Erdigg House

Good morning all. It’s time for Rambler5319 to take over with a guest post. Enjoy!

 

You may remember I went on a two day break to Llangollen a while ago. On our way back home we did call in at this place and as usual the National Trust didn’t let us down. It’s called Erdigg House and was down quite a long stretch of narrow lanes. Its distance away from other houses is probably the reason why the servants all lived in – it was just too far to commute in and out every day especially with the long hours of work expected of them. Built at the beginning of the 18^th century it passed into the ownership of the Yorke family in 1733 and remained with them until 1973. It was then given to the National Trust and celebrated 40 years under their control this year. It has won a number of awards over the years and I think it’s worth a visit if you’re around the area. The NT had a special offer on membership so I decided to take the plunge and go for a 6 month trial. I have to visit just 3 places to get my membership cost back so it seemed a good deal.

First place we came to was the bee-keeping section. Not a very posh sign but there was the obligatory grey protective suit hanging on the opposite brick wall.

And a pic of a volunteer keeper “marking the queen”

Next is a water purifier.

The tap is missing from the bottom where there’s just a hole. You should be able to read the manufacturer’s name – Lipscombe & Co and their address 233 Strand (London). I checked up on the company and they seemed to do quite well for a time with branches in a number of UK towns. However in The London Gazette (16^th April, 1889) there was a notice of a hearing to take place on 16^th May 1889 for bankruptcy. Things had obviously gone bad for them.

This next item is quite interesting as it’s an early form of fridge.

Here’s a close up of the sign pinned to the inside of the lid

Have a read about how you had to use it. No opening a door & putting something in and closing it again like we do today. What a rigmarole!

Then there was this. Any ideas?

It is a knife cleaner. That’s right not a sharpener – a cleaner. You might just be able to see the manufacturer’s name in the largest lettering – VONO. Now if you’ve ever had one of those beds with a metal frame and a metal lattice with springs stretched between the edges they were often made by Vono. There is special tool for screwing & unscrewing the ends of the bed from the metal frame called a “Vono key”. It’s really just a chunky spanner but made especially for the size of the hexagonal bolt heads.

Here’s another interesting photo.

Can you see how it’s constructed? It’s a sort of enclosed bell shape but the bottom has a hole in and it’s pushed up inside the bell. Apparently it was a Victorian idea of a fly/wasp trap. You put something to attract the insects in the area between the rim of the hole and the side of the bell. The insects fly in but can’t fly out again. Well that’s what they told us. It looks a good idea but it obviously never caught on. I guess it’s the cleaning which is difficult. How do you get whatever you put into the trough area out? Definitely looks tricky to me.

This next photo is really interesting but you might not see why at first.

There a number of folks stood in front of the window. They are all servants belonging to the house. However if you look at the open window just behind the back row of two people you can see more figures. These are actually the master, mistress & children who owned the house. Quite a reversal of prominence to let the servants take centre stage and have themselves just looking out of the window. The year is 1852.

60 years later in 1912 the then owner re-created this photo with his own family & servants. Great idea! Here’s his version. Did you count the servants – I make it 15 in each pic. One of the notes said there was a servant who was present in both photos but I can’t remember which one except that it was a lady. I reckon the family got their money’s worth out of her!

Next is another water filter, this time made by Cheavin’s.

The company was founded in the late 17th century by John Dwight who, with Robert Hooke, had worked in the laboratory of Robert Boyle. Hooke was a natural philosopher, architect & polymath. He also did many surveys in London after the Great Fire (over half). Irishman Boyle is most famous for Boyle’s Law (PV=k) but he was also a natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor and writer in theology. (He was the 14^th child born into his family!)

Cheavin’s and their relatives & descendants remained in control of the company until 1864 when it was sold and went out of the family. Then in 1889 it went bankrupt. 1889 was not a good year for water filter manufacturers was it – remember Lipscombe’s?

The whole water filtering idea is a reminder to us of how risky drinking or even just using ordinary water could be in days gone by. Today we think nothing of turning our taps on and drinking it. We no longer fear infection & disease coming to us that way. Our cleaning and treatment of water before it gets to our homes is a tried & tested & trusted method. Just think of how disconcerting it would be if you had to filter all the water that comes out of your tap.

Another name in the water filter market was Doulton; many UK residents will know that name from their manufacture of domestic toilets! (We definitely had one when I was younger). Their motto “Making Water Fit for Kings, Queens & Presidents Since 1827. Isn’t it Time You Had One?” And they’re still going today selling over a million filters a year around the world.

That’s a good place to stop. Part 2 next week.

Hot dogs, Spam and packet mixes

It’s Chat time again, everyone! These Chat days are my favourite blogging days. And there is much to love in this week’s magazine.

We start with a picture of a wet owl. The caption goes “You’ve heard of the Angry Birds game, well here’s an outraged owl!” The words “Too wet to woo!” are also mentioned. I imagine you’re thinking, what does she mean, ‘there’s a picture of a wet owl’? It turns out, that’s how random Chat is. They just have pictures of wet owls. Look.

Next up, a lady with a serious face does various poses holding phones or pointing at stuff or crossing her arms and tells a story about her boyfriend cheating on her and how she caught him. The pictures really are the best thing about the story. Check them out.

Now, we’ve just got to check out the Top Tips page because there is some amazing stuff here. The first one is ‘Put necklace beads on top of the soil in a potted plant.’ It’s that simple. Want to see what it would look like? Prepare to be amazed.

Amazed? No, me neither.

Next up, put a tea towel over a tennis racket and use it as a tray for your breakfast. Have a look.

And lastly, if you’ve got packet mixes or tubes, put them into a plastic container. Yep, that’s as complicated as it gets. Put your stuff into a plastic container. Why, thank you, Lucy Travell of Gloucester, I’ve been wondering for years what to do with all my packet mixes and tubes.

O wait, I don’t use packet mixes.

Cause they’re gross.

If we flip to page 31, we’ve got the infamous Bit On The Side section, in which we are given a little simple recipe. My favourite previous recipe was mushrooms on toast. That’s the kind of thing we’re dealing with here. And what might it be this week, you’re thinking, aren’t you?

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, that really is a recipe for hot dog spaghetti. And the instructions specifically tell me that in step 3 of the recipe, I must ‘thickly slice a pack of Jungle Dogs 6 Pork Hot Dogs.’ Was there ever a worse sentence in the English language? (Except perhaps ‘Fry the frozen chips in the lard.’)

The Bit On The Side on the following page has a picture of a tub of Spam Chopped Pork and Ham. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Spam. The caption says “We love Spam – and now it comes in a new lightweight plastic container.” Do we? Do we love Spam? One of the worse violations of food to ever exist. Spam. Do we love it? Do we love filling our bodies with processed crap? Do we enjoy foods more only when they have minimal nutritional value? We? Really?

Lastly, a pretty amusing story about a lady who had some chutney in her fridge which exploded and absolutely wrecked her kitchen! I liked that story. The lesson? Cover it with clingfilm so it doesn’t react with the air and cause a build up of methane.

So, actually, I’ve learned something here today. I hope you have too.

L is for…

LOVE!

Now, there’s a lot of love between my colleague, Mimi, and I. You might be wondering if you remember the name Mimi from a previous post. And you would be right. For it is Mimi of Falling For You fame. Tabasco-breast Mimi, if you will.

Now Mimi is like my long lost sister. Ish. Kind of. Our surnames are a bit similar and our signatures are similar too. So you see, a lot of love.

After a few months of working together, we were on a shift one day and it was handover time. At 3pm, the evening shift starts and the morning shift finishes. It was at this point that a company who delivers our packaging decided to bring everything we had ordered for that week. As there was loads of stuff, I told the evening shift person I would stay to unpack it, save them trying to do that plus everything else you need to do on an evening shift.

As I got started, I clamoured over all the boxes and was kind of wedged in with my back to the big fridge, unpacking stuff. Mimi, with her coat on ready to go, leaned toward me with one arm outstretched.

O, we’ve reached that stage in our relationship, have we? I thought, as I responded to the invitation to hug. This is nice. This is how we say goodbye now.

I really went for it actually, embracing Mimi and knowing that this was a significant moment for us. We were now, officially, best friends. (Mimi says I was a bit like a limpit, clinging onto her.)

A pause followed. Then Mimi spoke.

“Get off. I’m trying to get to the fridge.”

“O, I thought you were… I thought you were saying bye.”

She laughed vigorously, assured me that she wasn’t going in for a hug and could I please move cause she needed to get the fridge.

Hurriedly, I unclamped and stepped aside a little, while she put something away in the fridge and bustled out, saying bye as usual.

I’ve not tried the goodbye hug again. But still, there’s a lot of love.

The time we defrosted a freezer

I was 18. I was living in Africa. I wasn’t that good at being a grown up but I was good at convincing myself I was.

One time my friend Lucy and I had noticed that we couldn’t fit stuff in our freezer anymore because it was full of ice. We thought we should defrost it but just made a vague guess about how exactly you did this. We had a fridge freezer thing so left the door open for a while but in the stifling heat of the coast town where we lived, all our milk and butter was having a bad reaction. We sat and puzzled for a bit about how to go about defrosting in a shorter time.

Then Lucy had an idea. Lovely Lucy, one of those people in life who you want to be like, who’s so easy to love. Lovely Lucy. She picked up a hammer and approached the fridge freezer. I stood by, a little uncertain about what she was going to do with it…..

Then Lovely Lucy used the hammer to smash all the ice to bits and get it out off the freezer. Mid-smashing session, me hovering nervously around, there was a noise. A hissing sound. Ssssssssssssssssss….

On. And on. And on. Went the hissing noise. Until, eventually, it stopped.

We didn’t know what it was but I had the distinct impression that my being-an-adult attempt had failed miserably.

There was a funny gas smell and we giggled nervously as I ran off to email my Dad about what we should do. That’s right. I was in Africa, holding my own as a teacher in a classroom, running the local town newspaper, making my living as an editor/journalist, and at the first hint of something electronic that I couldn’t figure out, I was running off to email my Dad.

The return email essentially said, “GET THAT THING OUT OF YOUR HOUSE NOW!”

Obediently, we unplugged it and got it into the garden and consumed everything which had been in the fridge, to save it going off, not because we’re greedy. Honest.

And there it sat for a few days while we pondered what to do. In those few days, the maggots found it. That’s right. The maggots. We opener the door one day to see if it still smelled gassy, and there they were! Whoops! We quickly shut the door, pretended we hadn’t seen anything and called a friend to ask him if we could put the fridge freezer in his car to take it to the repair shop. He said he’d come the next day.

That evening, something happened. Something which only happened three times the entire year we lived there. Something that pretty much never happens in a desert so you wouldn’t even think about it happening (we were basically living on the edge of a desert). Something that when it did happen, was so much worse for only happening a few times a year.

It rained.

The most torrential rain we’d seen since arriving. The wind and rain whipped the fridge door about furiously. It banged and crashed all evening. The rainwater got into every nook and cranny on that fridge. Inside, in the back, into the plug. Everywhere.

The plus side of this rainstorm was that the gassy smell and maggots had disappeared. Yehhhhh!

The down side, however, was that the fridge was SMASHED TO PEICES. Noooooooo…..

Our friend, George, arrived the next day and looked at it in shock. We pretended all was fine and piled it into the car and off we went to the repair shop. He also looked at it in shock and we just smiled a bit and convinced him to try and fix it.

A week or so later, Lovely hammer-wielding Lucy was passing by the repair shop with another teacher from the school and mentioned that they’d had our fridge for a week and we hadn’t heard anything from them.

“O yeh,” said the other teacher, knowingly. “They’ve had my dishwasher for about four years now.”

We spent the rest of the year without a fridge or freezer.

“Have you turned the switch on?”

A few years ago, I was working in a coffee place (the same one where I did my detective work) and my manager had asked me to turn off the freezer to defrost it one evening. I spent most of the evening, with this massive freezer, trying to keep the melting ice from flooding on to the floor, whilst also trying to serve customers and do everything else. It was a bit of a headache but it needed doing so I  didn’t mind. I left the door on the freezer open when I closed up and left, to get some air in. It had been a while since it was last defrosted and it was noticeable. All was well, I pottered off home, feeling like a job had been well done.

Next day was delivery day. I was due in at 2pm, around the time the stuff was being delivered. I was just walking along happily, humming a little tune maybe, ready for my shift.

As I approached, I saw the delivery man…. And I saw a huge freezer on wheels being hauled towards the stock room.

“Guys! What’s going on? Why is this here?”

“When I came in this morning, the freezer wasn’t working. It’s broken. So I called Head Office and got them to send a new one.”

I was actually astounded. I didn’t know what to say. The same person who had asked me to turn the freezer off and defrost it, had opened the shop the next day and thought the freezer was broken because it wasn’t on. How short-term can someone’s memory really be?

“Ok, stop. Take this freezer back to your van,” I told the delivery man. To the staff on shift, I checked, “Did anyone try turning it on?”

They said they had and pointed to a switch on the actual freezer, the one that you use to increase or decrease the temperature.

“No, did anyone turn it on at the wall?”

They pointed to a socket, with two plugs in and said those were both on so they didn’t know what was wrong. I’ll tell you what’s wrong. There are three machines here, two freezers and a fridge. And there are two plug sockets there. So clearly, there must be a third one somewhere else and it’s a safe bet that that’s where your problem lies.

I looked a little to my right and, sure enough, there on the wall, in plain sight, was the third plug. Switched off. I switched it back on. The freezer started up and made engine whirring sounds. The mystery was solved. I didn’t say anything else to the other staff. I didn’t need to.

You make you own conclusions about that story.

Another good one was when we got a new member of staff and when she was being trained, she was told to throw away the bins every night after her shift. The shop was always very clean when she had worked, even the coffee grinder had been cleaned out. Quite impressive, as it was usually only done once a week.

After a few weeks, we noticed that she always left the binbags upstairs and hadn’t taken them out. Someone said to her about taking them out and hadn’t she been told to do it and, as the conversation went on, it suddenly became clear what had been happening.

She thought she had been told to ‘throw away the beans’ every night! So when she finished her shift, she threw away all the perfectly fine and useable COFFEE BEANS and left the BINS in the shop…!

Oops……