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Unsurprisingly, scanning the family photos has led me to remember Stuff and some of it I'm writing down in the form of general burbling, mostly in case I forget, but who knows, somebody might find it vaguely interesting too...
Today's burbling is about my childhood home in Sidcup.
The house I grew up in would seem a bit odd today and even when I was a teenager it was unusual.
It had no bathroom.
It did have a bath though - a fully plumbed in one, not a tin bath in front of the fire.
It lived in the kitchen, and when not in use was coved with a hand-made wooden "bath-top" covered in lino, which was used as a kitchen work surface - the only kitchen work surface in fact.
Baths thus tended to be once a week affairs, usually on a Sunday night - I remember listening to the top twenty on Radio 1 on bathnights - and the rest of the time a wash with a flannel in front of the living room fire had to suffice.
What about the toilet? Well that was a small room which was part of the house, but accessed by going out the back door and past the living room window. So when I was small, going to the toilet was referred to as "going round the corner" and not much fun as there tended to be a fair few spiders lurking therein.
But having never known anything else, it didn't seem strange to me when I was small - it was home.
The front door was painted orange, which was unusual, but it was bright and pretty and I liked it a lot. In fact, I've just had a lightbulb moment - I've always liked the colour orange, without ever thinking about it - but obviously in some subconscious way it means "home" to me. D'oh!
Over the front door was a sign saying "Yer Tis". None of my schoolmates understood this, which baffled me - it was clear as day to me that it meant "Here it is" in my Mum's Devonshire accent.
The front garden was surrounded by a privet hedge and had a bit of lawn and a number of hydrangea bushes. These had both pink and blue flowers - I don't know if they were being fed something to bring this about or if we just had weird soil :) Google maps tells me this has all gone now - the current owners have concreted the garden and use it to park their cars.
But the back garden was where all the real gardening happened - there was a rockery along the right hand side, and then, divided by a fence, the vegetable plots where grandad and later Dad grew leeks and runner beans and other veg to help feed us and eke out the budget.
And in the flower bed below the old apple tree, just in front of the fence, I had "my" little bit of garden. I don't think I ever grew anything of note there, but it was a nice feeling to have a bit of ground that was "mine". Oddly, I didn't have any interest in gardening between leaving that house and meeting Rob. But I think the allotment makes up for it now :)
At the very bottom of the garden was the garage, a mystical place filled with the smell of motor-oil and an assortment of mysterious artefacts of unknown purpose, with wooden handles smoothed from years of use. The car (whichever car we had at the time) lived in there too - unlike most modern "garages" there was room for one in there - and not the tiny modern cars either, but big seventies monsters like the Vauxhall Victor that Dad kept for nearly a decade because it was so reliable.
Just before the garage on the left and side of garden path was an old Nissen hut where Dad kept his little red and white moped.
Also in the garden was a "meat safe" - a hole in the ground with a lid, suspended from which was a tray. The idea was that the meat would be put in the tray to keep cool in the summer. I don't think it was used much, but it was fascinating to me as a child - I think I imagined it was some sort of hiding place for pirates treasure or something like that :)
I made the mistake of looking up the house on Zoopla and except the garage, all that's gone now. My mature self knows that this is what happens when houses are sold. But my inner ten year old is screaming in rage and anguish at what these heedless, vandalous Philistines have done to her home....
Even my more mature self thinks it's an indictment of the subsequent owners that the low wire fence between our garden and next door's, over which my mum used to chat with the neighbours, has been replaced with a six foot larchlap fence, through which you can't even see the neighbours, much less converse with them.
Today's burbling is about my childhood home in Sidcup.
The house I grew up in would seem a bit odd today and even when I was a teenager it was unusual.
It had no bathroom.
It did have a bath though - a fully plumbed in one, not a tin bath in front of the fire.
It lived in the kitchen, and when not in use was coved with a hand-made wooden "bath-top" covered in lino, which was used as a kitchen work surface - the only kitchen work surface in fact.
Baths thus tended to be once a week affairs, usually on a Sunday night - I remember listening to the top twenty on Radio 1 on bathnights - and the rest of the time a wash with a flannel in front of the living room fire had to suffice.
What about the toilet? Well that was a small room which was part of the house, but accessed by going out the back door and past the living room window. So when I was small, going to the toilet was referred to as "going round the corner" and not much fun as there tended to be a fair few spiders lurking therein.
But having never known anything else, it didn't seem strange to me when I was small - it was home.
The front door was painted orange, which was unusual, but it was bright and pretty and I liked it a lot. In fact, I've just had a lightbulb moment - I've always liked the colour orange, without ever thinking about it - but obviously in some subconscious way it means "home" to me. D'oh!
Over the front door was a sign saying "Yer Tis". None of my schoolmates understood this, which baffled me - it was clear as day to me that it meant "Here it is" in my Mum's Devonshire accent.
The front garden was surrounded by a privet hedge and had a bit of lawn and a number of hydrangea bushes. These had both pink and blue flowers - I don't know if they were being fed something to bring this about or if we just had weird soil :) Google maps tells me this has all gone now - the current owners have concreted the garden and use it to park their cars.
But the back garden was where all the real gardening happened - there was a rockery along the right hand side, and then, divided by a fence, the vegetable plots where grandad and later Dad grew leeks and runner beans and other veg to help feed us and eke out the budget.
And in the flower bed below the old apple tree, just in front of the fence, I had "my" little bit of garden. I don't think I ever grew anything of note there, but it was a nice feeling to have a bit of ground that was "mine". Oddly, I didn't have any interest in gardening between leaving that house and meeting Rob. But I think the allotment makes up for it now :)
At the very bottom of the garden was the garage, a mystical place filled with the smell of motor-oil and an assortment of mysterious artefacts of unknown purpose, with wooden handles smoothed from years of use. The car (whichever car we had at the time) lived in there too - unlike most modern "garages" there was room for one in there - and not the tiny modern cars either, but big seventies monsters like the Vauxhall Victor that Dad kept for nearly a decade because it was so reliable.
Just before the garage on the left and side of garden path was an old Nissen hut where Dad kept his little red and white moped.
Also in the garden was a "meat safe" - a hole in the ground with a lid, suspended from which was a tray. The idea was that the meat would be put in the tray to keep cool in the summer. I don't think it was used much, but it was fascinating to me as a child - I think I imagined it was some sort of hiding place for pirates treasure or something like that :)
I made the mistake of looking up the house on Zoopla and except the garage, all that's gone now. My mature self knows that this is what happens when houses are sold. But my inner ten year old is screaming in rage and anguish at what these heedless, vandalous Philistines have done to her home....
Even my more mature self thinks it's an indictment of the subsequent owners that the low wire fence between our garden and next door's, over which my mum used to chat with the neighbours, has been replaced with a six foot larchlap fence, through which you can't even see the neighbours, much less converse with them.