Thursday 3 January 2008

CELLARS

People who live in houses with cellars, don't need fridges.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

or lots of reasons:

1.) We live in a convenience culture. You have to plan what you need if you have your typical fridge contents in a cellar otherwise you would end up spending most of your time walking backwards and forwards between the fridge.

2.)I used to live in a house where the cellar was rarely visited, probably due to the dirty state of the cellar and the general dangerous state of the steps. I know my Mum would not be able to make the trip up and down the stairs very easily these days.

3.) You are more likely to do yourself an injury carrying things up and down stairs rather than reaching across to the fridge.

Susan Harwood said...

Perhaps, in some ways, we need a more 'inconvenient' culture?

Nor am I suggesting we should all live in the same way. There are all sorts of reasons why some people need fridges.

All the same, more people have fridges than really need them . . . in my family, we don't have a fridge . . . and we don't have a cellar . . . but we're fine none the less!

And cellars are such useful places - not just for keeping things cool!

Sandra Dodd said...

It might depend where that cellar is. I live in New Mexico, cellars are rare, and it won't be cool enough to keep milk.

If people from milk-drinking cultures hadn't moved away from Tibet and northern Europe, maybe the world wouldn't need so much electricity.

Susan Harwood said...

Sandra

Putting cellars and fridges in the context of cross-cultural migration through the milennia makes my brain go cross-eyed.

Lots of gaps in my knowledge.

I associate milk-drinking with nomadic peoples throughout the world. Is cattle-herding not something that has, more or less, always happened in Africa?

And I know absolutely nothing about New Mexico except that 'Albuquerque' has always been one of my favourite words. How did people keep things cool there before electricity?

Susan

Sandra Dodd said...

Cattle herding doesn't equal milk drinking, though. Blood drinking maybe.

Before refrigeration, before ice boxes, people used fresh or dried. Jerkey was the way venison and beef were saved here. When I was little the neighbors still made it, hanging in strips on string under the eaves of the house. Now people use freezers.

In West Texas where there are tornados, my granny had a storm cellar. That's where she kept "canned goods," like green beans and pickles she canned herself (glass jars vacuum sealed). It was not a cool cellar, though. Stifling hot with dust, spiders and snakes. It was like the one on Wizard of Oz--a metal door slanty on a mound of dirt, and down inside there was a bed, shelves, chairs, and altogether I think it was about six feet wide and ten feet long. My parents both had gone into cellars many times as children.

Susan Harwood said...

The storm cellars sound both frightening and exciting . . . and I'm glad I've never had to go in one.

There were cellars in two of the houses where I grew up - and both were under the house.

The first was in London. There were three rooms in it. One was where coal and coke were stored. There were iron discs in the pavement outside. The dustmen would lift these out, tip the coal out of sacks and it would all come streaming down the shoot in a noisy cloud of dust. The smell was wonderful!

And there was a workroom down there too - with a wooden work bench with a vice on it(which, for some reason, I found especially interesting as a child - probabaly because I wasn't allowed to use a saw!).

And there was a middle room which was more like a little hall.

Then, in rural Essex, we had a cellar where apples from the orchard were laid out on wooden benches to keep. And there were boxes of walnuts . . . and layers of carrots were kept fresh in sand there through the winter. (They'd often gone a bit wrinkly before we'd eaten them all but the system worked well enough.)

And now houses are built without them . . . . !

Ohhhhh!

TartanWonder said...

Well, now, Susan, you've started something! I got your email, and I can't resist a friendly invitation to join in.
I've never lived in a house with a cellar, but as a child (up to the age of 10) I lived in a tenement building in Musselburgh, east of Edinburgh.
We were on the 2nd floor up a dark close. On the ground floor was a pub(lic house), the name of which escapes me.
I remember when the delivery of barrels of beer were made, originally on horse-drawn carts, then by lorries, the steel trapdoors in the pavement at one side of our building would be opened outwards and upwards. 2 or 3 stuffed hessian sacks would be placed on the kerb side of the opening in the pavement, and the barrels would be lowered by ropes wound around them, firstly on to the sacks, then, guided by a man standing on a metal-runged ladder descending down into the cellar, down into the cellar itself.
Much though we pleaded, we children were never allowed down that ladder, nor even to stand close enough to the hole in the pavement to be able to see down into the dark cellar.
Until I read your blog, I had not thought of that cellar and that trapdoor for at least 40 years. Thank you for bringing back a childhood memory.
My blog is http://davidslisttodo.blogspot.com/ and if you want to know about my efforts to do a charity walk around Britain go to www.davidpaterson.paterson.googlepages.com/home and www.seansshack.com/

David.

Susan Harwood said...

Dear David

I really enjoyed your comment.

In turn, it reminded me of our milkman when I was a child.

Although milkfloats were in common use, he must have been one of the last tradespeople (apart from rag and bone men) to use a horse drawn vehicle.

He didn't ride on the cart himself. He walked along the pavement and up the paths to the houses to put the bottles on the doorsteps while the horse, who knew where all the customers lived, walked on to the next house where a delivery had to be made.

As children, we used to go out with our mum to give lumps of sugar to the horse.

And this leads on to another issue . . . do you have milk delivered to your home in New Zealand?

We are still lucky to have two 'proper' milkmen come into our street. The trouble is, we don't like the milk delivered by one . . . and the other arrives too late in the morning to be of use.

Cellars . . . people contributing to this blog thought I was suggesting milk should be kept there . . . but I've never kept milk in a cellar (only other things) and we don't have one in our present house.

On the other hand, we don't have a fridge either . . . which doesn't cause us any bother . . .

I took a look at your blog. Am I right in understanding that you are preparing to make your mammoth expedition around Britain from a starting point of not usually walking anywhere at all?

Susan

TartanWonder said...

Dear Susan,

This is beginning to feel to me like that lovely film where two booklovers corresponded overseas to one another. Anthony Hopkins was the man, and I think he had the bookshop. Can't remember who the woman was, but I think she acted an American(?)
Anyway, that's the joy of a lot of thse blogs. The postings can throw up memories for you.
To answer you, Susan - We haven't had milk delivered at home since we lived in Murupara, a small town south of here, in 1977-79. Now, we just nip down to the supermarket for milk - which is in plastic bottles instead of glass or cardboard.
Susan, can you elaborate, please, on your question - "Am I right in understanding that you are preparing to make your mammoth expedition around Britain from a starting point of not usually walking anywhere at all?".
I'm not sure about the not anywhere at all. I imagine I've made some obscure reference in my blog. Help me out here, and I'll then be able to answer your question.

Susan Harwood said...

David

You say, on your blog, that you are starting your training with 4km a day, working up to 20km. You also say you have a blister after 7km.

This is why I was assuming you don't usually walk a lot.

To walk to town and back, something we would do in the ordinary course of a day, would be about 8km. If one of our children needs to attend a class or a party and we need to deliver and collect them after, that would be 16km.

So . . .

TartanWonder said...

Ah, Susan, I see where you're coming from!
Yes, I've done a fair bit of walking, including a 30 km walk a year or more ago to help raise funds for a local charity, our radio station. Finished with 3 beaut blisters that time!
My wife tells me I have soft skin, and she reckons it's due to my Scottish heritage. I don't know where she gets that one from, but being a mere married man I'm not prepared to argue with her!
When I was asked to prepare for the Rotorua Marathon it was all but precisely 4 months ahead of the date of the event (3 May 2008). I was advised to take it easy and build up gradually, more for the mental preparation than the physical.
So, I started at 2 Kms on a hard surface (road and pavement) course I had measured out around our town centre (I have an inherent fear of dogs, so I choose to walk in relatively dog-free areas when I can). My plan was to increase the distance daily by 2 kms, ignoring the 10% rule of walking/running training, and I was doing reasonably well with this until I reached 14 kms.
The blister that developed may have been due to the sock or the shoe, but I tried to keep walking on it anyway, because my first target was to get to 20 kms per day, and then build more slowly to 35 per day.
However, a really cutting pain at the area of the blister made me stop a couple of days ago, and I took a rest day to give the foot a chance.
I'm aware that my left foot flaps down a wee bit when I'm walking, and that may contribute to the blister problem, for I don't have the same problem with my right foot.
Also, I'm walking at a base rate of 2 Kms per 19 minutes, and trying to reduce that time as I go, so I'm pushing it a wee bit.
I can't afford the sports shoes and socks my mentor swears are the true answer to blister etc. problems, so I'll just have to carry on as is. I'll get there.

David.

Unknown said...

So if you DON'T have a cellar, you DO need a fridge? Do you have a fridge?

Susan Harwood said...

Anthony

No, we don't have a fridge.

Nor do we need one.

If we need to keep things cool, we keep them in front of a partly opened window or in the shade of a bush in the garden.

Occasionally, milk goes off. But, since the lightest of scones are made with sour milk - that's no problem.

This is the point. Hardly anyone needs a fridge . . . so why do people have them? . . . except to store half eaten food until it's thrown away . . . that seems to be quite a popular use of the space!

Susan Harwood said...

People who like SHOUTING AT THE RADIO may also like LUCY AND ESTHER TAKE ON THE ELECTION

Susan