A favorite statement in our house is " What would my Mother think ? " and we trot it out regularly. Whether it`s something shocking on the TV or we spot bad behaviour or a fashion trend or a new piece of technology. The nearest thing to hi tech my Mother ever reached was an automatic washing machine which we bought her when she badly smashed her arm in a fall and her old twin tub was too difficult for her to pull out, fill and hoist clothes from the tub to the spinner. She was NOT impressed and declared she could wash a week`s washing in the time the automatic took to do one load.
I remember my first microwave and using it to warm baby food. My Mum declared the waves would fry his brains and I shouldn`t be using such a dangerous thing.
She died over 30 years ago and I often wonder what she`d make of the internet, the fact that money can be spent online using nothing but a piece of plastic and bank accounts could be hacked and emptied by an invisible person on the other side of the World. She`d have taken her old Post Office savings book to bed with her and stuffed it under the mattress along with her pension book and birth certificate.
She`d have been fascinated by gadgets holding hundreds of photos instead of the old biscuit tins and chocolate boxes she kept her faded black and white ones in and a mobile phone would have been tossed aside as being useless for her ex weaver`s work worn sausage sized fingers.
As for cakes in a cup, her tut tutting would have been heard from miles away as she`d declare that "Nowt made in a cup could be called baking !" and a proper housewife would lay aside one morning a week to be elbow deep in flour and timing the 3 shelves of cakes and pies in the ancient gas oven which was built before the War whilst beating off 4 hungry kids fighting who licked the baking bowl and spoon.
