Going back to the range were you responsible for cleaning
that?
My Mother used to clean it using Zebo. There used to be a
black, I think you can still get it actually, black kind of polish thing with a
funny, a brush with a handle on it so you didn't get your hands all black of
course. We used to Zebo it and then the, probably people would pay a mint of
money for this now because it would be rather la di da, but it wasn't to us.
And then we had this thing that my mother used to have to get the whole oven
out and carry it into the garden to brush the soot off it, quite heavy, and
then come and manhandle it back into its hole.
I suppose if you got to know it and had enough money and
could get the coal going when you wanted to, the heat you exactly wanted, you
probably could do some wonderful cooking with it. But everything was very
basic, fish in the oven, the odd cake. Cakes were made with carrots in those
days because we were told carrots were good for you. Nutty cakes, loads of
carrots used to go into the cake. And so, I know the cake tins sometimes were
old biscuit tins. You would line them with paper and use it as a cake tin. But
the range was really a horror, an absolute horror.
|