Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid Read Online Free Page A

never liked them and always locked up
     his chickens when they were in the area, but I had no problem with them. They belonged
     in the countryside as much as any of us.
    In and amongst all this rural splendour, me
     and my friends, Jack and Bernard, ran wild. While my mother busied herself with the
     endless washing, cooking, baking and cleaning that keeping house involved in the days
     before modern appliances, I had incredible freedom. Every day was filled with magic,
     promise and excitement. Because our time wasn’t taken up with computers and
     televisions, we learnt to use our imagination. The Norfolk fields were one giant
     adventure playground. If there was a tree to climb or a ditch to poke around in, you
     could bet I’d be in the thick of it, spattered with mud, my face stained
     purple from gorging on blackberries and my pockets stuffed with nuts, birds’
     eggs and feathers. And if the ever-present PC Risebrough happened to catch us, well,
     that just added to the adventure.
    We played rounders, hopscotch and skipping
     races in the summer. Come winter, when temperatures plunged and the Norfolk ponds froze
     over, we tied blades to our boots with string and skated over the ice. It was ever so
     deep and dangerous but what did we care? Often we’d land, helpless with
     laughter, in an icy scrummage of arms and legs. Only the promise of bread and dripping
     by the fire would have us limping for home with aching limbs and grazed knees. Actually,
     in my whole childhood, I don’t ever remember a time when my knees
     weren’t grazed!
    The only two rules my mother would ever
     issue before I ran to the door of a morning? ‘Don’t cheek the
     tramps,Mollie Browne, that mouth of yours’ll get you in
     trouble one of these days,’ and ‘Stay away from the sluice. People
     have drowned swimming there.’
    ‘Yes, Mum,’
     I’d promise.
    Denver Sluice, one mile out of Downham on
     the River Great Ouse, was built to drain the vast wetlands of the fens and create
     fertile farmland. But to us kids it was like a magnet and the perfect place to take a
     cooling dip on a hot summer’s day. Mother’s words would be lost on
     the wind as I pedalled like crazy to the sluice with my dress tucked into my
     knickers.
    What did she know? I was twelve, I knew
     better.
    But a mother’s wisdom should
     always be observed, as I was about to find out, to my great peril …

Tips from a 1930s Kitchen
…
MOLLIE’S FAMOUS SAUSAGE ROLLS
    I used to run wild through the Norfolk countryside as a child, but nothing had me haring for home faster than the smell of my mother’s home-baked sausage rolls drifting out over the fields. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know how to bake them.
    8 oz (225 g) self-raising flour
    4 oz (110 g) butter
    8 oz (225 g) sausage meat
    1 egg for glazing
    Rub the flour and butter together, adding a few drops of water, until it forms the consistency of a firm dough. Roll it out on a floured pastry board until it’s a quarter of an inch (6 mm) thick. Cut the pastry into four-inch (10 cm) squares. Wet them round the edges with a dab of water. Add a teaspoon of sausage meat in the middle and then fold the pastry over the top and nip the edges to close it together. Brush the tops with beaten egg and bake for half an hour at 180 degrees or until golden brown.
HOUSEHOLD TIP
    If your fridge or kitchen is full of overpowering cooking smells, simply slice an onion, pop it in a bowl of water and leave it on the table or in the fridge, and all nasty niffs vanish.

2
London Calling
    Every woman is a rebel.
    Oscar Wilde
    ‘Dare you to jump in from
     there,’ said Jack, pointing to the highest bank of the sluice. A slippery wall
     of crumbly soil was all that stood between me and the dark swirling waters below.
    ‘All right then,’ I
     said, rising to the challenge.
    Everyone that knew me knew I
     couldn’t resist a dare. Too competitive by half, that was my problem. Even
     blacking out after choking