Do people still have room-dividers?

I didn’t in my Balham flat, but I would often go to friends’ houses where the kitchen had a series of beads and/or coloured strips hanging down from the doorframe, separating it from the rest of the house. 

What were they there for?  Was it to give an air of mystery to the kitchen holy of holies?  Hide embarrassing old relatives? Stop herds of wildebeest rampaging into the lounge?

Anyone going to the cinema in south-west London in the sixties would remember the ad for a local restaurant which advertised: “it’s so good, even the cook eats here”.  The reveal would be the chef, behind the dangling beads, literally eating his own lunch.

I think, budding cooks believed that the magic ingredient to a good meal wouldn’t be to add a selection of exotic spices, but to erect a series of dangly things.  Who needs Mrs Beeton or Fanny & Johnny if you’ve got the threads of Joseph’s coat hanging from your kitchen doorway?

How were these things created?  My belief is that many a room divider was made out of beads stolen from school abacuses.  This would explain why many people at my school could only count to five by the time they were eleven.

If there was to be privacy, you couldn’t knock, as your hand would go straight through – thus knocking over the embarrassing relative.  At least that would have saved her from the stampeding wildebeest.