What We Ate

A Memory of Newburn.

Eeh! Remember potted meat? You could eat it as it was or put it on bread for a sandwich, where is it now? Then there was dripping which was quite solid and spread like margarine on your bread for sandwiches. I worked in Leeds on the university in the late 1960s and early 1970s and when I got there I never had digs, my pal Tommy Bishop from the west end was with me so I called to see my Aunt Lilly and Uncle Jack who lived in Gipton and stayed there for a week till we got sorted. Yes! You're right, we got dripping and bread for our bait off her for a full week. Tommy found it disgusting but it wasn't that bad when you got plenty salt on it. Licorice root was lovely, you could chew it forever, in fact I got some of this recently at a chemist in Wylam but it didn't taste the same. Christmas was a great time to get some exotic fruit in your stocking, what about the good auld pomegranate! Yi got a needle oot ya ma's needle and thread bag to eat it, you just pierced the little juicy seeds and pop them in your mouth or if you were really hungry yi might get aboot four in one go, this would be a great food for the slimmers clubs to introduce cos I am sure it used to take a day ti eat one and the pith was the most foul bitter taste as you tried to bite it to get a mouthful of seeds in one go. Hoggetts crisps, what a taste these had and yi got the salt in a bag in a little bit of blue paper twisted at the top which you shook into the bag, the pictures was a great place to do this cos yi would cause an uproar especially if the scene was a tense one of whispers. Doon would come Wally Morgan torch flashing to catch the culprit but us young 'uns were too quick for him, sitting there in our grey short pants and with a look of innocents. Another great favourite was sugar and bread, I got this at me nanna's and before I folded the door stop I had a cup of tea beside me and I would use the spoon to pour some of the tea over the bread before folding the bread in two and devouring it. We also had nestles milk in a tin, sweet as honey spooned onto bread. There was no sliced loaves then, me Nanna made her own and passed this recipe on to me Ma, bah! it tasted lovely. What aboot the Black Jacks which made ya mouth like the soot on the back o the fire. Gob stoppers were a great favourite along with candy tabs with the red tip on the end. A can still taste Eldorado ice cream in its little block wrapped in paper and as creamy as you could get, the usherettes used to come around the cinema during the interval with this little tray around there necks. eeh! the good auld days weren't that bad for us young uns it was the grown ups that had to suffer keeping us in clothes and food. Then there was the deadly syrup of figs or cod liver oil which you got a dose of almost every day, ya Ma would hold ya nose, you opened ya mouth and it went down, then you ran around the room rubbing your lips with the sleeve of ya cardigan (why did she hold ya nose?). Another one was Malt Extract in a big black jar, this was quite nice. People never had much and sweets were rationed so toffee apples were a great home made favourite, as was toffee and cinder toffee. Next was little Imps no bigger than a match head and by were they fiery, they came in a little box about half the size of a match box. Zubes! Who could forget these little gems, they were round and about the size of a little finger nail, covered in an icing sugar type powder, these came in a little round tin which you screwed the lid off. We called liquorice "Spanish", we got those Spanish pipes which were shaped like a pipe and on top of the bowl there was white and red little candy seeds to give the appearance of it being alight, we also had Spanish boot laces. You could buy a bag of batter from the Nardinis' chippy, this was cheaper than chips and it made a canny sarnie. Spangles started to make different flavours and I loved the acid drop version. What aboot a bottle of Tizer, I also remember Omo washing powder, Dolly Blues which I have a box full that I discovered in a property we were renovating. Flit fly spray filled with D.D.T and the lovely fly paper which adorned all the houses, this was very sticky and came in a roll which you opened and hung it from the light in the middle of the sitting room the light attracted the flies and the paper trapped them. This would hang there until full, you never took it down when visitors came as it was part of life then, could you imagine having one of them now adorning your best room covered in those disease-bearing little black flies and bluebottles! In those days the dickie nurse would come around the schools checking everyone's hair, you would queue up outside the room waiting for your turn, and having dickies wasn't dealt with discreetly as they put purple stuff on your heads and if you had ringworm you had your head shaved and wore a nylon stocking on it with a knot in the end. The small tooth combe was a part of everyones life then and after your bath on a Saturday night you would sit in front of the coal fire with ya jamas on and your head resting on ya Mas knees while she put the comb through, religiously checking for nits or dickies and if one was caught it would be squashed between her two fingernails making a cracking sound, when I was done it was my two sisters' turn. Mind, if you were seen scratching your head for any reason out came the nit comb.