Open Writing

Just looking around you can see so many social inventions that were not known 100 years ago. And you can see even more thousands of technological and scientific inventions.

But it is worth putting on record the social inventions that have been lost or are threatened with loss. Many would still be useful.

I LOOK IN MY KITCHEN with its everyday use of often home-made items up to 100 years' old—the spatter-cone for a fry-pan, the large ladle, two-tier dishrack that saves on drying, using a strainer in a cup instead of teabags, even cutting up old cotton garments for dish-cloths and dusters.

Every women's magazine used to have a feature of Household Hints. What housekeeping know-how has gone! At an Aberdeen meeting of old women, I asked them for canny practices their mothers used when Aberdeen was the world’s most famous centre of thrift—and the only thing any of them could think of was using old stockings to strain jelly-preserves.

PARENTS now read in Baby magazines about how to hold their baby—they have never held another one before. What Social Inventions in Parenting are being lost! How to get a baby to sleep by singing lullabies, and rocking a cradle. How to tell stories to children, and even make them up, at any time, rather than just read to them. How children can be ‘apprentices’ in kitchens and back-yard workshops. Simple toys that gave exercise can often not be found in toyshops now—from whipping tops and skipping ropes to hoops and even the newer hula hoops. Even cheap and simple go-kart pushers for children that are not like major footpath vehicles.

AND FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLE—why build pool-rooms to stop outback youth sniffing glue, when they should be out learning tracking and other survival skills that all Australians may need to learn from them.

(PS my spellchecker wanted to replace dishrack with disfrock, and teabags with teargas. What a social commentary is there!)

© Valerie Yule