I was thinking about when I was younger and living at home with my parents. I must have mentioned before on this blog that I lived on a farm in Cardington. Malting Farm, to be exact. We were tenants of the Whitbread Estate. Malting Farmhouse was a large Georgian house, built in 1764. It is red brick, with windows that have diamond panes. Some of the windows had been bricked up back in the 18th century, or thereabouts, probably because of the window tax, which was introduced during that period. I think the more windows you had, the more tax you had to pay, so people blocked up windows to avoid paying more tax. There was no double glazing or central heating. In the winter, when you got up in the morning, you would invariably find thick ice on the inside of the windows. The upstairs rooms were connected to one another, so you had to go through one room to get to another. My bedroom, which I shared with my younger brother, had three doors, so it wasn't exactly private. A corridor was added, both upstairs and downstairs, at a much later date. To get dressed in the morning to go to school, we had to run along the corridor to the bathroom and turn on the electric wall heater. This was the only source of heating in the winter in that room. Downstairs in the kitchen, there was an Aga, which was fired with a coal-like substance, which came in sort of nut-shaped lozenges. This Aga had to be kept alight, as it not only heated the water (although there was an immersion tank in the bathroom) but was used for cooking. There was a coal/wood-burning stove in the dining room, which was actually used as the main room where we used to watch television and as a family centre. There were other fireplaces in the other rooms, but they were rarely used.
Thinking about it, we had all we needed in some respects. Being a farm, we had milking cows, providing milk, potatoes, grown to be sold at Covent Garden Market, Brussels sprouts, similarly grown for sale, and in garden of Malting Farm, a whole range of fruit and vegetables, apples, plums, pears, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries as well as lettuce, onions and in season, celery and rhubarb. My mum did shop for other household items, at a grocer's in Bedford called West's and later, at a store off Cardington Road, called D and A (that may be wrong.) This was well before supermarkets, such as Tesco or Sainsbury's, but she also went into Bedford centre and went to International Stores in the High Street as well as Saxby's, which did pork pies and sausages.
Dad was friends with a man who was a butcher, Dick Woods. He had greyhounds, similar to Dad. They used to take their greyhounds coursing, and one of Dad's won a race at White City. Dick Woods owned and ran a butcher's shop in Harrowden Road, and we bought our meat from him. Often it would be delivered by van, and often he would drop in for coffee or around 4 o'clock when we had tea and at times bring sausages which he made himself. It rather makes me think of Jones the butcher in Dad's Army, who was renowned for giving extra bits of meat or sausages to his regular customers, which was actually probably illegal and against the wartime rationing regulations.
Teatime was, as I have said, around 4 o'clock and my mother produced her best cakes, especially her speciality, shortbread. I think it was passed down to her from my father's side of the family. I believe it is a Scottish tradition, which would be right, because my father's family came from Scotland. It was at this time that there were visitors who just happened to call in at the right time, to be invited for a cup of tea, a piece of cake and a chat. Many of those who came to tea would be reps for the various companies that did business with the farm.
Earlier in the day, around 11 o'clock, would be coffee time. My mother had a coffee percolator, which sat on the fridge. I don't think you can buy these gadgets today. It was probably made by Russell Hobbs. You put ground coffee into a metal sieve-like container within the percolator and filled the thing with water, and as it boiled, the water came up through a pipe and percolated through the coffee grounds, and the hot coffee was contained in a separate compartment. The outer body was made of ceramic, and it had a clear glass lid through which you could see the coffee percolating. I probably took about 15 minutes to brew a cup of coffee.
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