Monday 13 August 2012

Holiday

I've been on holiday for a couple of weeks driving around the country. I visited all kinds of places friends, family, private gardens, building sites, and aircraft museums, but the most interesting visit was three nights in the 1970's.

I stayed with my brother and his wife at her mother's house. It's a perfectly preserved time capsule of furniture and decorations from about 40 years ago. Among the exhibits, some of my favourites were:
  • A kitchen with a chocolate brown electric cooker, and a serving hatch into the dining room.
  • A mains powered kitchen clock.
  • An electric whisk so heavy and powerful you could kill a man with it.
  • Glass corn cob dishes with matching forks.
  • Small cut-glass dessert bowls from which we ate yet-to-be-invented Mint Vienetta.
  • A wood effect Cathode Ray Tube television with a bulging 4:3 screen.
  • A criss-cross knick knack shelf.
  • A white melamine dressing table with brass drawer handles.
  • Loud floral curtains.
  • Blown vinyl wallpaper.
  • A ding-dong doorbell with chimes as long as organ pipes.
  • Glass fronted wood veneer cabinets.
  • An asymmetric York-stone fireplace with a brass chimney hood.
  • An entertainment centre that plays records and cassettes.
  • Spider plants.
  • Artex.
  • Carpets with a repeating brown blotch pattern.
  • A floral three piece suite surrounding an imitation sheepskin rug.
  • Pink velvet curtains.
  • A cloth lampshade with string fringes.
  • Interior secondary glazing.
  • A bathroom with matching beige bath, toilet, and basin, and maroon wall-to-wall carpet, and a moulded plastic medicine cabinet.
Richard "time machine" B

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