I have sent about a dozen sacks to the charity shop, where hopefully someone will get use out of them. But I came across a carefully packed bag of hand knitted matinee jackets, capes, bottees and hats that my grandmother had made for J 19 years ago. As they are so beautiful and my grandmother died many years ago, I couldn't bare to part with them. Hopefully one day one of the boys might be able to use them for their children.
It got me reminiscing, and I thought about how things have changed and but how they are now turning around again.
When I was a child, in the 60's/70's it was quite normal to;
- Grow your own veg in the garden, and to be sent out by parents/grand parents to pick beans or peas or pull carrots for dinner - it was just something you did.
- Wear clothes that had been handed down by older siblings, cousins, friends or parents -why buy new clothes when there were perfectly good ones that could be reused.
- Your mother to darn / mend holes in clothes to get more use out of them - see above
- Walk or use public transport to go places - mothers either couldn't drive or the family only had one car
- Have homemade meals, and cakes - who else was going to make them!?
Now it is becoming common again to;
- Grow your own veg - people want to know what goes onto their food and that it hasn't been mutated in any way. Food is getting so expensive that more people are growing out of necessity, and it is a great way to get exercise with many of us sitting behind desks or working inside all day.
- Re-using clothes is now called - recycling or vintage and is very acceptable, can you imagine it in the 80's!
- Mending clothes gives them character, and originality so very in at the moment.
- People are returning to walking or public transport - this time due to the cost of fuel and trying to go greener or get fitter.
- There is an ever increasing return to homemade food - again we want to know what goes into our food and we are now realising it works out cheaper. With the numerous cooking shows on TV we have plenty of ideas for wonderful meals that can be cooked in minutes.
- Many of us are enjoying the revival of home crafts; knitting, crochet, sewing, cooking, but less that 40 years ago this was just a way of life.
We worry about what is happening at the moment, but everything goes in cycles things get worse and then they get better. We make everything, then we buy then we return to making again - we just give it different names and have different reasons, but we do it all the same. So in the end there is not point in worrying at all.
We may even find that the seasons get back to how they were, I can remember being told in my geography classes that we were heading for a mini ice-age!
But right now my clematis had come out in bud again and it's nearly October.
I'm off back to my cave now to cook a dinosaur egg omelette!
