A stiff, thick sludge

I was gazing out of the window, a little pointless as its dark and although there are two street lamps down Westfield Close, a little cul-de-sac which leads us to the the main street in Uphill. The lamps don’t illuminate much from where I’m sitting. Even though I can’t see anything, I know there’s a small creature prowling around down there, tiny Bailey, a cat the size of a kitten who must be at least eight years old. I have several books on the windowsill, not chosen for any reason, they just ended up there, probably as I wrote something about them, then parked them while I carried on.

One of these books is little more than a pamphlet by dear Ruth Drew. I call her that because I have a great deal of affection although I never met her, she died in 1960 at the relatively early age of fifty-two. Ruth Drew was a well-known broadcaster, writer, and I guess what we would now call a media personality. In her writing she comes across as very funny and witty, very warm and encouraging, very knowledgeable and interesting, and maybe slightly eccentric. She wrote about women working in the home and offered advice on household chores, cooking, camping, caravanning, cleaning… lots of things beginning with ‘c’! I have this little forty-page pamphlet, published posthumously and I’m just looking at the chapter of ‘Miscellaneous Hints’

Coal Briquettes
My friends always complain that, when they get down to the coal dust in the coal cellar, they can never find the recipe for making briquettes, so here it is again.
Put eight parts of fine coal dust to one part of ordinary cement, and mix it, like a stiff batter, by adding water gradually and stirring hard. When you have mixed up a stiff, thick sludge, pack it firmly into flower pots. The next day, turn out your coal castles and leave them to dry.

This recipe says so much about ordinary domestic life in the 1950’s, and probably earlier, of being thrifty, of not wasting, of working hard, of using imagination to make use of everything, even coal dust!