Absolutely my last post about drying (until the next one...)

This is my grandma! She's the woman who taught me how to bake, using traditional techniques, and nothing more labour-saving than a rotary whisk. She's also the woman who spent the 1970s thinking that adding violently orange 'breadcrumbs' to a piece of fresh fish from Brixham fishmarket could only improve the meal...

And I think I can understand where she was coming from. She'd grown up in a time when women who wanted something at home had to do it for themselves or make it from scratch, and suddenly, from the 1950s onwards, she was offered a world where women could choose to work at what they liked (baking, sewing, gardening, speaking and playing the piano at meetings and raising money for charity, in her case) and find an easier option for the things they's always hated (making breadcrumbs for her, it appears!)

In addition, life wasn't just getting easier thanks to the introduction of new technology, it was also getting very exciting indeed! Having read Bill Bryson's 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid', I can see why people in the 1950s were just deliriously thrilled by the technological possibilities opening up in the world.

Advertising took a lead in telling us why the new labour-saving devices were better than the old ways, and often, the adverts were right - this post may turn up a reader who has brooms and sweepers INSTEAD of (not as well as) a vacuum cleaner, but I doubt it - vacuum cleaners just do a better job, so we all use them now.

And I guess it was this combination of liberating technology and forceful advertising that convinced home owners' associations that outdoor washing lines were a sign of poverty and generally being behind the times!Fascinatingly, Andi's comment on my last post shows that washing lines were banned in some places in the UK, as well as in the USA - her uncle wasn't allowed one in the 1970s. And I find it very understandable. Wrong, when viewed from the long term, just like my grandma's orange breadcrumbs! But perfectly understandable.

j

Thanks for all your great comments by the way - I love the way Joy's grandmother: "had two clothes lines. One under in the back of her house that was more shaded for colors and the other out front where it was open to the sun." That's really handy! I could do with that here.

j

So, I promise you that tomorrow any post I do will contain no reference whatsoever to laundry...

j

..but Sunday's Pause in Lent is shaping up to have something to say about advertising! Joined-up-thinking, that's what it is...