No, Michael, sometimes it’s not a beautiful day

I’ve got this thing about Michael Buble. I can’t cope with him. I can’t cope with his endlessly cheery face and his insistence that he’s totally in love with me, even if he hasn’t met me yet. I’m glad he knows that some day it will all work out and that he’s having a beautiful day and that he’s feeling good and that he has a Christmas album full of love and cheery things and smiles and….. bleeeeurh. 

 

Sorry, I just vomited. 

 

“I can’t stop myself from smiling…. Let me tell you all the reasons why I think you’re one of a kind… And I’m feeling good…” and on and on and on, he goes. About his fabulous happiness and about how much he loves everyone.

 

You know what I want? Every time I hear one of his songs, I listen out for a line that says something like, “I’m a filthy crackwhore and I hate everyone….” Not because I think he’d be much improved, but because he’d seem a bit more human. Maybe he doesn’t need to go that far. Maybe he could just say, “I felt like rubbish the other day so I ate 23 chocolate bars and got drunk by myself at home.” I mean, even that would just round of his edges a little. 

 

He’s too plastic cheerful, like bubblegum or a colourful child’s toy that they learn to hate when they grow up because of it’s stupid cheery tunes and bright colours and you can never find the off switch so you’re forced to listen to an endless stream of squeaky-tuned silly-voiced madness…. 

 

I don’t hate him or anything. I just want him to do something naughty, give someone a wedgie live on television or release an angst ridden song, full of self-doubt and edginess. Maybe he should cover Smells Like Teen Spirit? O, but you know what would happen? He’d get a big band in there, 15 trumpets minimum, he’d have a big smile on his face, he’d do a few Elvis-esque leg-shake moves and he’d bop around having made it, somehow, into a cheery song to make you smile on a winter’s day. 

 

Winter doesn’t bother him in fact. He just dons a fluffy coat, gets some ice skates on and bops around an ice rink, smiling, endlessly smiling, and talking about how great snow is and Christmas and how he loves Santa and wants to be Santa and spread cheer and happiness and he never falls over on the ice. O no! He skates perfectly. And you know what? Even if he were to fall over on the ice, you know what he’d do? Give us a winning smile, say something like, “It’s a beautiful day to fall over on the ice,” sing a little ditty then bounce straight up, inviting the small children to hold his hand and skate in a line, laughing and being jolly.

 

Now, it’s ok to be a generally positive person. That’s ok, I get that. But he’s been saying it for quite a while now and sometimes I just want to shake him and say, “Michael, shhhhh for once, sometimes it’s NOT a beautiful day, alright?!”

 

A final word on his surname, what’s going on there? It’s Bubble, right? Bubble, like bubblegum, like bright colours and bubbles being popped and happiness and children having fun and gaiety. Just like Micheal Buble himself. Ridiculous.

The life I almost had; the reblog

It’s time for Remember The Time with Emily and Kelly again. This week, it’s wildcard time so I’ve dug through previous posts and found one about the time I became a TV presenter. That’s right. Became a TV presenter.

“Another career I pursued quite seriously when I was younger was as a presenter. I had my own TV programme. This one’s quite embarrassing so be supportive, please….

The show was called ‘Parents, Get Out’ and I presented it from my bed, the ceiling being the camera. I would start by saying, ‘ok kids, it’s time for the parents to get out!’ and the TV would have a sensor so it could detect any adults in the room. I wouldn’t start the show until I could see that all the parents had gone.

I’d then spend the next hour (actually I don’t know how long it really was but it felt like ages) talking about kid’s stuff. I don’t know what exactly I chatted about. The best part is that I did it all in a faux American accent, which I thought I was pretty good at.

I had ‘co-presenters’ too. Two guys called John and Nathan, I think. In the middle of an item I was presenting I’d stop and hold my hand to my ear and go “Ok John, that’s fascinating, great, yeh, I’ll hand over to you now. Kids, here’s John, he’s got a great story for us.” And then I’d lie there looking at the camera (ceiling) for a few minutes, in silence, while I imagined the other news story going on.

I don’t know how long the programme ran for but I remember doing it for a long time, enough to perfect my pretend accent. Maybe the TV company took us off air because we were too successful, we were stealing all the viewers. It was probably jealousy and a feeling of inferiority from others which got us shut down.

Well, maybe if I hit 40 and I’ve not achieved worldwide domination of the music charts or become a bestselling author, I know I’ve got that to fall back on. It’s always good to have a back up plan.”

Meritocracy, privilege or equality?

Good morning all. Wednesday brings my guest blogger, Rambler5319, and his post prompting by a certain new arrival on the UK scene…

 

Last week LLM mentioned the birth of a certain baby: George Alexander Louis – one who is now 3^rd in line to the throne here in the UK. (According to the statistics he is just one of 14,000 babies born in the UK last week.) The birth has stirred up interest in a particular area over the past week or so – privilege and the benefits it confers on later generations. Some people are not happy about those who simply inherit a pot of money or land or a title, and don’t have to work for it; others are quite content to live in a society where there will always be inequalities. My reason for writing about the subject is that the BBC dedicated a whole programme on the radio to a discussion on the subject. They have a discussion series called The Moral Maze and it tries to tackle controversial issues; it uses the format of a panel who question “witnesses” (3 or 4 on each prog) who come to state their case on the subject for the week.

Many folks consider life (in general) is unfair: those with money and privilege seem to get access to jobs, education and many other opportunities, those without don’t. The difficulty comes when we or the state take the view that the “playing field” should be levelled so that all have an equal opportunity to get the position under consideration be it a place at university, a job or membership of a club or team. How can it be done? Some would say we already have that in that anyone can apply but that it’s an equality of outcome that would be the best solution. For that to happen though certain things would have to be put in place which might seem unfair to those who do not get what they believed they deserved.

First principle to think about is – do we believe in the idea that if you work hard and get the results you need in exams for instance you should get the place that was offered? However if we then have a situation, as has happened in the UK in recent years, that for example the government wants more people from, as they put it, poorer sections of society to go to university how can that be achieved? Their answer is that you help them with maybe some extra teaching or finance or bursary payment. This though puts the university admission system under great strain because how do they decide between two candidates applying for say one place? Do they admit a person from a poor background who needs financial aid or say a middle class person who can afford to go because their parents simply have more money than the poorer person? Do you see the problem? Yes, they can admit say 10 people from poorer backgrounds to various courses but in order to do that 10 people from what is considered a higher social group have to be excluded. Is that fair or is it simply what we would call social engineering – making a university population a cross section of the wider society in terms of its social & financial groupings? Is that more morally right? Shouldn’t the emphasis be on the academic achievements of the candidates for the places and other factors come in afterwards? If the grade required in a particular subject is for example a “C” and there are two applicants – one has an “A” and one a “B”. Suppose the B grade applicant is from the poorer background – can you see the problem? Why should one way be more right than another? How many students from poor backgrounds would we expect to find in say some of the top universities like Oxford or Cambridge? It is not simply a case of grades it is also one of expense once you’re there. A further problem arises if, as history tends to confirm, that the people from the poorer social grouping, for one reason or another, don’t do as well academically as those from the more affluent neighbourhoods. Again this is not necessarily down to the child. It may be that the school itself has a poor record and one of the reasons for that might be due to poorer quality teachers ending up in say schools in poorer areas. The child may have come from a family in which education was not valued & books were not read. It could even be that the parents were just not interested in the child; perhaps it was not even wanted. There are a number of possible reasons and we can’t just blame or highlight one.

Second principle to think about is that of inheritance. Is it morally right that you or I as a parent should seek to do our best for our children? Do we believe that if we work hard and accumulate wealth during our lives that we have the right to pass it on to our children? In other words should you get what are called your “just deserts”? I think most people would say that this system seems fair – if you work hard, you get the rewards. Again we can do this in a number of ways but in the final analysis a big question is about what we leave behind for them. Suppose the parents “work their socks off” so they can pay off their mortgage so that their children can inherit their house and not be in debt. Should those parents be penalised for having worked really hard to be able to leave their children money or property or whatever? One speaker in the programme suggested that those who leave “excessive wealth” should have it taken off them. When challenged by the panel as to what he would define as excessive of course he couldn’t and also couldn’t say who should do the defining. The panel’s conclusion was quite simply that his idea amounted to straightforward theft!

Another speaker used the phrase when speaking of the opportunities that it was “unacceptably unfair” to those at the bottom of the social scale. As with the previous point, he was unable to properly define “unacceptably”. In the end he went down the route of saying that some things were unacceptably unfair but not all. He then went on to discuss the idea of rewarding those who “fulfil their potential”. In other words if you are not so clever academically and are expected to attain a grade C and you then do or perhaps achieve even higher, say a B you should be rewarded. This is a nice idea but think about this – suppose a student who was expected to achieve an A just misses it and gets a B. If both are applying to the same university, who is more deserving of the place? – Both have got B grades but to whom would you give the place if you had to make the decision? And why?

The last speaker came up with another generalisation: it’s unfair that bright kids from poor working class backgrounds are losing out to middle class kids who are less bright. I’m not sure how you could prove that. Surely I’d be just as “right” to say that bright middle class kids are losing out to bright working class kids because the latter are being favoured by the social engineering going on in higher education entrance procedures.

Now there isn’t time to go into all the arguments for & against but it seems clear to me that it will be incredibly difficult to move from our present position. Consider this – those who say the present system is unfair because a certain person only “got in” or “got the job” because they were born into a higher income family, than those who did not, haven’t got a practical alternative. If the current system is deemed unfair then how can you replace it with one which bestows favour on lower income groups in order to level things up a little? That just means there will be similar cries of unfairness by those who qualified but were discriminated against in the interests of some social policy either by the state or the institution concerned. You will simply be replacing one unfair system with another unfair one. So can anything help? Do we just have to accept that, as has been the case throughout history, in a society where money buys things those with the most can buy the most of whatever it is – material possessions or access to jobs & education? Is it unfair that one is born into a rich family and one into a poor?

Summer in England

Ah. Summer in England. What a glorious thing to behold. It took a while getting here but now it is fabulous.

The skies are blue. The grass is green. The flowers are emerging.

Trees are a shock of loud greens instead of the twigs they have been during the seven month winter.

Colourful clothing is being worn again. Pale sun-starved flesh is getting an airing with mass shorts and t-shirt wearing.

Iced coffee is fashionable. The new ice cream shop in town finally has customers!

Groups of trendy city-workers let their hair down and drink pink champagne from plastic cups on the green.

My neighbours are feeling happy and generous and I get home to freshly baked biscuits on the doorstep.

We greet each other cheerily across the street, welcome each other in for cups of tea or homemade lemonade. The children who annoyed us yesterday suddenly seem sweet and funny.

We even go so far as to say it feels ‘too hot’! Older men play golf again, younger men get out their bikes again. The outdoor pools are open again and rammed with kids splashing about on sponge floats, almost hitting everyone else.

We drink more tea as, according the age old adage, it actually cools you down….?!

We eat dinner in the garden. We have barbecues.

We unearth the lawn from the general leafy debris that has gathered for months while we looked sadly out from the back window, not daring to step out. We get excited.

We love England. It’s the most wonderful place in the world. There’s nowhere else we’d rather be (except when the winter kicks in and we all run away to take holidays elsewhere).

Armchair activism…

Yesterday, I was back on the useful thing with a vengeance, so much so that I did about four useful things in one day! I know, I know, I’m so selfless. Four useful things in one day. Yes, that’s right. Four. I’ll be round to do autographs later. Let me tell you what they were.

Wear your heart on your wrist – order a bracelet from Doctors Without Borders
(The Difference A Day Makes by Karen M. Jones)

Let your mouse save a child – visit a website which creates sponsorship through advertiser donations
(The Difference A Day Makes by Karen M. Jones)

Meditate – to improve your mental wellbeing and your dedication to the other tasks in the book
(Going Greener by Simon Gear)

The thing with both of these books, and I knew I was going to have to confront this at some point, is that they are quite country-specific. Karen M. Jones is US-based and Simon Gear is in South Africa. Maybe, to give me a little more to do, I should look for a UK based one. Anyway, my first task was to look up Doctors Without Borders. Having the books on Kindle is great as the website addresses come up as links and I can just click on them – the laziest form of activism, yes I know. So when I clicked on the DWB link, it was an American website. I looked for the bracelet but needed a US address. I decided maybe a donation would be best. It was all in dollars and needed a zip code from me.

Then I saw a little button asking if I wanted to donate from outside America. Yes, please. Click! And I went to the UK site of Medicins Sans Frontieres. I hadn’t realised DWB was the US branch of MSF. I’ve always had good feelings about most of these ‘without borders’ organisations so got stuck into the website and found an easy way to donate by texting 70070 with the letters DOCS01 and an amount.

Easy! I’d like to think that I will train as a doctor and go out and save small children from terrible diseases but the truth is I probably won’t. There are people who have done it and are good at it. So for now, until I complete my degree in medicine with flying colours (any minute now), the best way I can help is by funding their work.

One quick text later and I was all done. First box ticked!

Second one. I was told to visit thechildhealthsite.com and click on things a bit. The sponsors who have adverts on the site will give money to different projects and charities that support healthcare for children. In the tabs at the top there are all different causes you can help simply by clicking. So I got a little click-crazy. I clicked to help the rainforests, improve literacy and stop hunger.

I’m steadily starting to understand the phrase ‘armchair activist.’

Lastly, I was advised by Simon Gear to take twenty minutes each day to meditate, without which, my dedication to my world-saving cause might suffer. So, thought I, I will do this. I will meditate my way to heroicism.

I made sure I was sitting comfortably. I set an alarm for twenty minutes away as checking the clock might disturb my deep and meaningful meditation session.

I closed my eyes… And cleared my thoughts out…. Sort of. A few crept in. I made a mental shopping list to ensure I wouldn’t forget anything. I worked out how many hours there were until I needed to be in work. I wondered if the rain would stop so I could go for a walk. Then I cleared my mind and tried again.

This time was more successful. I enjoyed this second attempt at meditation, although some people (not me), might say that that’s because it strongly resembled what most consider ‘sleeping.’ I was startled awake by the alarm… I mean, I was already awake.

I think meditation is something I’ll need to work on.

And the fourth thing, what about the fourth thing, you’re all wondering.

Well, I went shopping and bought environmentally friendly softener for washing my clothes. I also didn’t wrap my vegetables in plastic bags. I just weighed them and stuck the sticker straight on. Check me out, I’m such a rebel.

Here endeth the world saving for another day.

You clap. I bow.

The wisdom of children

Molly on rabbits:
“I like wibbits. I want a wibbit. And I tarry it. And tuddle it. And tiss it.”

Molly on hippos:
“I don’t like hippos.”

Molly on frogs:
“I don’t like froggies. I like wibbits.”

Molly on midday cuddles:
“It’s not tuddles time. It’s playing time.”

Molly on planes:
“A lane, a lane! I’ve got a lane at home”

Molly on swimming:
“I got doddles!” (goggles)

Ella on blackbirds:
“O, a blackbird! I’ve always wanted to see a blackbird!”

Ella on the lovely new book she was given as a present:
“O no. I don’t think there’s room on my bookshelf for this.”

Ella on her punishment after being naughty one day:
“Daddy, I think I should only have one book before bed, not two. Cause I’ve been very naughty today.”

Ella on the stars:
“O, look! A constellation. Look, the archer!” (She’s five, by the way.)

Ella on her best attributes:
“I’m the funniest girl in the class.”

Ella’s first joke:
“What sheep eats a flower? A strawberry!” (Don’t ask.)

Ella on history:
“Before the dinosaurs, there were cavemen and caveladies.”

Ella on her romantic prospects:
“When I grow up, I’m going to marry Adam. When I’m 13.”

My favourite Namibia memories

Making pizzas on Friday nights with one of our student’s mums.

Stuffing our faces at the Nest Hotel because we were pretty poor and ate mostly rice at home.

The time Fiona and I took a road trip round the whole country and had no radio so had to sing to each other all day.

Our comedy dog, Diaz, barking at the kids at school or following us around or weeing on the floor.

The time we were stranded in the desert with no water, no money or bank card, no ID, no suncream and no keys to get back into our car.

The time Lucy and I were painting murals on the wall in the creche where we taught and the kids started singing Atomic Kitten to us.

When I used to jump in the freezing cold swimming pool every morning at the guest house where I lived and worked in Namibia.

The time we walked out to Diaz Point, which took hours and hours, and we had three apples between us.

The time I lost control of the car and went on a little spin off the road with Fiona yelling “Steer into the spin!” and clinging onto the dashboard.

Singing the Amarula song with the kitchen staff at Grootberg Lodge.

One of my students, Zara, saying “Thank you for teaching us,” after a class.

Bungee jumping, like a loony, over the Zambezi River during a stay in Livingston.

Sleeping through the most important day in the Namibian calendar, their independence day, then making a story up for the newspaper afterwards (we ran the local town newspaper and we had to make up the main story of the whole year. Shoddy).

Climbing into the big wardrobe in Lucy’s room with our friend, Andre, to look for Narnia. We were sober, by the way.

Packing a tent, some sleeping bags, a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a knife and walking to the campsite just out of town, Shark Island, and camping for the weekend to get away from it all.

Flinging ourselves in the pool to cool down after a hot sweaty bus journey back from Victoria Falls to Windhoek.

Taking a load of disadvantaged kids away for an activity week in the desert and, among other things, teaching them how to swim.

Drinking cups of rooibos tea and watching the sun set over the Atlantic ocean and the clouds and sky turning pink and purple and orange.

Fiona and I going to the coolest bar in town, Rumours, and graffitiing our names behind the bar.

Cutting my own hair because I had no money for hairdressers.

Going out to an old abandoned town in the desert with our friend, George, and him giving us Namibian names. Mine was Naufiku, which means ‘born in the evening.’

Fiona chucking a glass of triple shot Jaegermeister and coke on a car.

Going to badminton club on Tuesdays and being rubbish at it.

Things it’s ok to do as a child

Stop a party of six whilst out walking so that you can wish on a star.

Fart and blame it on the TV.

Have long conversations with your reflection in the mirror.

Have plain spaghetti and green ‘olibs’ (olives) for dinner.

Say things like, “I’m going to marry Adam. When I’m 13.”

Have people accompany you to the toilet, just to chat to them about Barbie.

Declare loudly, “I don’t like hippos!” at the dinner table with absolutely no prerequisite.

Reply to the sentence, “I’m scared of monsters,” with the advice, “You should eat your carrots then.”

Jump in all puddles, even ones which are tiny, five hundred times before moving on, even when everyone’s in a rush.

Dig around in your nostril for a massive snot then wipe it on the nearest person forehead (Danda’s).

Tell everyone in the room whether it is a wee or a poo that you are going to the bathroom for.

Drink your entire body weight in apple juice.

Laugh hysterically for ten whole minutes at someone pulling tongues at you.

Rub novelty Gruffalo shampoo all over everyone’s faces and necks and tell them it is make up.

Paint a grown man’s fingernails (Danda’s) with silver glittery nail varnish then insist he go out to McDonald’s with it still on.

Talk for twenty minutes about the best way to defeat dragons.

Eat a whole apple before holding up the core and saying, “I don’t like apples.”

Put animal stickers all over your face in public and sit on a windowsill looking around and waving at strangers.

Yaya’s Meltdown

The other day I was hanging out with Yaya at his house. We were watching Mr. Bean. It was loads of fun. We had just been out for dinner where I had eaten scallops, braised pork belly and a goats cheese crostini with walnuts and an onion marmalade dressing. It was amazing. Yaya had turned his nose up at his dinner, declared ‘it doesn’t look nice’ then fallen off his chair, taking his apple juice with him. Later he had eaten a bit of chocolate brownie and ice cream and had a long conversation with me about the milkman who delivers his milk.

I should mention now, in case any new readers are unaware, Yaya is a four year old boy.

While watching the TV, he decided he wanted to sit on his dad’s knee. So he pottered over and plonked down. Dad got up for a minute so put Yaya in the space while he got up. He came back a few minutes later and sat back in his space and invited Yaya back onto his lap.

This is when Yaya’s Meltdown happened.

Yaya wanted Dad to go and sit on the other sofa. Dad, confused, said he wanted to sit with everyone else on the same sofa and didn’t Yaya want to sit with him? Yaya was angry. Yaya wanted the space Dad was in. Dad tried to reason, he had been sitting in the space just a few minutes ago, he wanted to stay in the same spot.

So Yaya formulated a plan (which was ultimately flawed). He would push Dad out of the space. He stands up on the sofa, gets his hand behind Dad’s back and pushes. He pushes, pulls, squeezes, tugs. We were all stifling giggles at his loud effort noises. We did not realise how serious this was about to get. So his plans started to it’s flaws pretty quickly – when you pit the strength of a four year old boy against his father, the four year old boy is always the weaker.

He makes valiant attempts to squish himself in between Dad and sofa, to reclaim the space.

I attempt a solution.

“Yaya,” I say, “there’s a space in between Daddy and me here, it’s just the right size for you. Why don’t you sit here?”

It is as though I have not spoken. The struggle continues. Dad is getting annoyed. Eventually Dad threatens Yaya with bedtime. Yaya freaks. He cries. He screams. He’s going, “I don’t want to go to bed!”

He’s told he has two options. Sit nicely with everyone on the sofa together. Or go to bed. He sobs loudly, “I don’t want to do ANYTHING!” and sits in the doorway in the other room whimpering and calling, “Mum! Mum, come downstairs, I need you. Mum!” Mum is busy with child number two and doesn’t hear.

Eventually, after ten long minutes of the whimpering, Dad goes to Yaya and asks him if he wants to come in and sit nicely. Yaya whimpers. The Meltdown has sapped all his energy. He lets Dad pick him up and bring him in and sit on the sofa with him. In the exact position they had been in before Dad left his spot and The Meltdown happened.

So here we are, all on the sofa, Yaya whimpering and no-one quite able to understand what just happened.

Maybe it’s because I’m a non-parent but whole thing seems totally illogical. I can’t stand things/people which are illogical. That’s why I’m not too keen on animals, I think. Animals and children. They both don’t make any sense.

If any parents can explain to me this situation, I would appreciate it. Here are the events as I see them:

Yaya sits with Dad on the sofa.
Dad gets up.
Yaya occupies the space.
Dad returns and sits in the spot again, offering his lap for Yaya to return to.
Yaya wants Dad to sit on the other sofa.
Yaya freaks and ends up in another room crying for Mum.
Dad gets Yaya, brings him back to sofa and sits with him on his lap.
Yaya is fine again.

WHAT. ON. EARTH!

This is why I do not have any children.

I’d be going, “Don’t be so illogical. It offends me.” And they’d be going, “I want that! Now! Waaah! I hate you! Give me lots of things now!”

P.S. Very exciting news. Following the Food Fair last week, at which we discovered truffle butter, the manager is considering stocking it. I am delirious with excitement!

A trip back in time to the workhouse

It’s Wednesday and it’s time for Rambler5319 to take over with his guest post again. Enjoy….

 

Perhaps you remember the post NaCl (from 1st Aug) about salt: its early production techniques and different uses. In it I said I would try and visit the Salt Museum at Northwich in Cheshire and last Friday that’s what I did. First thing to note is that, a couple of years ago, the place changed its name from the Salt Museum to the Weaver Hall Museum & Workhouse. I had intended to write up on the whole visit but there was quite a bit of interesting stuff on the workhouse so will do that this week; next week will cover the salt bit of the Museum and another site visit.

I arrived, in boiling sunshine, an hour or so after opening time and yet was still able to choose any spec in the completely empty car park!

Here’s the front entrance

The Museum is housed in the refurbished original buildings of the old Workhouse, built as you can see in 1837, the year Queen Victoria came to the throne. The irony is that an original salt museum, built in 1887 by two local businessmen involved in the salt industry, collapsed due to salt mining subsidence! A replacement was built in 1909 and eventually the collection moved to Weaver Hall in 1981.

I went in and paid my entry fee; parking was free. The curator led me through to the start point – the video room; a film show for one as I was the only visitor so far. After the brief intro film, the first displays were all workhouse related. Of course the workhouse was never meant to be an easy life; it was tough in order to deter people from taking it as an easy option. No state handouts for people to become dependent upon. All inmates had to work. Children were educated in the belief that by so doing they would improve themselves and their prospects. Here’s a quote from a 1901 Poor Law Handbook:

“The care and training of children are matters which should receive the anxious attention of Guardians. Pauperism is in the blood, and there is no more effectual means of checking its hereditary nature than by doing all in our power to bring up our pauper children in such a manner as to make them God-fearing, useful and healthy members of society.”

Interesting that they saw ‘pauperism’ as an inherited (“in the blood”) condition.
Here’s a poster, from a London workhouse in 1902, showing one kind of job people were given to do – in this case, Oakum Picking:

Note, from the write-up, the effects on people doing this work over a period of time. I’m sure they are what today we would call RSI (repetitive strain injury).
Next up was the laundry area and here are some examples of items you would expect to find there:

You can see the two signs to encourage the workers to keep going: one says, “Hard Work Is Its Own Reward” and the other hanging on the right wall, “Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness”. Do you believe it?

An interesting chart was this one below giving the daily & weekly meal allowances for each category of inmate: male, female, child, over 60s, nursing mothers & sick. Have a good look through and see what you reckon to those meals if you had to eat them.

In some areas of the country H.M. Prisons allowed each prisoner 292oz (8.27kg) food per week; workhouse rations, in the same area, were set at 137oz (3.88kg). Meals were to be conducted in silence and sometimes without cutlery! However if you look at the allowances in the Northwich Workhouse some do seem quite generous. I was curious as to what they might equate to so did a quick measure on my kitchen scales of some of the food rations there.

For example, here’s a pic of the over 60s allowances which they could have in place of the breakfast gruel.

Here’s the same sugar ration in a jam jar:

1oz of tea per week equates to the tea in approx 14 tea bags (had to add a bit as theirs would have been loose tea); that means approx 2 cups of tea/day. 5oz butter looks reasonable but it has to last a week. The sugar pile on the plate is 6ins (15cms) diameter, or roughly half a jam jar, but as they were not getting any other sweet food maybe that just had to do. Apart from sugar in tea what else would they use it for?

Bread weight works out at roughly 1 slice (modern day) = 1oz (on my bread anyway); that means men got the equivalent of 12 slices/day, (adding breakfast & supper together) which seems quite a bit more than I’d consume. Most days men got 2lbs (908g) of potatoes.

Here’s my plate with 1lb (454g) so half a day’s ration:

That’s 19 smallish potatoes so 38 for a day’s worth of 2lbs.

There were some other historical exhibits but not related to the workhouse or salt industry. Here’s one poster, advertising a concert at a local dance hall, in the early 1960s.

You could have seen the Beatles play for an entrance fee of 10/- (or 50p/80 cents). Notice you also got The Cadillacs and The Psychos on the same bill. The following week Gene Vincent was due to appear with “HMV Recording Stars” The Outlaws; tickets were only 7/6 (37.5p/60 cents) for that one. And you could dance for four hours (7.45-11.45pm) – if you had the energy. Ah, those were the days, eh?
Then I came across this one. It was quite a high toilet from the ground to seat level. I wondered why? The note on the top warned the reader not to use it in the corridor (as if anyone would in a public place!). You may be able to read that.

It also said to lift the lid to find out more info, so I did and here’s what it said inside:

Imagine that – no flush. You just leave the waste, which dropped down a long pipe, to be washed away by water from the kitchen. It didn’t say if the toilet was likely to be located upstairs or downstairs; if upstairs imagine the length of the pipe down to the ground floor where your number twos would wait for someone in the kitchen to empty the sink. Hmm…..(I understand some people pooh-poohed the idea of including this exhibit….haha.. See what I did there?)

The next exhibit was interesting because of why it was made: “the model of the canal boat Wren was presented to Rev R.V. Barker, at the end of his ministry, by the local boatmen and the address was signed by the captains of the canal boats – Wasp, Beagle, Bunbury & Wren – in recognition of his ministry to them in Nantwich in 1879.

After the museum I headed north of the town to sit by the canal and have my sandwiches.

What a lovely peaceful spot and, a few minutes later, just the chugging sound of a westbound narrow boat passing by.

Different pace of life on the canals! 4 mph speed limit though most go a bit slower to prevent damage to the banks caused by the waves the boat creates as it goes along. Soon it was home time and back to the hustle & bustle of city life. (Time also to remember that we today have much to be thankful for in state and government provision so that the poor don’t have to go to institutions like the old workhouse any more.) It had been a really interesting day out.