Category: lava lamp

Setting a small bar

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The few times I was allowed to go with my parents to socialise at other SW17 houses, I was always amazed where the drinks where kept.

In our flat, if you were a visitor, you’d assume my family were sponsored by Bell’s or Gordon’s.

The drink wasn’t stored in some fancy cabinet; in our flat, it was in the mandatory brown sideboard, next to dad’s old Chelsea programmes.

In other peoples’ places the Black & Decker had been working overtime as one wall had been transformed into a small bar – albeit without the dartboard and cardboard sleeve of packets of pork scratchings.

One family had a globe.  The globe would open up and a selection of alcoholic beverages were instantly displayed – I assumed Marco Polo had a similar container?  I tried spinning it once and nearly broke my wrist.  Although, only until recently, I thought gin came from Abyssinia (it was an old globe) and Soda Stream was a lake in Africa.

Some families had clearly won decanters at various fetes; many had collected glasses from Esso.  In 1970, they may have swapped them for a card featuring Martin Peters.

Once, trying to help out, I thought I’d move the pineapple off the Borrowers-sized bar; having picked it up by the top, ice-cubes suddenly scattered to all parts of the shagpile. 

For the remainder of the evening I was condemned to sit, and not move, by the Dansette record player.  It’s not unusual.

Eva Brown

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In the kitchen of our Balham flat in the ‘60s, my mother had eight brown jars containing all manner of exotic foodstuffs: ginger; cloves; nutmeg; cinnamon; marjoram; mint; parsley and thyme. 

Because of my utter loathing of boiled fish in parsley sauce, I’d hide the jar marked “parsley”.  I couldn’t watch any episode of The Herbs without the fear of coming out in a rash.

What puzzled me, as a kid growing up, was why the contents of these jars were never used? 

My diet was very formulaic; I had the same thing most days; most weeks.  But cannot remember my Saturday evening smoked haddock being supplemented with a sprinkling of nutmeg; Sunday’s roasts rarely featured ginger instead of Yorkshires – and whose cloves were actually in that jar?  The Borrowers? (At this point I’d not learned how to spell “clothes” properly).

Brown was a popular colour in our flat:  Brown three-piece suite; brown carpet – with both parents being heavy smokers, it tended to hide the burn marks (and an unruly Flake packet); brown coffee pot; brown cups and saucers; dark brown sideboard and stereo.  The only brown not there was Eva Braun.

My dad had a brown suit.  He could hide his head in his jacket and my mum wouldn’t spot him sitting on the sofa for hours.  

So, when sometimes says to you, “brown is the new black”, send them off for a colour blindness check.

Hot under the collar

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We rarely wear things our parents wore.

I’ve never had recourse to wear arm bands to keep my shirt sleeves up; I never wore a flat hat to go football; my mother had a different chest size to me, so I never wore any of her bras – well, not since the psychiatrist visit, anyway.

Fashions change.  You don’t see people wearing togas these days or coats made out of mammoths.

As a kid, I’d be dragged, by my mum, into various clothes shops along Balham High Road.  I remember a milliners.  I wasn’t allowed to touch a single hat and realised, at a very early age, I was never going to sport a fascinator, bonnet or boudoir cap.

I’m also neither posh nor old enough to wear braces; I don’t use string to hold my trousers up and luckily never had a de-mob suit. 

However, I did secretly wear my dad’s old football shirt once – although I did think Roy Bentley was a type of car rather than the centre-forward for Chelsea.  Probably best not mention my mum’s thigh-length boots – if only to say how tricky I found walking in such high heels.

Our children are unlikely to go out wearing loons, anything made of velvet and possibly think Biba is a far-way planet.

Time to starch my collar and attach my cuffs.

Lava and lime

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In the 60s you didn’t have to go to the edge of Mount Vesuvius to see lava, if you’d saved up enough Green Shield stamps you could get some in a lamp; if you had faulty wiring, there was that ever-present danger the eruption of AD79 would be re-enacted in your flat.

But, if globules resembling something out of the Quatermass Experiment wasn’t for you, then a fibre-optic lamp was the thing to adorn your bedroom in the (in my case) highly unlikely event that a girl might visit. 

In the 70s, in my Balham flat, I would turn my light on in the hope that it would act as a homing device to any unsuspecting girl in our flats (preferably one who liked cricket, Thunderbirds and Sven Hassel novels).

However, the only danger (there was no danger of anyone visiting) was that the fibre-optic lamp, though wonderfully pretty when lit up, would moult more than the hairiest German Shepherd dog. 

This was not advertised on the packaging and you only found out – given the room was in virtual darkness – when you trod on one. Think pieces of Lego, only with a skin-piercing syringe attached. 

I was clearly never going to make it as a Hippie, my mother had installed fire alarms in my room, so joss sticks were out of the question and the only flares I’d see would be my mother firing one out of our flat window signalling my dad had gone to work.