Heart of the Home

Today

At last I have a definite date for the fitting of my new kitchen. I've a space 3X6m to play with and am looking forward to finding homes for all my kitchen stuff. And I have to find space for the washer-dryer, dishwasher, microwave, fridge-freezer and bread-maker.

Most people with whom I discuss this are full of enthusiasm. "Most important," they say. "The kitchen's the heart of the home."

In My Day

Given that 4Bh was a twenty-roomed four-storey Victorian mansion, I wonder why my parents chose to use as a kitchen a space very little larger than a cupboard.

Access to the front door was up a substantial flight of steps, through a glazed porch into a very graceful octagonal hall. The kitchen was a tiny room to the left. I'm not even sure that it had a door; maybe just a curtain.

There was access to a back porch at the head of precipitous steps leading down to the back garden and another sliding door that gave directly onto a toilet. Daddy was convinced that having a toilet leading straight off the kitchen was illegal in some way and we were charged not to divulge its location to any non-family member.

In between was the kitchen. There was a gas cooker (I seem to remember Mamma acquiring a Cannon cooker later on, which had a very new-fangled "eye-level" grill). This was tucked in to the right of the entrance.

On the other side of the back porch door was a diminutive worktop with open shelves beneath which housed saucepans. Then there was a sink with wooden draining board and some more shelves tucked up on the left.

There was also a small folding table grandly called the "kitchen table" which I suppose it was but no meals were ever taken there.

Hot water was supplied by a gas heater which was rather tricky to use.

There was no fridge, washing machine or dishwasher. All cooking and washing (except of sheets which were washed in the bath or sent to the laundry) was done in this space.

Somehow in this dark, small and inconvenient space Mamma managed to produce daily fresh-cooked meals, roast Sunday lunches, elaborate Christmas dinners, birthday cakes of all kinds, an array of mouth-watering German cakes and biscuits, bottle fruit, make jam and cream cheese.

Much later a washing machine, spin-dryer and fridge were all acquired. Accommodating them necessitated the knocking through of an "alcove" into the octagonal hall.

Now that would be considered illegal nowadays.