Posted by Alan Hakim on August 04, 2000 at 23:07:54 from asn15-50.mcmail.com:
In Reply to: Re: Picts and Martyrs Oddities posted by Bill Wright on August 04, 2000 at 22:20:56:
How interesting that all these things appear as oddities when they were quite normal when the book came out. So here are some answers that you haven't already had:
1. BRAWN is a sort of meat-loaf made of pig's head.
2. Housekeeping has changed its meaning in the last 60 years. Remember that Mrs Beeton's famous cookbook is actually called "Household Management". So in the 30s, a middle-class family employed a live-in cook, and the mistress of the house did the "housekeeping", i.e. order the meals for her to cook. Cook then did the actual preparation of the meals. There should have been a housemaid to clean the house, but I don't remember her getting a mention.
Nancy and Dorothea are young enough to accept what goes on in their homes as normal. So they make lists.
3. I'm not sure either exactly what is sago, but it was made into a milk pudding, marginally less unpleasant than tapioca. Both dishes appeared in boarding school dinners, and were universally hated.
4. Some misunderstanding here? Surely Mrs Blackett has gone on a cruise to convalesce after her flu. And in an ocean liner, not a small boat. A very popular treatment after illness, then and now.
5. I have often wondered how the Americans lost the fortnight. (Related non-AR question: why do our roadsigns say "Exit - 200 yards" and yours "Exit - 600 feet"?)
6. Telegrams in the 30s cost 1d (a penny) a word, including the address. Mimimum was 1/- (one shilling) for 12 words or less. If your recipent had a telephone, you could send a telegram to its number (2 words) which was much shorter than the postal address. It was also quicker, since the receiving telegraph office rang up with the message straightaway, instead of sending a boy on a bicycle. You got the paper (white, in a yellow/orange envelope) with the sticky strips on it, by post next morning.
Telephoning, on the other hand, was much more expensive (3/6d for 3 minutes minimum, I think) even assuming you had a phone. It looks as if the GA hadn't got one, and she certainly wouldn't demean herself to go to a phone box.
7. The cost of telephoning has gone down astonishingly, while most things have gone up. I recently had Dave Thewlis visiting here, and he made a 6-minute phone call home to the USA. It cost less than a single inland letter. Even 40 years ago, the cost of a 6-minute call to the USA would have been 25 times more in absolute terms (leaving out inflation) and for that money, one could have sent 576 letters.
8 etc. Nancy's slang was commonplace in my schooldays, when PM was written. The meaning is fairly self-evident. "Frizzle" is like fry, but probably overcooked. "Jiff" or "jiffy" is still around; a short time, not long enough to be worth measuring. We post things in "jiffy bags" which are much quicker to prepare than parcels.
11. People were very honest in the 30s. Progress is not always forward.
12. Sunset in the summer in the Lakes is very late. (And very early in WH.) In the tropics, it is much the same time all the year round.
13. The British Post Office was of legendary efficiency in those days, though already less good than in Victorian times. But a letter, costing 1d, would be expected to arrive next morning over any normal distance. In 1968, "second class mail" was introduced, which offers a delayed service (2-3 days) for about 30% discount. First class (now 27p, i.e. 5/5d, 65 times the 30s price) is still very good on average; most letters posted today will be delivered at the other end of the country tomorrow. "Snail mail" is a wicked libel in the UK.
14. All those dialect words.... If you read my article in MM 1996 about my visit to Japan, I expressed astonishment that the Japanese school exam in English language gave them chapter 1 of PP to understand.
15. Fritillaries are indeed butterflies - also flowers. The Red Admiral is one of our most attractive butterflies.
19. Beckfoot can't have had a pump, or they wouldn't have commented on Mrs Tyson's. But until the 1950s, it was quite common to have only one or two rooms in the house with taps and a sink, and you could take a jug of water from there to a bedroom where there was a "washstand" with a basin, but no plumbing. In the case you quote, Nancy is saying she will need to fill the vases in the bathroom and take them to the guest bedroom, i.e. no running water there. But Beckfoot was well appointed for those days.
20. Speculating here: remember that there were very few packaged goods. Sugar would come in bulk to the grocer, who would weigh out the amount you wanted into a bag when you asked for it. So I expect the sugar box is what his supplier delivered it in, and they had got one from him to convert for their own use.
21. Roads were narrow, but not clogged with traffic. PP is the best source of information. The car that starts the fire on High Topps is only the second one they see while keeping watch. Notice also that it leaves a dust trail. No universal tarmac in those days.
22. I can still buy unsliced plain white bread, but only from a real baker. Supermarket standard bread is sliced, though they do speciality breads unsliced.
27. By that time, sealing wax was only used for special purposes, especially to make a letter tamper-proof. In particular, it was compulsory for registered mail. Sellotape (Scotch tape in US, Durex in Australia) replaced it from about the 50s.
32. Of course they change clothes (discreetly) in the open air. What do Americans do in the deep country?
33. "Bucket" clearly means "go very fast", though I can't explain why. I don't think that one has survived.
35. Butchers usually skin their animals first nowadays. A hare is not at all the same as a rabbit. Even though it looks like a big one, it has quite different habits.
36."Two minutes" is considerably longer than a jiff, but can easily be less than 120 seconds. In fact, it is probably identical with "a minute", as in "Wait a minute."
37. There was discussion of this "Nancy" mistake quite recently on Tarboard. Of course, with Nancy telling the story, she probably did say "Nancy" without thinking.
40. "Bucked" was commonplace ("very pleased"). Perhaps obsolete now, except in my generation. "Gimletty" would imply a piercing look. You bored holes with a gimlet, before power drills.
42. Or maybe it's AR doing a tactful "new readers start here". Not all of us read the books in the right order.
Enough. You are making me feel my age........