KITCHEN 1900s-style & KIKA KAT.

KITCHEN – The heart of Albie’s home after his adoption in 1925 by George and Dot Smith was the kitchen. Meals were cooked and eaten there, baths taken in front of the range, clothes dried on a wooden airer raised and lowered from the ceiling on a pulley system.

Here is an excerpt from my novel Helter-Skelter that describes it through the eyes of a girl who is used to the many rooms of her own family’s farmhouse.

Bessie’s eyes refused to meet his – they were darting wildly round the small kitchen. Apart from the even smaller scullery beyond the other door, this was clearly the only living-room. With a table in front of the window, a range along one wall and a dresser against another, there was scarcely enough space for an ancient armchair and the rocker in which Missus Smith now sat, nervously pleating her apron. The whole house would fit into the scullery back home.

Dot Smith had an old range - the above picture I found online is very close to my mental image of her kitchen - but it is possible that Bessie’s well-off mother had one of the newer models, like this one advertised in a 100 year-old cookery book I bought at a jumble sale. Apparently “The Linings can be removed by any servant, cleaned and replaced without trouble”. I don't have a servant, and to clean my oven I have to get down on my knees - does anyone know where I can get one one of these?

KIKA KAT 

In December 2000, three days before Christmas, we woke up to find Kika and her four kittens on our terrace. I told the full story of their arrival in last year’s A-Z blog so I won’t repeat it here. (You can pop into my archives and have a look if you're interested). 

Suffice it to say that we re-homed the kittens but Kika stayed. The OH, who professes to hate cats, spoils her rotten. He says it’s because her eyes are blue like his – they also go red if they catch the light at night (no comment!)

Kika waits on the swimming-pool wall when we go out and welcomes us home with a spectacular display of somersaults.  She’s getting on a bit now – sometimes she misjudges a leap through the railing and bangs her head (we hear the clang). She’s knocked a tooth out doing it, so she’s not as pretty as she was, but it hasn't spoiled her appetite.

She feigns not to notice the birds that hop about the garden looking for the combings of her hair we throw out and with which they line their nests. I'm sure the birds know she can't be bothered to chase them.

But – she panics if the door is shut while she’s inside the apartment, she still has mad moments when she races from one end of the terrace to the other after a bougainvillea flower, and she refuses to drink clean water, preferring the mucky brown stuff in the bottom of the plant pots – there’s still a bit of wildness left in her.

HELTER-SKELTER & HORSES

   HELTER-SKELTER Anyone who has followed my A-Z blog from the beginning must have guessed this would be my H-word.
It is Albie’s fascination with the helter-skelter on the pier that first brings him to the attention of George, the owner. The ride influences the whole of Albie’s young life, and even in the midst of war the memory comforts him.

HORSES This is another thread that runs through the entire book. Gypsies have always been horse-traders, and Albie’s affinity with horses strengthens his belief that he might have gypsy blood.

And for your little taste of Tenerife, here is a photo of the HOOPOE that I sometimes see on my walks. Don't you just love his fancy HEAD-DRESS?

GYPSY, GEORGE AND GUAZA MAN

   GYPSY When Albie’s mother abandons him she calls him a “gypsy brat” and tells him that her latest man friend doesn’t want him around. From that moment Albie is determined to find out if this was just another jibe or if he really does have Romany blood in his veins.

In the early 1900s the hop-fields and fruit farms of Kent, where my novel Helter-Skelter is set, are rich in travelling folk who, although they are still regarded with suspicion by the locals, are a necessary part of the labour force.

Meanwhile GEORGE & DOT SMITH become Albie’s parents by taking him into their home. George is a big, working class man – a patient grandfather who takes pity on the young waif Albie, and Dot is strong-willed but kind and motherly. She is a typical housewife of her era, who wears a wrap-over pinny all day, makes nourishing meals on very little money, and can’t stand bad behaviour. Come to think of it, she’s not unlike me – except for the apron!




As we drive home from Las Galletas, the fishing village a few kilometres away where we do our shopping and drink cafe con leche, we pass through GUAZA, where the mountain looks so like a recumbent figure that he is known as GUAZA MAN.