When I was a kid my Mum and Dad used to sometimes have 'visitors' for tea on a Sunday. Sundays were actually VERY boring when I was a kid - there was nothing to do, EVER.
This was OF COURSE pre everything. No tv on in the day (that started in about 1981 in the UK I think); no Internet of course; we did not even have a tape recorder till I was twelve (and then it ran on batteries that my Mum and Dad could not afford to replace).
My sister Jane had a record player which we played 45s on - Blackberry Way by The Move was Jane's first single. Mine was Crackling Rosie by Neil Diamond (don't know how I can admit that.)
Anyway it was the olden days OK? So when we had visitors my Mum would cook cakes from Good Housekeepings Cookery book - maybe cheese straws, maybe butterfly cakes; maybe date and walnut cake.
( I now have my own copy of Good Housekeepings - bought off e-bay. It's fab.)
And we always had to Look Nice. So after Sunday dinner, ( a proper roast - I always hid the meat in my serviette and then chucked it in the coal bunker immediately afterwards), we had to go upstairs and get changed with clean clothes on.
Weird, huh? Seems so OLD.
Then the visitors would arrive and we had to go downstairs for a while to be polite. But it was always boring so we would usually go back upstairs, play, and then come down for tea - sandwiches and cake. Sometimes we sat in a line on the settee and someone (usually if Stan came, with his 'proper' camera), would take our photograph. This would appear in a frame later if we were really unlucky.
But anyway they always did this boring kind of talk as if they were on a special conversation display. And it was called 'being polite' I think. You had to act like a proper family which was weird as we already were a proper family. What reminded me of this was when I read about Vygotsky who had observed two little girls who were sisters and they said to each other 'Let's play sisters'.
Fantastic.
I knew what those little girls meant. And I felt like when the visitors came, my whole family played families. And it was as if we were in a pretend house with special visitor food. And we had to wear itchy clothes.
There is something in here about the relationships between space, language and identity. And about how there is a push-pull relationship amongst them all; they all influence each other so that you change in the space, or the space can change, and you change your language to change the space, but the space changes your language. And you end up being like a visitor in your own house.
7 comments:
This is a great post, DrJoolz, and you are right that it so helps make sense of that Vygotsky story. It also reminded me of how Sundays used to be and although you are right that they were boring they did also feel kind of different and special - and I think that also made Saturday an even better day as it had all the good things about Sunday like no school plus things to do and the freedom to wear comfortable clothes. Occasionally we do have a Sunday a bit like the ones you describe but with friends for lunch and that feels a bit like this- acting at being friends having Sunday lunch. (I don't mean acting because they are not really friends, but acting like you talk about here.) Actually makes me want to invite somoeone round tomorrow!)
Brilliant. That is a fab story - you should write a book. Even more weird for me is that I am in the same family and I never did any of those things - except eat Mum's cakes and be "sissterz".
Yes it is weird CityB becauuse as I was writing this I was thinking about yoou and how it was not like this as you grew up because times changed and we became teenagers and then you were born. My memories of when you were there were not quite like this ... although when you were a baby I remember a few similar visits to this - with Dave Winterrrrr and with Stan and Brenda. (Great names btw.)
Seems we all remember cakes and family teas .... GHK will be really pleased with that work!
I was turned out after lunch like a dog.
Now I realise they were having posh teas without me.
Luckily I could lie in the woods and moke roll ups.
In fact, the fifties were very, very, dull in working class homes. I always had to go to chapel on Sunday and we were allowed no treats. I can here the mantra now: 'We mustn'tspend money on a Sunday, must we Miss Briggs?' (ofetn relieved however on fine weekends, by dad's commitment to country walks and cheating a little on Sunday ban on spending, by taking a bus out to Padley Gorge on the Longshaw Estate, Derbyshire, to walk and, of course, paddle! In the evenings I would do my home work and listen to the Home Service. No sophistication there at all.
Ah yes the Bero book. Another favourite .. it has the wonderful lemon dainty recipe in it and a cheese scone recipe too I think.
We had to buy the BERO book at school for o' level cookery as well. I have food on quite a lot of my books ... I think it is obligatory.
As for the working class thing ... I think that the working classes spent a lot of time trying to move out of them so it is hard to tell what is working class and what is not. I hated it when my Mum and Dad made us go for walks and I suspected they thought it was what posh people did. We went to scratch woods sometimes (by the service station); I fell up to my neck in stinging nettles there once. Bloody nightmare.
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