You’ve Never Had it so Good!

When I am not writing blogs or generally messing about on the Internet, I have a proper job, working in a call centre for a major domestic appliance supplier. I often get calls from people who consider it a disaster that their dishwasher is not working and often feel like telling them to use a bowl and water with some washing up liquid and to get their hands wet. For all of those people, I am quoting below, an article I recently came across in an old Cookery Book dated 1926. The article is entitled:

Simple Rules for Cleaning Utensils

TO WASH DISHES

1. Scrape all scraps away from the plates and dishes.
2. Wipe very greay ones with soft paper.
3. Have a bowl of hot water, and if dishes are greasy use a little soap powder.
4. Wash cleaner dishes first, then greasy ones, adding more hot water.
5. Allow to drain, and then dry with a clean cloth.

NOTE:- When plates or dishes are burnt after baking, they can be easily cleaned with a damp cloth dipped in sal, or Monkey Brand.
TO CLEAN PANS

1. Wash pans inside and out with hot water (and soda if greasy).
2. Scour inside with coarse cloth, using brick dust or Brooke’s soap.
3. Re-wash, rinse and dry.
4. Place by the fire a few minutes to thoroughly dry.

TO WASH AND CLEAN KNIVES AND FORKS

1. Wash in hot water (keeping out the handles), and dry them.
2. Rub with cork, dipped in brick or emery dust; or rub on knife-board on which a little brick dust has been sprinkled.
3. Polish and dust with dry, clean cloth.

N.B. If the leather of knife board is found to wear the knives, a piece of carpet nailed on the board will prove quite as effective for polishing, and will not wear the knives. Or they may be polished by rubbibg between pieces of soft “felt” on which brick has been sprinkled.

TO CLEAN TINS AND SPOONS

1. Wash in hot water and a little soap to remove grease; then dry.
2. Rub with whitening made into a paste with cold water.
3. Polish and dust with a clean, dry cloth.

WOODEN UTENSILS

1. Wash with hot water and soft flannel cloth.
2. Rub a little soap on a scrubbing brush, and scrub with grain; a little fine sand, or brick dust, will also help to clean and keep wood a good colour.
3. Wsh with soap, thoroughly dry off the wood, and dry with a clean cloth.

I trust that the above will be of use to you, the next time your dishwasher breaks down!

In a Pickle

Bill worked in a pickle factory. He had been employed there for a number of years when he came home one day to confess to his wife that he had a terrible complulsion. He had an urge to stick his penis into the pickle slicer.

His wife suggested that he should see a sex therapist to talk about it, but Bill said he would be too embarassed. He vowed to overcome his compulsion on his own.

One day, a few weeks later, Bill came home early. His wife could see at once that something was seriously wrong.

“What’s wrong Bill?” she asked.

“Do you remember how I told you I had this tremendous urge to put my penis into the pickle slicer?”

“Oh, Bill, you didn’t?”

“Yes, I did.”

“My god Bill, what happened?”

“I got fired.”

“No, Bill, I mean what happened to the pickle slicer?”

“Oh…..she got fired too.”

Famous quotations

A few more of my favourite quotations.

“The mariner to sail with is he who has been shipwrecked for he knows where the reefs are.”- Daniel Defoe.

“The Golden Rule is that there are no Golden Rules.” - George Bernard Shaw.

“You can observe a lot by just watching.” - Yogi Berra (US baseball player).

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Derek Bok (President of Harvard).

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” - Sir Isaac Newton.

“Anyone can be a genius if they work as hard as I do.” Johan Sebastian Bach.

“To find a prince, you need to kiss an awful lot of frogs.” - Anon.

“Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.” - Aldous Huxley.

“We had better be concerned about the future because that’s where we are going to spend the rest of our lives.” - Mark Twain.

“For two days labour you ask two hundred guineas?” “No, I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime.” - Whistler after someone queried his charge for painting a portrait.

“We are not here to sell off a parcel of vats and boilers but wealth beyond dreams of avarice.” - Dr Johnson when auctioning Mrs Thales brewey.

If you were born before the 1980’s!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1940’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking .

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun.

We drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because……

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem .

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms……….WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents ..

We played with worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

Made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out any eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Local teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned

HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good - and while you are at it, show it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?!