A happy pinta

We have our milk delivered. On four mornings a week two pints of milk and on Fridays some eggs too are left outside 88 under the hedge. They are left by Graham the milkman at some god-awful time in the morning and placed into a little wooden box, subdivided into six that my dad made me five years ago. One of the six compartments is slightly too tight for a milk bottle - it must annoy Graham when he has to gently nudge the empty bottle out of that section on a frosty dark morning.

I open the door and bring in the two pints. No tetra packs or plastic bottles for us. I duly pop my empties back out for Graham to collect. There's a cycle, a rhythm to the doorstep delivery.  And on Thursdays at 3.25pm practically on the dot Graham collects his money and we have a little chat and put the world to rights.

I have a history with milk. My dad was a dairy farmer and at one point a milkman. He would milk the cows and then go out and deliver the green top unpasteurised milk. I have two milk bottles as an heirloom to prove it. He stopped in the seventies actually delivering milk but I can still remember him bringing me an aero chocolate bar, a Jack and Jill comic and my mum a Turkish Delight after he'd finished deliveries on a Saturday morning. I drank milk morning, noon and night.

I can remember as a 5 year old helping my Dad heave two big silver churns full of the excess milk on the back of his green Morris pick-up van, drive up the lane and roll the two cans on a flat slab of stone on a wall by the main road, awaiting the big dairy to collect them. Then modern life hit and we had to install a bulk tank and the milk tanker would rumble up the drive for the extra milk and the magic was lost.

Support a British institution. Support your milkman....milkwoman...milkperson!

The Indispensables

Happy Valentines .....and moving swiftly on.....

I wrapped a present today and unexpectedly I didn't get tangled and mangled with the sellotape. My big solid sellotape dispenser that I bought in the January sales has transformed my life. I love it. A little love affair with a sticky tape dispenser. Pull the tape and with a simple downward motion you have a neat little piece of the sticky stuff. No lost ends, no wishing you had a third hand. Faithful to the sticky end.

It got me thinking what other non electrical gadgets do I have in the house at 88 which enhance my life. What little domestic love affairs make life sweet? What are my indispensables?

My airer or Sheila's Maid is my number one love. I lay wet washing over it's horizontal wooden poles and pull the pulley, leave it high and there to dry. I can't resist shouting 'Hoist the main sail' as I pull on the rope to heave ho it upwards. No need to waste electricity on a drier. I love it. It is so simple. No hanging pots and pans and dried flowers from my airer. It's there for the fundamental reason of drying.

The only downfall is that although it's in a great position over a long radiator which dries the clothes quickly, that position is in the walking path of everyone who enters the kitchen. Tall bodies have to duck and weave the towels and long and short bodies alike get a look at the family's underwear. Kind of a variation of airing your dirty laundry in public except it's clean and we don't have too many scandals to air. Very unromantic.

I don't get that many letters nowadays other than bills and certainly no love declarations. When I do receive a handwritten missive I get quite excited. I use my wrought iron letter opener, shaped at the top in a heart. My friend bought it for me a long time ago and I love it. It's an over used phrase by William Morris but nevertheless a good one: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." This is useful and beautiful. It elegantly rips through the top of the envelope and I dip in for my letter. I unfold it. I feel I'm in the golden olden days, opening a letter sent from some far away continent. I've just put down my buttered toast at breakfast after the butler has brought the post in on a silver salver, dressed in my beautiful crinoline.....that is I am in the dress and not a cross-dressing butler....that is not a cross but probably a very happy butler... intriguing thoughts.

What are your favourite love of your life, non-electrical domestic life enhancers?

Mine's with golden syrup

How do you take your pancake? I don't want to hear about any savoury fillings ....you can keep your smoked salmon and cream cheese fillings and your baked pancakes in a creamy mushroom and cheese sauce. There is a time and a place. Those are probably delicious but not for Shrove Tuesday. You can also keep your American pancakes with maple syrup, bacon and blueberries for breakfast on Sundays (delicious). No Pancake Day is about thin, golden flecked pancakes, tossed into the air from the pan and then lain gently onto a plate for immediate scoffing.

It's about the children and grown-ups queueing up for their next pancake and the cook chained to the cooker, pouring the batter into the frying pan and teasing it around til it's ready to flip. At 88 I pour the batter into the hot pan with a tea cup simply because my mum always used a cup. The first pancake is usually a disaster and by the third or fourth I have built the courage up to somersault the pancake using only a flick of the wrist. When everyone has eaten and I am about to eat my pancake, David takes over and does the next round of pancakes. He is a consummate flipper. And there is always someone who will be there right to the end to eat the very last pancake.

I take my pancakes with golden syrup because that was how I had them as a child. The children have them with maple syrup and David has them with lemon and sugar although this year he combined golden syrup with a little lemon juice quite successfully. My brother was here tonight so joined us for the pancake feast. He like me enjoys golden syrup but insisted that the golden syrup had to come out of a green and golden tin and not a plastic easy pour bottle. You see traditions can be very complex.

Finally do you roll or not? I don't simply because I think my pancake lasts a bit longer even as I scoff away but to David it's much more of a patient construct, spreading the syrup and squeezing the lemon and then gently rolling the pancake to get layers of flavour. If truth be told I think David was just a tad disappointed this year that we had real lemons and not a small plastic lemon shaped opaque bottle on the table. Clearly what you put on your pancakes is important but the receptacle from whence that topping comes is just as crucial.  Everyone has their ways and these are ours.

Coastering along

To coaster or not to coaster? That is the question. Well it's not actually a question at all at 88. It's a given. A no-brainer. Where you find a cup in our household you will find a coaster under it. Just like lamb and mint, strawberries and cream, jam and butter, you will find glass and mat at 88. Just as I now find I cannot say 'kid' ,  I cannot place a cup filled with liquid down on a wooden surface without a coaster. Burn marks and water stains you will not find here.

And why not? We have a wooden coffee table and a wooden dining table and to stain them would be careless and unappreciative of the work gone into producing them. A blight on their beauty. Ugly to gaze upon. Ungrateful to the trees, felled for their wood.

My mum taught me about the efficacy of the mat and now my children would no more pop a drink down without a coaster than pull their teeth out. Actually that's not quite true. They are at that age where wobbly teeth are two a penny....actually £1 for one lost tooth... so they have been known to tease a dangling tooth out to improve their piggy bank balance.

I have super human skills when it comes to coastering. If a guest pops a hot coffee down on the wooden surface without a mat, I'm in there with consummate speed. Cup up, coaster under, cup down, back in chair, conversation continued. I remember once my brother's girlfriend put a teapot straight down on my parent's oak dining table when noone was looking (obviously if I'd witnessed this I'd have been in there teapot up, mat under, teapot down, bob's your uncle). Oh the carnage. We've barely got over the shock til this day.

So beware oh honoured guest when you come to 88, you are most most welcome but woe betide you if you coast along without using a coaster.

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