Growing up on the outskirts of a rural village in the midlands in the 1970s was no cake walk. So many of the things we take for granted today – running water, indoor toilets, a fridge in the kitchen – weren’t yet part of domestic life for everyone.
Still, life back then had its moments. The one I’m about to tell relates to the children’s Saturday night bathing ritual.
On these weekend nights, the kitchen-cum-living room also acquired the status of a bathroom, as a little bath was taken out, placed on the kitchen floor and filled with water heated on the range. As small children, my brother, sister and I would take turns having our dip in the bath, complete with a hair wash. After that, out came the old newspaper and elastic bands, and I got my weekly “ringlets” hair-styling session.
It being Saturday night, as well as getting us children bathed, my mother was often simultaneously involved in cooking the next days’s Sunday dinner. One particular evening, my younger sister, who was little more than a toddler at the time, emerged from the bath tub at roughly the same time as a roast chicken emerged from the oven. My sister, never one to miss a trick, had clearly watched on previous nights as my mother had taken out the chicken, basted it and sprinkled it with salt and pepper.
Now, once out of the bath and towelled dry, and unseen by any of us (my mother must have been tidying away the bathing accoutrements), she grabbed hold of the talcum powder and liberally sprinkled the chicken with lashings of the stuff. My mother turned around to see a beautifully plump roast chicken covered in a blanket of white.
This was not my sister being naughty. I imagine she thought she was being very helpful. So what could my mother do, except join in as we all fell around the place laughing. I can’t remember what we ate for dinner the next day, but probably my ever-resourceful mother just removed the talcum-powdered skin, leaving us to eat the naked bird.
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