When L.P. Hartley wrote, “The past is another country. They do things differently there.” he cleverly avoided suggesting whether the things done were better or worse. An admirable aide mémoire for those of us well stricken in years since it hints we should be careful about recalling Golden Eras. Often, the Golden Era is now.This jazzy device is our kitchen scale and I had intended it to be the basis for a quite different post. But the word scale took me back in time, reminding me of earlier versions of such weighing systems and the effect they had on the general populace.
No one under the age of fifty can possibly imagine how long it took to buy necessities in, say, 1951 . You didn’t serve yourself, you stood in a queue and listened to inordinate chat as white-aproned men behind the counter cut lumps of cheese, poured out bags of sugar and dug into barrels of dried peas then carefully weighed out the amounts. Weighed – that is – by putting the produce in one pan and weights in the other.
Groceries were beautifully tricked out with wooden drawers, hanging reels of string and a beguiling combination of smells. An environment destined straight for the heritage museum. And thank goodness. Using a grocery gave me plenty of time to reflect that the adult capacity for conversation was infinite. Those scales which helped drag out the process now grace the window-bottoms (West Riding phrase) of houses in south-east England. The Golden Age of Weighing? Yes, if you like weighing. Otherwise there’s always our streamlined little number.
