How we used to live

I watched the second part of 'I, Caveman' last night, it had been recorded for a bit and I knew that OH and darling father would enjoy that sort of programme. It was described as a documentary showing modern people living as cavemen for two weeks. We heckled it. It seemed very odd to just drop a lot of people without adequate training into the middle of a survival situation which would need a very different skill set than modern day living. For those interested in hard history, it is not recommended.

I was just thinking, only 100 years ago, my life would have been so different. Just the sheer hard labour of doing washing is such a contrast to bunging it in the washer and pressing a switch. No refrigeration means that I would have had to bought things in every day, and no tupperware containers meant that storing things like flour would have meant expensive glass jars, or rust prone tins. And that is if the food itself was safe!

Tonight I will be taking little bear to piano in the cold. Poor little mite will complain, but he will be well wrapped up and I look at what was normal even in my childhood, when cars were rare and waiting at bus stops was normal, we are really very, very lucky. When I got him dressed downstairs because the fire meant that the room was warmer, I was so grateful that I was not forced to either be cold or to haul heavy and expensive buckets of coal from coal house to fire side, nor did I need to worry about ice inside the house. Darling uncle is having problems with his fire because the coal in his coal bunker has frozen. And actually, if little bear was getting dressed upstairs, it wasn't actually that cold, not compared with outside.

I feel extremely blessed.