The slices of bread and butter, which they give you with your tea, are as thin as poppy leaves. But there is another kind of bread and butter usually eaten with tea, which is toasted by the fire, and is incomparably good. You take one slice after the other and hold it to the fire on a fork till the butter is melted, so that it penetrates a number of slices at once: this is called toast.
Karl Philipp Moritz - Travels in England in 1782
It's something I miss, making toast by the fire. We made fireside toast quite regularly while growing up in the fifties. We used a brass toasting fork which worked quite well although the toast did sometimes fall off into the fire.
In colder months, the fire had other uses apart from keeping warm. Staring into the flames, conjuring up magical images was one. Roasting chestnuts was another. Disposing of flammable rubbish was yet another.
Oh well, back to modern times and unromantic central heating. Everyone will have noticed this but it is still interesting. For example, our central heating system always has the thermostat set for a background temperature we find comfortable around the house. For the living room we need it to be a little higher, especially during long winter evenings, so we warm that room with the log burner or gas fire.
When it snowed recently and when has been particularly cold outside, I tend to wear another layer of clothing while pottering around the house. Today it's much milder outside so I've discarded that extra layer. Yet the central heating maintains the same background temperature whatever the outside temperature. Feeling warm enough is partly psychological. Which we've always known but it is interesting.
While growing up in the fifties, our house had no central heating, just the coal fire in the living room, yet I don't remember being cold. I remember using my fingernails to scrape the ice from the inside of our bedroom window on a winter morning and at night I remember curling up in bed until the bed warmed up, but this was part of life.
Similarly, living room chairs were grouped around the fire because that was where the only warmth was in winter. The back of the room could be distinctly cooler. We wore more wool of course such as wool jumpers knitted by Mum. Maybe they were warmer than modern clothes or maybe we were just more active. Activity makes quite a difference. It doesn't matter how cold it is when I chop the wood for the wood burner, I end up warm.
All this does sometimes make me wonder if we have become accustomed to houses which are warmer than they need be, although cold houses probably helped kill off old people not so long ago. Maybe central heating is partly responsible for old people ending up in care homes.
10 comments:
Hold it to the fire until the butter is melted?!
It looks as if someone was taking Der Michael with their German guest. Perhaps having experienced German cooking, they were getting their own back.
We don't have central heating and so find everyone else's houses too hot. Such extravagance, my dears!
And baked potato. Put in when the embers are reduced to hot white ash, buried in the ash. No foil wrap. Taken out, ash brushed off, sliced in two, butter slapped in. Even the charred black exterior was delicious.
Dribble.
The memsahib and I must be getting old. We have always slept with the heating off and the window ajar. This year we've turned on the radiator and shut the window!
Central heating keeps the air warmer but in unusually cold weather it doesn't feel warm and comfortable to me, it's either chilly or uncomfortably warm and stuffy. Radiant heat feels warm, even if the air is colder. Our lounge has large south windows, on a grey damp day it can feel chilly with the heating at 20 degrees, on a bright sunny day even if near zero and snowwy outside it feels comfortably warm at 18 while the sun shines.
Your article brought back many memories of life in the 40s and 50s.
The whole family surrounding the fire promoting conversation, teaching and laughter, or listening to the radio (the BBC had good programmes). Older sister knitting, Mum and other sister sewing, Dad reading and me, on the floor, playing with my toy cars.
When Dad bought a TV set in the late 50s, all changed. Knitting, sewing, reading and playing stopped; all eyes on the 'google box' (as the TV set was called in those days).
We had a couple of parrafin stoves when we were first married, and while they gave out a reasonable heat, the condensation was dreadful, so the windows had to be left open which rather defeated the object!
As a child of the fifties your article made me smile with nostalgia.
Since then the winter has become far less foggy (Clean Air Act?) and also less frosty/snowy. Windows are now mostly double glazed and lofts insulated - but winters also seem milder. Now short term weather is not the same as long term climate, and long term climate can change over the centuries, but the 'mild snap' of the last 40 years or so does encourage the AGW activists.
The comments above are a joy to read, I share many of them. Fewer fogs where I am are probably due to the removal of the gas works. I remember walking to school with my barely visible hand held out in front of me. We would take a twig from a lonicera hedge and fold it into a hoop to collect dewy spider webs.
These days I probably spend more minutes in the evenings looking into the fire than at the television. The fire doesn't lie. Just need to find my toy box with the Matchbox cars. Sigh...
Sam - unless it was something like two slices put together with butter in the middle, like a sandwich with no filling.
dearieme - I'm too nesh for that. It takes me ages to get into the sea.
Doonhamer - we used to do that as kids. Once the ashes were too hot and the spud was charred quite deeply, but inside it was delicious.
Jannie - we turn the heating off at night, but leave the bedroom windows closed. The occasional car going down the street outside would make it too noisy to leave them open.
Woodsy - we have something similar, a bow window facing East which soon warms the room on a sunny morning even when the air temperature is fairly low.
DAD - and lots of people had a piano plus someone who could play it.
Scrobs - we had one in our first house but we also found it created too much condensation. It was an effective heater though.
DJ - some people think there were more sunny days after the Clean Air Act. Could be but I've noticed some aircraft vapour trails seem to dissipate into vast swathes of thin cloud which presumably have an effect too.
Andy - that reminds me. A few years ago I showed our grandson how to fold a twig into a hoop and collect spider webs. He thought it was great fun. I must remember to show our granddaughter too one day.
Andy -
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