The coronation of Queen Elizaneth II took place this year. Most children in the United Kingdom were given a spoon or a special painted Mug to mark the occasion. Many other keep-sakes were available. I remember having a cast metal model of the Royal Coronation Coach and horses.
The ceremony was broadcast live at a time when few televisions were available. It was not unusual to find crowds of people huddled around a small 300mm (12") black & white screen. Most streets had bunting and streamers attached to lamp-posts and telegraph poles.
Street parties were organised where nearly everyone wore red white & blue /gold coloured hats, and we children all waved flags at our party in Third Avenue, Oldfield Park, Bath.
After our tea-time Dad used to relax and go to sleep in a chair most days after work. His chair was next to the back room window, it had flat wooden arms with strips of wood with gaps in between, that joined the arm to the seat part. The bottom where he sat was made of slats of wood with a cushion to sit on. The back rest and its cushion could be adjusted so that the angle of it would slope more or less, a bit like adjusting a deck chair.
Mums chair was more squarish in shape, brown leather looking with round tacks all around the front edges holding the material in place.. She sat opposite Dad, at the other side of the fireplace. In front the fire was a rag rug, made of canvas sacking with thin strips of different coloured material sown into it. The floor was covered in a square piece of Linoleum that didn`t quite reach the skirting boards. The bare wood around the edge was painted with black gloss paint. There were cupboards either side of the fireplace. They had glass panelled doors at the top half, wooden ones at the bottom.
The fire basket was made of black coloured cast iron, there were two curved metal shelves either side of it. In front of the fireplace was a metal fender about 3" (75mm) high and 3ft (900mm) long. It had a metal box with a brown leather looking lid at each end. The lid had black metal tacks (studs) to hold the material over the horsehair stuffing which formed a little seat. The seats had hinges so you could lift them up and put things inside.
In the right-hand box was the sticks of wood and the firelighters. The firelighters were about 3" (75mm) long and about 2" (50mm) square. They had stiff brown coloured waxed paper around them. The ends were open and had sawdust mixed with parafin wax packed tight inside. You placed the firelighter in the grate, and then packed small coals around it first. It was lit with a match at either end, then when it was burning you put on the larger pieces of coal. That was how to start a fire to make sure it didn`t go out again.
The box on the left held all the old news paper to start the fire with if we had no firelighters. It also held the coal dust (small coal pieces that always broke off when you moved coal aroung). Mum would put a shovel full of coal dust on the fire once it had really got going, and she always did this on very cold winter nights to keep the fire in, (burning slowly) overnight. Making the fire was a dirty and messy job.
In front of the chimney breast we had a fireguard. Made of metal wire on a stiff metal frame, it sttod in front of the grate to stop things falling into the fire. In the fire-grate on the right was a metal stand, called a companion set. It held a round brush with stiff bristles to sweep up the ash with. A shovel to collect the ash and cinders in. A poker to move the coal about to stop the fire going out from lack of air flow. A long fork with 4 prongs on the end, about 3" (75mm) wide). It was called a toasting fork.
This item was for toasting bread in front of the fire with. You had to be careful not to burn it, and to make sure the bread didn`t fall off when it got hard. On the left of the grate area was the coal scuttle, a metal container, wide at the botton getting narrower as it went to the top. Mum (or Dad sometimes) used it to carry the coal in from the coal house in the conservatory at the back of our house. The scuttle had a handle on one side to be able to lift it, and the scoop at the end allowed you to control where the coal went on the fire. Too much at once would put the fire out.
The dirty plates, cups, pots and pans would be stacked onto the draining board, the edge of which over-hung the right hand side of the white glazed Belfast kitchen sink. Sometimes the washing up was not done for a few days by Mum. Rosie and me got this job to do on the days that Mum was too tired or just to busy.
We would get a wooden dining chair from the back room table and Rosie would kneel on this to reach down into the sink. Mum would boil the kettle on the gas ring and put some water and washing up liquid into the sink for us. I would have the drying towel and would stand on the floor next to Rosie.
Rosie would pile all the cleaner plates in first, swill them off and put them on the drainer at the side of the sink. When she had done enough to make room for more dishes she would put all the rest in. It was a big sink and could hold a lot of pots and pans. Rosie would pass down to me some plates that had started to drain off. I would finish drying them, carry them acroos the room and reach up, and push them as far onto the kitchen table as I could. We did this chore quite often when we got older.
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