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