LiR in some recent posts has commented how short-hand, and even copy- or audio-typing, are no longer widely taught as key secretarial skills (being replaced by modern word-processing, OCR and voice recognition systems). Similarly a short while ago a survey by the Good Housekeeping Institute (chores we can no longer do) suggested that our reliance on technology and a throw-away culture means that many people say they no longer know how, or at least are not confident, to do simple household tasks such as sewing on a button, wiring a 3-pin plug, or bleeding a radiator ... to say nothing of cleaning, gutting and filleting a fish ... or a chicken!

 
So what basic tasks were just a normal part of nearly everyone’s lives which are now completely redundant or forgotten?
 
For a start what about getting a light - for a fire or candle - with just a flint and steel? For centuries it was a basic skill that everyone, high or low, rich or poor, master, mistress, maid or manservant, would have acquired and been proficient at from fairly early in life. But who could do it now?

Yes - sewing - real sewing, or "needlework"! Victorian girls stitched and stitched all day, it would seem. They could even do something mysterious called "turning" a dress. I'm not entirely sure what this entailed, but I know I couldn't do it!

They were all expected to be able to do it and it was not seen as a lowly servants job. Catherine of Aragon continued to sew Henry's shirts even when he was canoodling with mistress Boleyn, although admittedly she was probably making the statement that she was still his lawful wife and that mending shirts was simply what wives did.

Yes - got right up Anne Boleyn's nose too, by all accounts. She had a fit when she found out.

The ability to turn out beautiful needlework was one of the marks of an accomplished woman. Perhaps AB was useless at it (I certainly was - my needlework teacher at school damned me with the withering comment: "***** is not nimble with her needle." I wasn't, and gave up the whole wretched business as soon as I could. Mind you, I regret that now.)

The whole clothing business (with a small 'b') was very much the responsibility of the mistress of the house regardless of her rank: from Roman matrons through to medieval dowagers and duchesses, they are all often depicted with a distaff, portable loom, or embroidary frame. Didn't Caesar's wife, Calpurnia, or was it Livia, Augustus's wife, hold regular gossipy spinning/weaving parties for emminent Senator's wives? I suppose it might have been a bit of political spin (excuse the pun) to portray the head of state's wife as 'mother of the nation' and all that, but they do all still seem to have been expected to be competent at these menial household tasks, if only so that they were able to manage the servants and keep an eagle eye on the household budget.

Some of the satirical pamphlets attacking Oliver Cromwell and his wife, Elizabeth, were based on the premise that while she had the airs of a queen, she was really just a country bumkin, and that she was a bad household manager, always cooking the same simple meals. This was in contrast to the best-selling recipe collection supposedly taken from Queen Henrietta-Maria's personal recipt book which risibly implied she stuffed her own sausages and frugally boiled left-over bones for stock. Elizabeth Cromwell of course could never win: if she made use of left-overs she was depicted as cheap and mean, wwhile if Henrietta-Maria did it, or rather implied she did, she was portrayed as frugal, careful and competent.

A and E report avocado hand casualties because people are inept with the skills needed in food preparation. Preparing fowl from plucking, gutting and trussing along with rabbit skinning and de-boning a side of pork/bacon are all skills I learned from watching my mother - but no longer pushed to use. I can't think of any such skills my daughter could have learned from me. Most of her age even have no idea how to deal with fresh herrings and thus never buy them..... must try this out with grandsons who will eiher puke or relish the task, there's no tellings there. How did you learn your far more advanced skills, MM?

Well I had to change a 3-pin plug recently and will own up to looking up the methodology on YouTube.  I have changed plugs a number of times over the years but it was a while since I had done so and therefore I double checked (though I was probably being extra cautious as there was a diagram provided with the plug).  I know people who still sew and do so myself though I'm not very prolific.  When I retired I intended to dabble in a few crafts (Jill of all, mistress of none) such as marbling (making patterns with paint or whatever on a carrageen base and then taking a print of said patterns) and to perhaps get back into crochet and knitting (I can crochet much faster than I can knit) and there is a chair with a reed/grass seat which is sagging which I intended to restring or at least attempt to.  Now I'm 7 and 1/2 (nearly) years into retirement and really haven't done all that many of my planned projects.  I traced off a pattern for a top just before I broke my arm so now 3 months down the line I should cut out the pattern and then pin it on the fabric and cut the pieces out in material and get on with it.  If I get some typing in to do I usually prioritise that (it helps the pension after all) and then sometimes I feel fatigued later in the day and just don't feel like doing anything.

I remember Ray Mears showing how to get a fire going with flint (can't remember whether he also used steel) on one of his programmes.  Did Bear Grylls do it too?  (Though since it came out that Bear Grylls and company had been staying in posh hotels overnight after stopping filming for the day I take his shows with a grain of salt).

I can also remember travelling to work on the train at some time in the 1990s and a man was sewing a leather saddle.  I imagine that is a fairly specialised skill.  There seems to be a community of people (mainly youngish women) who are interested in corsetry and some make their own corsets.  I bought a pattern for a corset last year (an easy one at least it is alleged to be) because the last time I did what I do that masquerades as gardening I developed an achy back and I wondered if a corset might give me some support.  Again I haven't cut out the pattern (haven't even bought any suitable fabric yet).

One thing I regret not learning is how to play an instrument (I don't think "Three Blind Mice" on the descant recorder self-taught counts).  I know "Every good boy deserves favour/fun" for the lines on the upper stave and F-A-C-E for the spaces on the upper stave but I wouldn't have a clue about the lower stave and even the upper stave I can't pitch in my head.

Yes P, cleaning and preparing rabbits, chicken and fish was a basic skill of housewives, and not just rural ones, at least up until and during the war wasn't it. My mum's family were fishing folk and kept chickens, mostly for the eggs but they did sometimes kill and eat them. The war, and associated food rationing, probably did a lot to preserve some of those skills for a decade longer than otherwise. There are of course nowadays those that say that morally one shouldn't eat meat unless one is prepared to kill and prepare it oneself, and that if more of us were accordingly forced to confront the reality of meat production a lot more of us would not only be vegetarian but would probably have better health (the nation was probably never healthier in general terms than under wartime rationing). On the other hand, one could argue that if you don't have to do a dirty job, why do it ... clearing a blocked toilet is usually a simple job but is unpleasant and why do it if you have the money to get someone else to do it?

But the effects certainly are that generally people are more separated from the unpleasant side of human existance than ever before, flush toilets, supermarkets, refuse collections, etc mean that urban living is now quite sanitised and the unpleasant tasks are now out of sight and out of mind. Even things like cheap socks, mean that it isn't really worth learning to knit or darn a holed sock ... but equally mean we don't need to confront the realities of sheep rearing or petrochemical nylon manufacture, and child labour in distant countries. Is that not a worrying thing in itself?

Wiring a 3-pin plug is an interesting one. At school we were all taught how to do it, as well as how to calculate the correct amperage of fuse, and LiR I see nothing wrong in consulting a manual or youtube to find out how it is done ... indeed I'd probably check myself if for no other reason that I believe the standard wire colours now in use throughout Europe differ from old ones, both in Britain and in France (and a lot of the wiring in my house is quite old). But the 3-pin plug thing is also interesting as nowadays all new appliances have by law to be supplied with a moulded-on plug, and there really is little need these days to wire it up yourself. This was of course, fairly sensibly, done as a safety measure, and has greatly reduced the incidence of electocution and fire. Wiring a plug is a forgotten but also redundant skill.

LiR you also mention wishing you'd learned to play a musical instrument. In the 19th century nearly all eligible young ladies and gentlemen would have strived to be reasonable piano players, or at least competent on some instrument. In the days before gamophones and the wireless if you wanted music you had to provide it yourself, and piano-playing, like dancing, was a key social skill to acquire if one was to succeed in the marrriage market. Although we now have musical devices everywhere, sometimes almost intrusively so, actually playing an instrument is far from redundant as making music, either alone or with others, is great fun. I used to play in an orchestra and in a small group - I wish I'd kept it up.

Meles Meles, I believe "She spun and weaved in wool" or words to that effect was one of the bog-standard inscriptions on funerary monuments for Roman women. Elizabeth Cromwell's and Henrietta Maria's cooking skills were, of course, irrelevant - both the Queen and the Lady Protectress had the service of a large catering staff, including those cooking for the Court and the 'Privy Kitchen' preparing food for the personal use of the King and Lord Protector (and presumably their spouses!)

I once humilated myself failing to light a fire with a tinderbox at the invitation of a costumed interpreter. I felt things would have been easier if I'd just been allowed to use a pinch of black powder and the flintlock of his musket!

I guess strictly speaking, looking back to my earlier post, knitting and crochet have never gone out.  I seem to remember Ferval mentioning making something for her grandchild.

I remember when I was younger that washing vegetables before cutting/cooking them was standard practice until they started coming (often) pre-washed and pre-packed in plastic coverings. I usually wash them even if it says they have been washed.  I must admit I do sometimes use the pre-prepared (the gluten free variety these days) meals available at the supermarket.  I keep saying I'm going to cook from scratch (well I do sometimes).  I don't know how true it was but I do remember learning that in the days of drawing water from the well water was not always deemed to be clean and pure and that people did more home brewing in days of yore (although I do seem to remember something on this website about people nowadays who indulged in homemade beer making and the making of wine or sloe gin or whatever as a hobby).  I remember home brewing was quite popular back in the 1970s, so maybe it is reduced skill rather than a redundant one.

Addendum: there are of course many versions of the "Charming Billie" folksong - where the lady Billie (Billy?) has been courting is a young thing and cannot leave her mother.  In some versions Billie's Mum interrogates him asking about the young lady in whom he is interested enquires "Can she bake a cherry pie?", "Can she make a feather bed?", "Can she knit and can she spin?".  In another version Mum asks "Can she bake and can she brew?" and in other versions (which I never knew about before) Mum asks him if he's shared a bed with the lady in question.  I guess people both male and female still bake and we still have to make the bed (in the sense of changing the bedclothes periodically) though I suppose it is sometimes convenient to buy cakes etc from a shop if just for the time-saving factor (I have to restrict consumption of cakes nowadays - doctor's orders as I'm on blood pressure tablets but on the odd occasion for a treat I'll buy a ready cooked gluten free cake (or set of small cakes).

Another thing I mentioned some time ago on the website (can't remember which thread sorry) was that I'd stumbled on some videos about "making" soap powder.  Basically it was grinding up soap and mixing it with sodium carbonate (washing soda) and borax substitute.  I did have a go at it and it's quite a fun thing to do but I don't know if one saves money greatly by doing so.  Of course, it wasn't really anything new as I'm pretty sure it's what the Victorian and Edwardian woman would have used to do their washing though they would have used proper borax I expect rather than substitute.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Of course, it wasn't really anything new as I'm pretty sure it's what the Victorian and Edwardian woman would have used to do their washing though they would have used proper borax I expect rather than substitute.

Victorian and Edwardian ladies were lucky as industrially made soap had started to appear ... but go back just a few decades earlier, and they'd have had to use lye, made at home from wood ash carefully sieved from the cinders of the kitchen fire, or have used locally foraged plants like soapwort. If they wanted to get their sheets 'whiter than white', they'd have had to use stale urine collected from the household's chamber pots, left to ferment a bit, and then worked into the clothes by treading them in a tub. And that's on top of all the labour involved in fetching water and coals for the boiling copper. No wonder wash day was literally a whole day's work (with more days for drying, ironing and mending).

When washing day came round you might have been lucky enough to have a posher.



It's hard to believe but I really did have one of these, with a longer handle, in the 60s. My mother-in-law, who never threw anything out, gave it to me to assist with nappy washing before I could aspire to a twin tub washing machine. It worked.

One long departed skill is basic car maintenance, these days there might as well not be a bonnet unlocking knob were it not for the need to top up the water for the windscreen washers.

On the other hand, hand crafts like sewing, crochet and knitting are frightfully fashionable but largely as a middle class pastime not an essential skill. It's probably significant that John Lewis is one of the few places left with a haberdashery department.

How long, I wonder, until handwriting joins the list of forgotten skills? Someone on the radio this morning commented that greetings cards are now one of the few places where adults regularly use or see anything inscribed by hand.

I keep popping back to the website today as a respite from a very boring piece of typing [or text processing as its on the computer?] (but I must press on with it because the lady wants it back today).

Thanks for the info about the washing MM and ferval, I seem to remember reading something about cloth during its manufacture being "fulled" with human urine at one time (I think they use soda ash now but don't quote me).  My mother told me that my grandmother (her mother) used (in fine weather obviously) sometimes used to take garments and put them on gorse bushes to dry - and another thing was to throw water over sheets hanging (on the line? Not sure) so that sunshine combined with the water would have a bleaching effect. My mother's first washing machine was a secondhand non-electric one where you moved a handle on the top of the contraption to agitate the clothes - I didn't used to mind moving the handle to and fro). I can remember my mother sewing by hand before she bought a sewing machine and she knitted some winter woollies for my brother and I when we were young.  She could never get the hang of crochet though.  Did people do their own bread making, butter making and cheese making or would that have been down to the baker or the farmer and his wife?

I remember my mother making homemade jam.
I don't know if anyone still does this.

I made a dozen pots of home-made, and home-grown, fig jam just yesterday (figs are not of course in season at the moment - I'd picked mine last year and had them in the freezer).

One year we had a glut of plums on the (now dead) plum tree and made (not so much me personally) plum preserve and some apple preserve also. That was back in the hot summer of 1976.  I do know women who still make jam and chutneys though I'd say they were probably a minority.

I keep meaning to buy a bread maker so that I can make gluten free bread (though strictly speaking bread can be made without a bread making machine).  Well, better get back to the typing...

Hand mincing the last of the Sunday joint is probably no longer done...... modern appliances just do not come up with the same stuff as the old fashioned hand mincer. I have one but no suitable place to fix it..... counter/ table tops no longer have the broad over hang edge. Abroad my cook used to use a cross support beneath the table - resourceful chap, The hard labour there is improving with bought spices but I recall hearing the chink chink from kitchens all around with spices being ground for aromatic paste on a hard stone, 

Here, door to door gypsies no longer  hawk split wood pegs and  twirly whittled flowers and useful baskets, no rag and bone carts nor knife sharpeners, either - we never turned any away. And by the quay and in sunny corners folk would gossip and make fishing nets all day. For all the heavier work load no one was forever rushing off somewhere but found the time for sitting back, taking in the world with a wry word and observation from time to time which seems to have become a redundant pastime and lost skill. When did I last see someone sit by their open front door of a sunny evening?

And talk of laundry - what of starching? I loved ironing damp things to folded perfection and would do so now if we used anything that screamed out for it. The spray on stuff is just not the same. But sadly we do not (here) have the daily pleasure of opening a  starched table napkin at each meal - a home anyway. I am talking myself into doing a heap - and probably will. I suppose one can still get laundry starch?

thevintagewashhouse.co.uk sells it (proper starch) online, Priscilla.  There are probably other places it can be bought - Ebay or Amazon?  There is an old-fashioned hardware shop (totally the opposite end of town to where I live but it is near where I go for the sign language class) that sometimes has things that are hard to get elsewhere though I haven't seen him selling starch.  Sometimes independent hardware stores have things that are hard to get elsewhere.  Talking of old-fashioned washing powder I quite like Acdo but it's difficult to get these days, though sometimes Home Bargains has it.

The gypsies sometimes come down the road where I live (though not that often) asking about scrap metal but they are in vans or those things that are half van and half small lorry if you know what I mean (not describing them very well, I'm sorry) and not with a pony and trap as many years ago.  Not used wooden pegs for ages - it's been plastic ones from Home Bargains or Savers or maybe Wilko's (I don't think the more pricey ones in other shops are actually any better).

Talking laundry ... remember the fastest and easiest way to iron a shirt is to do it the correct order: cuffs, sleeves, yoke, collar, front panels, back. But I'm sure you knew that.

I knew that and have told the lady who irons shirts here. She cannot fold one tho - any help on that... a dying skill if ever - and one I never acquired.

The Girl Siduri makes jam from our own raspberries and blackcurrants (and from any cheap surplus fruit, pineapple & apple for one, and apple & orange marmalade - wartime recipes, plus banana), mint, rosemary and redcurrant jelly as well as the ubiquitous Blackberry and apple, various chutneys, pickled onions, red cabbage etc. so the skills still exist here (I'm the bread maker now I'm no longer a breadwinner btw).

Triceratops wrote:

I remember my mother making homemade jam.
I don't know if anyone still does this.

A colleague of mine makes vast quantities of jam (and pickles and chutneys) which he sells for charity.

My sons make their own jam, as I used to, but am not able to now.  My husband is making chutneys from our tomatoes.  I see see apricot jam in our fridge made by husband two years ago in which he put some kernels which I used to do too as I like the texture.  They are apparently poisonous raw, but when cooked they lose that quality (at least I am still alive! after years of eating them).

I was still using a hand-scrubber for clothes (have forgotten its proper name) till quite recently.  The one where you rubbed the clothes up and down to get the dirt out.  Good for mud, etc.  

There has been discussion in our media this week about children not knowing how to hand-write, but I expect that is just a media beat-up.

Horses.

In times when horses were the main means of motive power and transportation, many people must have been competent riders: even people who weren't wealthy enough to have their own horses might have ridden regularly as part of their job. Every farm boy, though he might actually ride like a sack of potatoes could probably still ride. Middle class tradesmen, craftsmen and shop keepers might have on occasion the need to travel, and if their destination wasn't served by regular coaches or carters, and it was too far to walk, they could hire a horse, mule or donkey (Pepys mentions doing just this).

Horses were everywhere and everyone must have been familiar with them. There were of course specialised horse-associated jobs: drivers, ostlers, stableboys, farriers, saddlemakers etc. but even the most urban of city street-urchins would have been ready to earn a few pennies holding a lord's horse, rubbing it down with a wisp of straw if necessary while his lordship conducted business, and then helping him back into the saddle afterwards. Through simple observation and familiarity I suspect most people, of both sexes, knew how to handle horses, how saddles and harness worked, how you cared for them ... and all the tricks and nuances equivalent to people knowing how to put newspaper over their car windscreen on frosty nights, and knowing, at least in theory, how to put fuel in a car's tank and air in the tyres. Nowadays nearly every adult can drive a car but it wasn't so long ago that private car ownership was so uncommon that driving was only done by enthusiasts, or professionals like lorry- and bus-drivers or chauffeurs (my mother's diary records with pride her first ever journey in a private car - as opposed to a bus - driven by a wealthy uncle in the mid 1930s when she was 10 years of age). And now with self-drive cars already on the streets how long before driving also becomes a completely redundant skill?

I have never ridden a horse, I've not even passively sat on a seaside donkey. I have no familiarity with horses and I wouldn't know the first thing about caring for them, if only for ten minutes or so. I suspect in this I am by no means alone. But am I right in my feeling that knowledge of general horse-care, if not actual horse-riding, was common amongst the majority of the population ... or was it really only restricted to the wealthy (riding) and trained specialists (ostling etc)?

Horses! That's a very interesting post, MM.

Walking? Getting to school on foot is becoming a thing of the past. Never mind buses and mum in her posh 4X4, kids actually have taxis paid for the local authority these days. It's like something out of a Monty Python sketch.

I wonder if this surgeon in Scotland, who walked miles in the snow last week to operate on a cancer patient, took a taxi to school?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-43343056

Ordinary people, who could not afford the upkeep of a horse, walked everywhere...

... or cycled. The pushbike was invented in the mid 19th century as the poor man's horse, partly, if memory serves, because of the rising costs of animal feed and increasing urbanisation, and facilitated by better roads.

I walked to school but many of my classmates cycled, as indeed did some of the teachers ... only a couple had mopeds when they were old enough. And of course there were also school buses.

The humble push-bike was a great liberator for children in my youth: no longer was I constrained distance-wise by walking or limited by bus and train routes. I passed my driving test at 17 - a fact that still causes me problems with car insurance because the minimum age in France was then (is still?) 18 years of age - but the thought of having my own car and driving to school would have been ridiculous fantasy (I obtained my first second hand car when I was 32!). Now I gather a brand new car is quite a common coming-of-age birthday gift for 18 and even 17 year-olds ... at least in some parts of the home counties.

But talking about horses ...

One often reads about people on long journeys, picking up fresh horses en route. Now I can understand how that might work for established coach routes, swapping horses at fixed points (coaching inns) along the route, or for long distance carting businesses, but how did it operate for individual travellers? You started out on one horse and swapped it, perhaps several times, along the way ... did you then have to return the same route swapping back exactly the same horses, so that everyone eventually gets their own horse back? What if you were going a circular route, or were intending to come back by sea? And if you were away some time did the whole chain of remounts just stay in their allotted places, doing nothing except eating and running up stabling charges, which presumably would have to paid on the way back?

Or was there a sort of national clearing system, perhaps a bit like that which used to be operated by the railways, where wagons might find themselves coupled and decoupled to trains running all over the country and on the lines of different companies... but eventually all found their way back home to their owner for maintenance and repair? This swapping-the-horses thing has always intrigued me.

Early car ownership and driving young, yes but perhaps tinkering beneath the bonnet is no longer a skill that as I recall many once did. I recall being handed spark plugs to clean and holding spanners whilst my father bashed about in the bonnet shadows.

I knew how to service my bike, too - tho I recall a lad in our class who got to the chain of bis by taking a can opener to the casing......he went on to get a degree in Russian.

Martha Stewart has a video on YouTube on how to fold a shirt - I suppose there is more than one way to do so.  At the moment I can't copy links on this laptop.  I usually hang my blouses in the wardrobe but I suppose ladies' blouses and gents' shirts are different - though I do have a pattern for a lady's shirt that I made a few years ago (but without the collar and with shorter sleeves and the yoke in a contrast fabric- that was because I was using fabric left over from another project though and running short).  I usually hang that up, probably me being lowbrow again!

My parents weren't awfully keen on me cycling because they were scared I'd have an accident.  Although I would not advocate such behaviour I did cycle further than the local area to which I had been confined (and on the road which they had forbidden to me) without their knowledge.  I still see quite a few people cycling though - maybe that is because there is a bike track (lane of the pavement dedicated to cyclists).  Sometimes I walk into town and get the bus back (now I'm getting a bit more active again).  I was about 30 when I passed my driving test but something more important to purchase always came up whenever I had enough put by to think of getting a car so I never bought one and I'm getting a bit antique to start now.  I really don't enjoy driving anyway though I realise that anyone who lives in an outlying village needs a car unless they are gong to be splashing out on taxis a lot (the last bus going past my house - which goes out through some of the country villages goes at about 6.20 during the week and 5.20 on a Saturday and there ain't no such animal on Sunday).  I did use taxis to come home sometimes when I still had my arm in a sling (like if I missed the 2pm bus - not that I made that many trips to town but sometimes I needed to - I didn't feel like hanging around in town with a manky arm till 3.45 which was the next bus - and would have been full of school kids.  I don't think the school kids would have deliberately knocked my arm but they are naturally boisterous).

Don't Gil and the girl Siduri keep hens?  In my childhood the area where I lived (which is where I'm based now) was a 1930s "semi" part of ribbon development so there was a field at the back of us and a field at the back of the houses over the road).  The field over the road is still there but that's only because it's part of a flood plain; the cow pasture at the back of where I am went in the 1960s.  I can remember a couple of families keeping hens and I think my mother bought eggs from them sometimes and there was a house that was slightly out into what was then (no longer) countryside where my Mum bought eggs too.

I will plead guilty to having ridden a donkey being led around on New Brighton beach when I was about 3 or 4 (that beach is sort of opposite Liverpool on the Mersey).  Other than that I was led around on a pony at a fundraiser when I was at my old (senior) school where a former pupil who had her own riding stables brought a few ponies to give rides to raise a bit of dosh for charity.  I actually had one proper lesson in riding on holiday with a friend 20 years ago but I never followed up on it.  I suppose actors and actresses in "period" dramas sometimes have to bone up on their riding skills!

I seem to remember it was possible (not saying it's impossible but it's harder now) to get a TV or a radio fixed in the 1950s/60s before people would say it was probably cheaper to chuck the old one out and buy a new one.  But then I did manage to get my 2nd hand laptop mended when it went bump so I won't say the skill of repairing has entirely gone out.  Depends what you are having repaired I suppose.

There used to be until quite recently a little craft shop in the shopping precinct nearest to me - the lady decided she wanted to retire and spend time with her grandchildren so I can't really blame her.  However another similar shop has opened up closer to town (as in closer but not quite in the town centre) and I see the new(ish) shop is offering classes in subjects such as knitting socks in the round and making a lampshade.

Sorry I crossed posts here, MM. I too have wondered long about this horse hire - also used in ancient times. The haulage of great loads too when one thinks of the building of huge temples and so on. Systems were clearly in place long before 'Boris Bikes.'

Priscilla wrote:

I knew how to service my bike, too - tho I recall a lad in our class who got to the chain of his by taking a can opener to the casing......

... like my surreptitious use of mum's dessert spoons to change a bike tyre.

Cars are now almost deliberately made to be unrepairable by the common man or woman, being all sealed uints of integrated, computer-controlled electronics ... rather than being of tinkerable cams, belts, cables, levers and other mechanical widgets. I reckon it's all a ploy by the car makers and garages ... in the same vein as Hillaire Belloc's comment:

Lord Finchley tried to mend the electric light
It struck him dead, and serve him right.
It is the duty of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.

or...

ferval wrote:

One long departed skill is basic car maintenance, these days there might as well not be a bonnet unlocking knob were it not for the need to top up the water for the windscreen washers.

This is so true. Up until the 1980s it was common to see people of all ages and sexes under the bonnet or even using a jack and going under the car. With the advent that decade of electronic diagnostics, however, the relationship between producer and consumer began to change. For example electric windows became standard. From around 2000 car manufactures started deliberately designing engines to be user unfriendly as part of an active policy to discourage tinkering by owners. Nuts, bolts and screws are put in inaccessible places which can only be reached with specialised spanners and screwdrivers. Some makes and models now even have headlamp bulbs which can’t be replaced without the major displacement of engine parts. And over the last 10 years they’ve started selling cars without handbrakes or even without keys.

I don't think it's just cars, Vizzer.  I think the batteries of Macs are sealed in (unlike the laptops that run on the other operating system) so you have to get a specialist to put a new battery in if necessary.  Well maybe a very skilled person could do it but I don't have that sort of skill.

I haven't seen a chimney sweep for a long time - not so many coal fires these days I suppose, though some ash would have been useful to spread on the snow when the Beast from the East hit last week.

The talk of nuts and bolts reminds me that one of the jobs I have been putting off is affixing a new cat flap.  Pro-temp I've been covering the hole at night with something waterproof and putting something against it so Pebbles (the cat) can't get out - though maybe she could if she was really determined.  I fixed the old one several years ago so I should be able to fix the new one; it's just getting up off my sitting down area and doing it.  The hole is already there this time; the first time I put a cat flap in I had to cut the hole for the contraption with a padsaw and my hands became really sore (probably because I did a sedentary secretarial job rather than manual work I guess).

Most "sealed" batteries only require a screwdriver to remove - and a willingness to laugh to scorn the "you will invalidate the warranty" notice.
Yes, we do keep hens, and ducks - including Donald the Aylesbury drake (in common with most so-called "aylesburys" he's more Pekin than his official breed.). He's 13 and a half, having been bought for Xmas dinner 13 years ago, along with his late mate Daisy. He's blind now, but has just been evicted from Castle Duckula for sexually abusing the Muscovies.

I recall my mother finding a shoe button hook in her late mother's sewing box. I overheard discussion with her sister - always listened in when the elders dropped voice - that they also came in handy for abortions. ...snuffle chortle - I had to look that up - most unwise. She  probably eventually  gave it to the charity shop. Mother never threw out much.

The girl Siduri has mislaid her bodgers (aka poggers). So she can't make any new rag rugs. We can skin, paunch and gralloch a wide variety of livestock, but her wrist is no longer equal to applying the quietus - my job. Well into my teens my grandmother used posher, washboard, copper stick and mangle every Monday - my task was usually poshing. As to flint and steel - it's a bit of a cheat but I can do the firelighting bit, if I have some cotton wool as tinder that makes it easy, dried moss etc is more of a problem. You need it dry to light a fire, and you need a fire to get it dry enough.

Alasm no tinderboxes at our Tesco. Many homes now have nothing with which to light a fire - should they have need (apart from stuff made by Hotpoint). The skill you mention may well revive. A;so in gran's cache were hair tongs - instruments of family torture heated in the coals enough to crepe paper and then hair is twisted around to make ringlets. I had this done a few times when forced  into fancy dress  which had also to disguise ensuing burned ears.

Priscilla wrote:

Alasm no tinderboxes at our Tesco. Many homes now have nothing with which to light a fire - should they have need (apart from stuff made by Hotpoint). The skill you mention may well revive. A;so in gran's cache were hair tongs - instruments of family torture heated in the coals enough to crepe paper and then hair is twisted around to make ringlets. I had this done a few times when forced  into fancy dress  which had also to disguise ensuing burned ears.

Priscilla,

still have matches in our house and gas from the "bonbonne" (have to ask MM what it is in English? I don't know it in Dutch. "drukfles?" a flask, cylinder under pressure?) at least to cook...and in that we are independent from the outerworld...till the "bonbonne" is empty....

Kind regards, Paul.

My macbook is secondhand so I should imagine it is now well out of warranty.  

Priscilla, I remember my mother (without much success) trying to coax my hair into curls with home perms and variously pipe cleaners and rags.  I hated rollers and having to sit under the hood thing at the hairdresser's.  When I have my hair cut these days (and in the months of having a manky right arm I went a couple of times also to have it washed because I couldn't reach up properly to my head) I always have it blow dried.

A 'bonbonne' is a big domestic gas cylinder for propane or butane, the sort of thing that's about half a metre diametre by about the same in height ... (the same word is also used for big liquid containers, the sort of thing that in English might be called a carboy or a demijohn etc).

Meles meles wrote:

A 'bonbonne' is a big domestic gas cylinder for propane or butane, the sort of thing that's about half a metre diametre by about the same in height ... (the same word is also used for big liquid containers, the sort of thing that in English might be called a carboy or a demijohn etc).

That's exactly what we mean with "bonbonne", Meles meles and thanks for the right description.

Kind regards, Paul.

Talking about hair perms reminds me of something that is no longer necessary and was probably quite dangerous in its time.  It has been superseded by hair straighteners.  We used to iron my beautiful vain flatmate's hair so it was straight in the days when straight hair was de rigeur. We put brown paper on her hair and then ironed it as close to her head as we could.  It left a bit of a ridge where we couldn't get any closer.  

Two at least of my sons keep chickens and gather their eggs.  Some of these old ways are coming back into fashion as people become more environmentally conscious.  One of them has a fire, too, which uses old newspapers and I am not sure whether they use matches or some other form of fire-lighting.  

But old kerosene-lit and charcoal-fuelled barbecues are no longer used; they are all gas now, and very large. And one of our sons built himself a pizza oven, unheard of when I was a child (as were pizzas themselves).    

As regards horses just last weekend we had a cavalcade come into our small town which increased the population ten-fold.  I was amazed at how many people keep horses and ride them.  We didn't have any horses on our farm when I was growing up, though my uncle kept a pony which even at its sedate pace terrified me.  But people all over Otago seem to have horses, and what a fiddle they are!  Shoeing, feeding, watering, sheltering, buying equipment, then in reward tipping the rider off so they have permanent injuries.

Regarding horses, for some years I did some riding as this supposedly was good training of the balance as well as being good for movements of the stomach, but due to my inability to actually control those wretched aninmals and a few other circumstances I eventually gave it up.

As someone said, "They bite at one end, cr*p at the other, and are bl**dy uncomfortable in the middle".



Edited because of spelling

With the minimum of irony The Guardian reports that Prince Charles is deeply concerned that old skills were being lost and that people were growing up without knowing how the world really works...

Prince Charles laments loss of craft skills in communities

Never had a proper job in his life but at least he knows how to ride a horse!

This doesn't fully answer the question about the horses that weren't coach horses but this refers to livery stables in America and gives something of their history 

Livery yard - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livery_yard

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I think nowadays livery stables are just any stables which hire out horses (and maybe have a riding school attached?)


Perhaps ordinary farm folk did supplement their income by hiring out their equines, thinking of the nursery rhyme,


"I have a little pony, his coat is dapple grey
I lent him to a lady to ride a mile away
She whipped him, she slashed him, she rode him through the mire,
I'll never lend my pony more for any lady's hire"

Meles meles wrote:

With the minimum of irony The Guardian reports that Prince Charles is deeply concerned that old skills were being lost and that people were growing up without knowing how the world really works...

Prince Charles laments loss of craft skills in communities

Never had a proper job in his life but at least he knows how to ride a horse!

Well he does have a cousin who is a cabinet maker, MM (Princess Margaret's son).

Meles meles wrote:

So what basic tasks were just a normal part of nearly everyone’s lives which are now completely redundant or forgotten?

Dialectic discourse, especially in the political sphere (in its widest sense). Once of absolute necessity to master by everyone, regardless of station or education, if one were to engage politically with members of one's own community (when community itself had more tangible proof of being), the advent of "improved" communication media has seen it dissolve into didactic, and then ultimately into excessively vocal and discordant contradiction of views with little or no discourse remaining. At one time even every proverbial dog in the village street knew that no value could be placed on any other style of discourse if social progress was to be achieved or maintained in areas that ensured and insured preservation of the welfare of the majority. Now every actual dog on the street has more mannered and constructive methods of discourse than humans seem capable of achieving.

Much of what you say there Nordmann is surely true not only for political discourse but also widely for communication / entertainnment / education as a whole. Television (and radio and youtubes etc) are a very passive (for the receiver) form of communication. They are presented and roll along at their own pace, with no interaction or discourse. Until just a century ago if you wanted music you had to make it yourself, or find someone willing to provide what you wanted: if you wanted to be amused you had to talk, act, play games with others, and give as much as take. If you wanted to be informed you had to read, write letters, ask questions, make your own investigations, and draw you own conclusions. Now much communication is simply presented and it is not even necessary for another human to be present. Indeed even university level education is nowadays often presented as a series of fixed, pre-prepared packages that one can buy, to down-load and absorb in the isolation of ones home.

I am sure people were indeed much more adept at communication between those of differeing views, levels of education, class and social background ... even in the "gated-communities" of pre-revolutionary France, the nobility had occasion to communicate with people other than their own small circle of friends and family. And go back just a few hundred years further and I'm sure most people in Europe were accustomed to communicating with others, who were not of the same language/culture. The church spoke in Latin, the law spoke in French, merchants spoke a variety of foreign tongues, while you and your neighbours spoke your own particular dialect. Even the mid 19th century about 80% of the inhabitants of France did not speak French as their first language, while something like 40% did not speak it at all ... yet they still traded, started businesses, joined the army, and pursued legal cases. So I suspect communication skills were generally far higher than today where language and accent is standardized, 'the playing field' is more level, there are strict rules and norms to behaviour, and as you say above, the basic skills of discourse, debate, negociation and compromise, especially between parties of differing social backgrounds, have often been lost.

Or maybe I'm just spouting didactic nonsense.