift down the chairs at school, but I knew what it meant as we did exactly the same at home every other day so that my Mum could mop the lino under the kitchen table. Yes, we had lino in all of the three rooms we lived in and rugs next to beds and where me and my brother sat on the floor to watch television.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite books as a child were first the original little Thomas the Tank Engine books and then all of the Just William books, then I moved on to Famous Five and Secret Seven.
I enjoyed all of those too. And Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan - both very old editions from my father's childhood.
DeleteI've just remembered how much I loved polishing the front step with the 'Donkey Stone'!
ReplyDeleteI never understood what donkeys had to do with it though
DeleteWe called the luncheon sausage slices we got for school suppers 'bathroom floor'. They were beige and speckled like bathroom lino.
ReplyDeleteLove it!
Delete