Clippie Mats

A Memory of Newburn.

It was 1947 and I had just started school at Newburn infants, I was only four and a half, I can still remember me Ma crying when she left me, she should have been clapping her hands. There I was in a lovely knitted jumper - me Ma was a great knitter and my job was sitting in front of the coal fire holding a hank of wool, arms in rhythm with me Ma winding it into a ball. Bah, some of them hanks went on for ever. We also used to make clippie mats in the sitting room, with a piece of hessian tensioned between lumps of wood, and the clippins were bits of coloured rag cut into small pieces, then we had our proggers, these would be used to plunge the clippin through the hessian and back in a loop out the top. This wasn't done just any how, chalk was used to mark a pattern on the hessian, all kinds of inventive sketches were made and the ribbons of cloth would be sorted into matching piles and added where needed, a bit like painting by numbers, only there were no numbers. Once the mat was finished it would need tidying up with a pair of scissors, just sharpened by the man on the bike who had just done his rounds that day.
This was the year of one of the heaviest snow falls recorded, we had a great time digging our way out from the back door to the yard gate and when the gate was opened there was a huge wall of snow facing us, it had drifted to our side of the lane, so this meant another digging task and all this happened before 9 o'clock when the bell rang. Aye! school just went on in those days.
I have asked this question a few times but no one can remember. Me Nanna had this clothes iron which used to plug into the gas stove, there was a little nipple built on to the side of the stoves onto which you could attach a tube, this in turn went on to a nipple on the iron, there was a gap between the sole plate and the upper body, and this was full of little jets which when you turned the gas tap on you lit the jets which heated the iron, but you had to be a master to get the temperature right. The nipple on the stove was good for the gas poker as well, this was a metal tube full of holes attached to the gas via the rubber tube which you put under the coals of the fire which you had just set up, turned on the gas, lit the poker which always went off with a bang by the time you had got from the stove in the kitchen with your match. Then went on the Bleezer, bah! this was a great invention to get your fire up and running, we burned many a one out. These were just a bit of tin with a handle on and it covered the fire opening to create a draw up the chimney, a bit like adding air to a blacksmith's forge. I've seen many a one glowing red if you left it too long.
Then me Nanna had gas lights on the walls, I loved the task of lighting these, the mantles which were made of very fine cotton spun like a spider's webb in the shape of a thimble if you like, but about an inch and a half high, if they got too hot they would burn out and had to be replaced. These were the same mantles that were in the gas lamps in the streets. I'm saying nought more, because I loved me Nanna and I don't want to get her into bother!
The electric lights were in a lot of properties but the auld folk took a bit of winning over, we had one of them electric irons which had a fitting the same as a light bulb on the end of the cord, and you took the bulb out of the light hanging from the ceiling and plugged in the iron. It was no good on a dark night when you wanted your strides pressed before you went out, eh!

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