Magazines - A Learning Curve

My first magazine was Look and Learn when I was still at infant school. My father bought it for me because I was captivated by a story my school teacher read to the class. I pestered him to ask her about it, which he eventually did, and I was delighted to have the story for myself. I think it was The Borrowers, or something similar.  As I got older, I read comics and books more than magazines. It was the usual ones, Beano and Dandy. We moved into a pub where a box of children’s books had been left ‘For the little girl’, me. Included was ‘Oor Wullie’ and ‘The Broons’ annuals. I loved them. They became my favourites characters and they still are. I’ve got many more of their annuals. I still have the collection of books that was left for me. It was my introduction to Enid Blyton and a lifetime of reading and writing.

September 1967.  I started high school and made a conscious decision to hate it because it wasn’t the school I wanted to go and I had to take two buses to get there and back.  I had a couple of friends with me from primary school, which was good, but I got picked on a lot and I was constantly bullied on one of the bus rides by girls from another secondary school.  It was a miserable time but I discovered something that opened my eyes and took my mind off my worries.  It was my mother’s weekly magazine, Woman’s Own.  It offered a wealth of important information to me, a curious eleven year old.  I read all the adverts for Tampax, Lil-lets, Kotex, et al and decided that I would have Nikini when this ‘period’ thing happened to me.  I learnt a lot about life from the Problem Page. I think Claire Rayner was the agony aunt at the time. The most fascinating read was her serialised articles which I remember clearly as being titled ‘What to Tell Your Children About Sex’.  This is where I discovered what was called The Facts of Life.  It might have taken my mind off school worries but such knowledge gave me other things to fret about.  I wasn’t ever going to do ‘that’, certainly not.  I don’t know if my mum noticed what I was reading.  She might have left the magazines out on purpose, hoping I would read those articles.  At the time, it felt like I was reading something forbidden and scary. Nothing was ever said. Years later, I had the book of ‘What to Tell Your Children About Sex’ and ‘The Body Book’, another of Claire Rayner’s.  She was a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction, a former nurse and midwife and I think she was a TV agony aunt at some point.  She passed away more than ten years ago.  I hope it is true that she actually said, “Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I’ll come back and bloody haunt him.”

Into my teens and off to the newsagents every Saturday morning to pick up my ordered Jackie and Fabulous 208 magazines.  Jackie was great.  I covered my bedroom walls with pictures of my favourite pop stars.  Those treasured pictures and posters were saved for decades until they got binned in a clear-out, probably when we emptied the attic for the loft conversion and I had to be brutal. Oh, how I wish I’d kept them.  I would have found somewhere safe to stash them.  Fabulous 208 magazine was connected to Radio Luxembourg. I liked to listen to DJ Tony Prince in the evening.

Magazines aren’t something I read regularly, but Woman’s Own is still as good as it ever was and I buy it occasionally.  Apart from that, if I notice an interesting article, an unusual knitting pattern or someone I know has contributed, I will buy it.

My Haikus,

I loved story time,
My teacher made it such fun.
Thanks for Look and Learn.

Woman’s Own page five
Now I know what they are for.
Is it a secret?

Is that really true?
I wish I dare ask my mum.
No, I’d better not.

Hooray! Saturday!
I will go out in the rain
To get my Jackie!

PMW 2024

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Sideboards

The first thing that sprang to mind when I thought of sideboards was: if there are sideboards, were there just originally boards? Well yes, there were. Historically, most dining tables were referred to as boards which as the name suggests were long planks that rested on trestles that were pulled apart after the meal to make room for living spaces. That gave rise to some familiar phrases as Chairman of the Board or Board and Lodging.

When the word first appeared in the Middle Ages, as an alternative to side table, it described a structure used for the display of conspicuously valuable eating utensils. It preserved a basic table shape until the 18th century. The first innovation was the substitution of hollow storage pedestals. Drawers (for napkins, cutlery, and the like) were added in the space beneath the main surface.

Incidentally, when I was reading some background on this I found that side tables are often called credenzas, a word I’ve never come across before.  The origin of the word itself comes from the Italian word for belief or the English word credence. This is due to the credenza being the surface on which food was placed when taste-tested by servants for poison, before serving to royalty, noblemen and other people of importance. I’ve been to cafes where this may still be a good idea.

Actual sideboards were introduced during the 1770s in the UK and were made popular by furniture designer Robert Adam. Reference to a sideboard is made in George Hepplewhite’s Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide in 1788.

I had to look up the word Upholsterer and it seems they used to be called Upholders and were members of the Worshipful Company of Upholders. I would like to be a member.

With the huge growth in the middle classes in the early 1800s due to the industrial revolution people were able to afford a separate room for dining. The sideboard became a must-have piece of furniture, on which were displayed cut glass lustres, silver candlesticks or polished brass oil lamps plus decanters, perhaps a silver salver, decorative soup tureen or punch bowl. Elaborate fantasies of design often converted the sideboard into a replica of a medieval cathedral or something equally improbable.

By the early to mid 20th Century tastes had changed and the philosophy was that the dining room was a place to eat and not be a museum for china and glass. Simplicity was the order of the day. In my opinion some of the Art Deco pieces produced around the 1920s and 30s were works of art.

My first memories of a sideboard are based around the early 60s. Every house would have one where papers, mementoes, photos etc were stored rather than being used for cutlery and stuff. All that had been moved to the kitchen, especially after room had to be made for the television. Ours was a long slim piece with sliding glass doors that I managed to break.

Thinking about it now I don’t think I know anyone with a sideboard. All my plates cups etc are in the kitchen, my papers are in a filing cabinet or on the computer, my memorabilia are stored in built in cupboards. I don’t think I’d have space for a sideboard.

But apparently there is a good trade in sideboards now but not for the heavy Victorian type more the sleek Art Deco or IKEA type design.

This is the only poem of mine that contains the word sideboard:

Curious

I like to think
that walking these lines
of pencil and paper
will take me to unexpected places
a hidden track
Stonehenge by moonlight
the finding of a tump

and it does
and I’m happy
though you may get to thinking
that it’s not quite enough

and you’d be right
especially if you’d been in Shrewsbury
the day before yesterday
and a slightly open door
to that medieval house
and the tension as I realised
without a shadow of doubt
that she was going in
and I was going to have to follow

not for the first time
and not for the first time
her daft excuse worked
as we left with the owner’s smile
and the history of a vase
on the sideboard in the hall

which we talked about
over flasks of tea
on an oak bench by the river
where she stumped me
by adding a question
regarding our future
which I haven’t thought about
and is hard to imagine.

Terry Quinn.

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