The way we were made us who we are

Jean's Journal with Jean Farrell

I really enjoyed the programme, ‘The Way We Were,’ on television. As I have often pointed out, so much has changed in life since we were young. And because things have changed so much, we nearly forget the way we were!

I laughed when someone, on the tv programme said, that they thought people in Italy were eating elastic bands, when they first saw spaghetti. A friend recalled her first holiday ‘out foreign’ in 1969. When she saw Italians eating spaghetti, she thought they were eating white worms! How very limited our diet was throughout the 50s and 60s!

On the programme I identified with Pat Shortt’s description of ‘a salad’ in the 1960s. It consisted of a leaf of lettuce, a hardboiled egg, a slice of cooked ham, a tomato and salad cream. I laughed when he added that the Sunday dinner preparations started on a Saturday night. That was when the peas were steeped and the jelly was set.

Two things come to mind regarding the setting of jelly. I told you one of my true stories already. A messenger boy came into our empty kitchen, one Saturday night, in the 1950s. My mother had set the jelly a little while earlier. The messenger boy took up the bowl and drank every bit of the warm jelly! He is still alive and, to this day, whenever I pass him I wonder has he suffered from constipation all his life!! I visualise a big lump of solid red jelly stuck inside him, forever and ever!

My other story is to do with collecting the cards that came in the box of jelly. One of my sisters collected these and it was her passion. Pictures of animals were on them. She remembers writing to Chivers in Clonsleagh for albums, into which she put these cards. Do any of you remember doing that? And, a more important question, if you did, have you still got those albums? I ask, because I see that the cards are now on sale, on ‘collector’s sites’ on-line.

Those little plastic dogs we got in Kellogg’s Cornflakes boxes are also on sale. Why didn’t we keep all these things? Whoever would have thought that they would be valuable someday!

Do you remember the advertisement for Cutex nail varnish, on RTE television, in the early 1960s? We were informed, by a man, that ‘A lady without her Cutex isn’t dressed.” A ‘lady,’ scantily clad, sat on a stool, applying her nail varnish. A priest objected strongly to this advertisement, using words we never hear anymore, words like ‘purity, chastity, decency and modesty.’

It was the way we were back then! When we were old enough to actually apply Cutex, in our twenties, we just painted our short nails in pink and that was that.

Nowadays the painting of nails seems to be a big business indeed. I see all sorts of decorations and colours on young girls’ nails. There is even ‘nail art’ for the different seasons and events, as well as shops galore to apply this.

Have you, like me, studied the nails of girls who attend to us in shops? Some have difficulty picking up coins. How do they root in their handbags or change their babies’ nappies with these long sharp painted nails?

I read that some schools have banned the wearing of false nails, as the pupils can’t do proper hand writing with them. I‘m sure they can’t. In fact, some very pointy nails remind me of the nibs on those pens that we used to dip into inkwells, long ago. I wonder if a student did dip a long pointy nail into ink would she be able to write with it! There’s a thought.

A friend who attended some rock concert with her daughter drew my attention to the ‘Ask For Angela’ posters. These were displayed on the back of every toilet door, on the vast site. Aren’t they a great idea? I hope some girl, under pressure, had the courage to seek help for herself by approaching a member of staff and asked for Angela.

Personal safety was different when we were young. I remember my wise mother giving us the following advice when we left home for Dublin. She said that if we were walking alone at night and thought that we were being followed, we were to stop and knock at the next door we passed. We were to tell the person who opened the door that we were afraid and needed help. I never had to do this, but I did give the same advice to my two daughters when they left home.

And yet, the more things change the more they stay the same. One day, when my eldest was a teenager, she was heading out to school. It was absolutely pouring rain and she was walking. I produced an umbrella and suggested that she bring this with her. Well, she was horrified and announced, “I wouldn’t be seen dead carrying an umbrella.”

A week ago I was in her house in Dublin. She is now a middle aged sensible mother of two. Her teenage son was heading off, to walk to the bus stop, to school. It was absolutely pouring rain. She took out an umbrella and suggested he bring it with him. Well, the look he gave her said it all, and off he went, minus the same umbrella.

I smiled silently!

jeanfarrell@live.ie