Friday 16 August 2013

Bums on seats


Anyone who was vaguely adult in the late 1960s will remember that we spent most of the time sitting around on the floor, sometimes talking and sometimes not.

Furniture - in particular, chairs - was shunned by everyone between the age of 16 and 30, but carpets were much admired, especially if they were the magic ones. It was our generation, after all, who coined the term 'Sit-Ins', and the occupation of the city squares in Cairo right now are being called 'Sit-Ins', even by the Egyptians themselves.

When I moved to Herne Bay from Canterbury in 1971, the agent of our rented house payed a visit to tell us that an elderly neighbour had complained because we had left a toilet-roll on the window cill to dry out after it had fallen into the baby's bath.

In those days, Herne Bay's residents were about 90% over retirement age, so we usually had quite a lot of attention from our elderly neighbours, who had forgotten what it was like to be young. The agent (who was an elderly woman herself) came into our living room, and I politely offered her a space on the carpet to sit down, but she preferred to stand, even ignoring the couple of chairs and table which came with the house.

We had just finished breakfast, and there were a couple of plates and mugs on the floor where we had left them, and this horrified the agent. She said that any civilised people eat from the table, and she bent down and picked up the crockery to place it on the wooden table.

I was not having this in my own house, so - as a matter of principle - I put the plates and mugs back on the carpet again, and an impasse was arrived at until she issued us with notice to quit, but only a verbal one. I think it was this woman who made me stubbornly persist in sitting on floors for the next few years - also as a matter of principle. If I want to sit on the floor, then I damn well will I thought.

Even in the 1960s, it was odd and incongruous to see a 50 or 60 year-old lefty sitting on the floor to have a conversation with young people, and I wished that they would just sit on a chair, with us young 'uns scattered about at their feet like Margaret Thatcher when she visited Harold MacMillan in his dotage. Seeing a cross-legged, uncomfortable adult surrounded by lithe youth was both embarrassing and patronising - a bit like the dads who try to talk to their children in wildly out-of-date street-speak, thinking it is 'cool'.

These days, I absolutely hate sitting straight on the ground - even outdoors - and if I could be bothered to carry an entire set of furniture into the countryside, I would.


20 comments:

  1. Private Eye magazine posted this photo with the caption - a bubble coming from Harold's lips - "Who is this ghastly woman?"

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  2. Gracious, first time I have ever seen Thatcher on her knees!
    Wonderful Private Eye caption, too. :)

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  3. Uncharacteristically 'condescending' pose from Mrs T.

    Didn't that lunatic woman landlady we had in Farnham throw us out? Mad!!!

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    1. Woman landlady? What other kind is there?

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    2. No - we all walked out in unison, remember?

      Lunatic ones, Sue.

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    3. Women landladies are the worst; especially the lunatic ones.

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  4. Recently had photos taken of husband and I for 20th anniversary. The young snip photographer had me sit on the ground next to hubbie for "informal" pose. Took me a week to get back up and by then she was gone so I could not bash in her head as I'd been dreaming of those 7 days. Now like you, I walk around the yard with a couch strapped to my back...just in case.

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    1. I like to be wheeled around the yard. Just like to be, that's all.

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  5. For the countryside there exists a special 'thing' (don't know the name) : a collapsible sort of grip - turning into a seat - on a walking stick. My father was horribly offended when my sister talked of giving him this as a birthday present. He even with disdain objected to a chair we put on the landing (?) in Hamburg - a stair with 244 single steps - being then 87, he thought it 'unmanly' or uncool. Out of principle, of course, he walked.

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    1. Here, they are called 'shooting sticks', and you are supposed to be able to fire a shotgun from them in a seated position. I tried one once, and I almost shot the man behind me with the second barrel.

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  6. It's called a 'shootin' stick'; I have one!

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    1. One can stick it into the earth? I think I saw it with painters and Lords in the countryside.

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    2. There is hardly anywhere else to put them in the country, Britta. They make make ones you can stick in Tarmac these days, but it would be a very limited market.

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  7. We had chairs. We had four folding wood public auditorium chairs; curb finds I painted apple green. We used them at our kitchen card table, when parents came. They didn't do floors.

    I want a stick like Harold's.

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    1. A stick like Harolds? Easily attainable, but don't wish for something you don't yet need...

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  8. I was a child in the 1960's and often sat on the floor because i was the youngest and smallest. I liked sitting on the floor, and never gave it much thought until, when i was in my mid-thirties, a friend asked why i was sitting on the floor while children and animals were sitting on the furniture?

    All of us were content with our chosen sitting spots and wondered at her question. It was a reminder that my youth was fleeing.

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    1. I used to like sitting under the tables until the adults forgot I was there. These days, they never seem to forget.

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  9. I love sitting on the floor Tom - always have - but these days, it is OK getting down, but getting back up again is a bit of a problem!

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    1. That's where manservants become indispensable.

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