ONCE UPON A TIME

 'Upon a day' or 'Once upon a time' has long been a traditional opening for myths, fables and folklore.  For most of us the phrase would belong to our earliest memories of listening to stories. I loved story time and looking at my books. I was delighted when my mother acted out parts of the story as she read and used squeaky voices.  But, those fairy tales they read to us when we were very young were often nicely revised versions of folk tales - originally almost horror stories designed to entertain with fright or teach lessons. 

Fairy Tales, originally called Little Tales, usually involved fantasy with magical creatures, curses, goblins, witches spells and the like. They often began with 'once upon a time', referring to a supposed age when magic was still in use. One old German opening was 'In the old times when wishing was still effective'.

Folk tales and legends included actual events and were often stories for adults while moral tales, including beast fables (animal characters) were told to adults and children.  Many stories appeared in a variety of languages, with changes to suit the local culture.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm travelled Germany writing down the folk tales told to them by a variety of people. They published a book titled 'Children's and Household Tales', volume one in 1812 and volume 2 in 1815 with a total of 83 stories.

The Brothers Grimm continued to add to the collection  and now we can read 200 stories under their name.  Stories without proven German origins were rejected and the brothers rewrote many tales to make them more acceptable to families. We now refer to their collection as Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Many of those tales have been made over again by the Walt Disney machine and what once were stories of horror, mutilation, curses and despair are now mostly plastic sugar and spice.

Hans Christian Anderson

The brothers Grimm inspired others to collect tales in their own language and writers such as Hans Christian Anderson continued writing tales that often drew on fables.  First published in 1822, his stories have been translated into over 125 languages, including The Emperor's New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea, Thumbelina and one I remember very well, The Tinderbox, live on today.

Whether they are fables or folk tales we all love the stories and new tales are being written for future generations. One of my favourites, by Oscar Wilde was published in 1888 - 'The Selfish Giant' - a moral tale of self sacrifice.

And from the Grimm collection;

The Pied Piper: (pied being a sort of patchwork of different colours) In the original story the piper rids the town of rats and when the town leaders refuse to pay him he leads the children to, not a wonderful paradise, but the river where they all drown.  That'll learn 'em.

Snow White: The evil queen wants Snow White killed because she is prettier than the queen. The hunter is told to take Snow into the forest and kill her,  cutting out not just her heart, but her liver and lungs too which were to be served for dinner in the palace.  Later when the Prince finds a dead Snow White in the forest, he hoists her body onto his horse and this jostling awakens her - not the Disney kiss.  When exposed in the end as an evil woman, the queen is welded into red hot iron shoes and forced to dance herself to death. ewwwwww

Cinderella: The Cinderella story dates back to 1st century BC in different forms, with different names.  In the version collected by the Grimm brothers the ugly sisters cut off parts of their feet to fit into the glass slipper. Does the Prince not notice the pools of blood? Eventually their eyes are plucked out by pigeons and they spend the rest of their lives as blind beggars, while Cinders enjoys a life of luxury in the castle.

Little Red Riding Hood or Little Red Cap:  This story was so horrible even the brothers Grimm had to nice'n it up.  In the original versions there was no woodsman to rescue Red and sometimes not even a grandmother. We tell this tale to babies when it's really about a young girl being seduced by a wolf and losing her virginity. An old saying from France, referring to a girl losing her virginity, translates as 'she saw the wolf'. In some versions, to illustrate that her life is over, the wolf eats her up.

Sleeping Beauty: A young woman falls into a deep sleep as the result of a prophecy. While unconscious she is raped by the King, gets pregnant, delivers twins and it is her children who finally wake her, not the modern day kiss of a handsome prince.

Hansel and Gretel: This is a scary story even today but in an early French version, called The Lost Children, the wicked witch was actually the devil.  The devils wife attempts to help the children but they are forced to trick her and then they slit her throat to aid their escape.

The Frog Prince: In the Grimm collection there is no magical kiss. The frog makes a bargain with the Princess to take him home to the palace to live. He gets closer and closer to her until he is in her bed but she throws him against the wall. Somehow this turns him into a Prince ... and it's a little confusing.

Rapunzel: Letting down her hair too often gets Rapunzel in the family way so the witch cuts off her hair and sends her away.  When the Prince comes back the witch lets down the hair for him. He is afraid of the witch, rejects her advances and she pushes him out the window. He falls into thorn bushes and brambles, which blind him, so he wanders the forest forever.

The Little Mermaid: One of many by Hans Christian Anderson this story originally ended with the mermaid's suicide, after watching her Prince marry a human Princess. Walt Disney added the happy ending we have today.

The Story of the Three Bears:  First published in 1837, this story by English author and poet, Robert Southey, featured a malicious old woman who invades the home of three male bears. As early as 1813 Southey had been telling the story to friends in various versions including a fox or vixen as the female. It is possible that this version had been a traditional oral tale. By 1849 Southey had changed the old woman to an intrusive little girl, who was given various names referring to her hair colour until she became Goldilocks early in the 20th century, and the three male bears evolved into father, mother and baby bear. The oral tale ending with the intruder being torn to pieces by the bears became the soft cuddly family story that is the most popular tale in the English language today. It comes under the banner of fairy tales even though it is more of an animal fable. The underlying theme of harsh punishment for those who trespass in areas they should not has changed to one of accepting others who seem different and making life 'just right', with the bears being the good guys. Some cartoon versions today show Goldi remaining with the bears to live happily ever after.

Usually this happy ending refers to the main characters only and indicates a work of fiction. It also gives us the comfort so necessary today.  While we read 'they lived happily ever after', many years ago it was 'and they all lived happily in the ever after'. 

and KEEPING CALM

Once upon a time, in the north east of England, there were two lovely people named Manley.  Mary Manley, who was American born, and her English husband, Stuart Manley, who had a small manufacturing business in an old Victorian Railway station in the little town of Alnwick. Mary dreamed of opening a second hand book shop, using the swap system, and she planned to call it Barter Books. Fortunately Stuart liked the idea and said she could use the front room, of the railway station, for her book shop. So she did and Barter Books opened in 1991.

Skipping to the year 2000, Stuart was unpacking a box of old books they had picked up at auction, when, at the bottom of the box he found a sheet of folded paper. It turned out to be an old poster. He liked it and showed it to Mary. She liked it too, so much that without knowing anything about it she had the poster framed and put it up in the shop. 

Customers in the book shop noticed the poster and asked if they could buy one. So Mary and Stuart had copies printed and soon they were selling posters, over 40,000 copies in the first 8 years. 

The Keep Calm message was so popular it soon spread around the world, but where had it come from?

Going back 61 years to early 1939, when England faced the threat of another war,   The Ministry of Information commissioned three inspirational posters to be used in the interest of public safety - to assure the population that all necessary steps to defend the nation were being taken, and to stress an attitude of mind, during the difficult times they expected were ahead.

As the posters conveyed a message from the King to his people they were designed to be difficult to counterfeit -  with a handsome typeface topped by the crown of King George Vl, on a plain coloured background. Five million posters were printed.

The first poster stated ...

                    Freedom Is In Peril. Defend It With All Your Might.

... to alert the population to the seriousness of war.

The second poster stated ...

                    Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness,

                    Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory.

... to encourage the nation to rally as one.

The second poster states ...

                    Keep Calm and Carry On.

... to reassure people when the country was invaded or occupied.

Posters 1 & 2 were displayed in public places - Railway Stations, Post Offices and shop windows from September 1939.   

Poster 3 was never used.

At the end of the war the unused posters were sent off to be destroyed ... all, it seems, except one, and it remained out of sight until discovered in a box of books more than 60 years later.

The posters Mary and Stuart sold were so popular the message was shared on line and suddenly Keep Calm and Carry On belonged to everyone. 

In 2007 online shops were selling the slogan on T-shirts and bags. Then one T-shirt company released a range of shirts that spoofed the poster such as Keep Calm and carry on sewing or Now Panic and Freak Out. Before long web stores allowed customers to design their own Keep Calm slogans.

By 2009 England was dealing with the global economic crisis and the attitude of mind conveyed by Keep Calm and Carry On became a strength to people who were struggling. At one stage 85 variations of the poster were recorded and it has become one of the first icons of the 21st century, appearing on walls, clothing, crockery, tote bags, and all types of souvenirs.

I was delighted when I discovered this story and to me this expression of keeping on is one to be celebrated. Firstly because in 1939 it was NOT needed. There was no invasion and no occupation.  But, the poster survived for over 60 years to bring the message of encouragement to the following generations - a reassurance that we go on, no matter what comes, to live our lives, to do our work and to care for each other.

We do not always understand the politics or economics of our world but we all have a place here, we all have a part to play in life on this planet - we just have to keep calm and carry on with it.

But back to the book shop.  The original building was designed by William Bell in 1887. As a railway station it was huge, 32,000 sq feet, far too grand for a small market town - but the town was also the seat of the Dukes of Northumberland, who would attract visiting royalty and so an impressive structure was necessary. The line closed in 1968 and the station building was put to several uses before becoming Barter Books.

The shop has many attractions, apart from a huge selection of second hand books, including open fires in winter, a refreshment room with skylights, a model railway, huge art works, free wifi, a children's room, plenty of seating, a reading room with newspapers and a display of antiquarian books. It's almost worth a trip to England to visit Barter Books.

Station built in 1887 - and as it is today

for all the TEA in China

In my grandmother's day everyone drank tea - there was very little else to drink and in some places drinking tea was actually better than drinking plain water because the water in the tea had been boiled.  The whole family drank tea for breakfast, lunch, dinner and in between.  It was relatively cheap,  refreshing in hot and cold weather and gave people something to do when socialising.  The process of boiling the water, brewing the tea, pouring and sipping helped to solve all problems, calm the spirit and to heal all wounds.

Tea is a hot drink made by infusing dried crushed tea leaves in boiling water.  We often refer to the infusion of other leaves, plants or flowers as tea, or herbal teas, but that is not real tea.

Real tea is made from the leaf of the tea bush, Camellia sinensis, which is native to southern and eastern Asia and has been grown as a cash crop for hundreds of years. The plant is a close relative of the camellia.  In Mandarin it was called ch'a, which is the origin of the char and chai words for tea, and in the Amoy dialect it was T'e.

The tea drinking habit came to Australia, from the United Kingdom, with the first settlers. For middle class England tea was served with a light afternoon meal  of sandwiches and cake.  I think the main meal was in the middle of the day and they had supper of buttered toast and cocoa late at night.  For the working people tea was the evening meal and both these concepts became part of the early Australian culture.

High Tea was a tradition from around the mid 1700s as a late afternoon meal for working men. They were usually grubby and smelly after work, so had their tea standing up, or sitting on tall stools at a high bench and it became a 'high' tea of scones, toast and fruit cake, served with tea.

Later, this evolved into an early meal for 'well to do' people, before a night out at the theatre or playing cards so High Tea was a light but nourishing meal. Later in the evening they returned home for supper, which was often cold meat and veg as the servants had gone to bed.  Around this time the Fourth Earl of Sandwich had the idea of holding a slice of meat between two slices of bread - so he could eat while playing cards - and the High Tea sandwich came into being.

My grandmother, who was born into a large family and grew up in a one room shack on a dairy farm, liked to feel that as she had trained as a nurse and made something of herself she could put on a few airs and graces. 'We' never referred to the evening meal as tea. That was for working class people.  In our house 'we' had dinner in the evening.  I was never quite sure about meals because on Sunday, when the lamb roast was served in the middle of the day it was also called dinner and on Sunday night we had early tea of toasted sandwiches and later on a supper with hot chocolate. So, if you had lunch you could have dinner, but if you had dinner at lunch time, then after tea you got supper.  I'm glad elevenses remained in England.  It all depends on who your grandmother was.

Until the 1960's tea, in Australia, was made in a pot and the left over tea leaves were disposed of by the back door, usually into a vegetable patch where they acted as fertiliser and mulch, or into a pile of maiden hair ferns that seemed to grow where people tipped tea leaves.  People who didn't have a back door often emptied the tea pot into the loo and at one family gathering I remember a small cousin came back from a visit to the toilet to announce to the room of relatives that 'someone in this house has a very sick tummy'.  Apparently Great Aunty had emptied the teapot and not flushed.

In the Aussie bush tea was brewed in
 tin billy-can over an open fire

An Australian tradition is billy tea - still make in camping grounds all over the country, it just takes a fire, a tin can of boiling water, a handful of tea and a gum leaf.  Tea and rum were the drinks, and at times currency, of early settlement days but real tea was not always available to people in the bush. The Leptospermum tree, from the family Myrtaceae, is commonly known as Teatree, from the practice of early settlers soaking the leaves in boiling water to make a tea substitute. I can't imagine what that tasted like.  I live near the town of Nambour which gets it's name from the local Aboriginal name for the tea tree.  

Tea tree oil distilled from Melaleuca alternifolia is popular for it's amazing antiseptic, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory and anti-viral properties.  

But, back to real tea, a visit to a Chinese tea shop will cause confusion because hundreds of different types and blends of tea are on offer, but there are only a few basic categories of tea and they all come from leaves of the same Camellia Sinensis plant. The processing of the newly picked leaves is what determines the tea's colour and taste.

Black tea is exposed to air until the oxidation of the leaf brings on its dark colour.  

Green tea comes from quickly heating the leaves to prevent further fermentation, and this gives the green colour and milder flavour.

White, yellow and the oolong teas are in-between, with different grades of fermentation.

Picking tea in India

History tells that tea travelled to Europe around 1590 when a Portuguese priest visited China and got permission to take some tea plants home, but until the 19th century nearly all tea was grown in China and most of it was exported to Great Britain.  

When political and business problems made trade difficult the British managed to get hold of (make off with), enough tea bushes to start tea plantations in Assam and Darjeeling in India, and Kenya in Africa, where it is still produced.  And, though China is still the biggest producer of tea, India comes a close second.

Apparently, for 300 years, at the London Tea Auction, tea was sold ‘by the candle’ system; bidding for lots went on until an inch of a candle had burnt away.

Water is still the most consumed beverage in the world today, but tea is a close second as we drink more than 3 billion cups of tea a year. The biggest consumers - and this may be a surprise - are the people of United Arab Emirates, followed by Morocco and then Ireland! 

Elkhorns

My grandmother, and her sisters, treasured their tea pots - one for every day, one for special occasions and one for decoration but today most people don't own a tea pot because teabags have replaced brewing in the pot. But, tea post are still included in children's toys and cartoons. Gone are the tea pots and knitted tea cosies, tea caddies and spoons, and the tradition of one for each person and one for the pot. Even the ferns miss out as tea drinkers who don't want to waste the used tea bags 'feed' them to elkhorns in their garden.

Some healthy things people say about tea: 

Green tea and white tea especially are praised for many health benefits, including antibiotic effects, anti-cancer properties, boosting of the immune system, lowering of cholesterol levels and improvement of cardiovascular health.
Tea contains vitamins B2, B1 and B6 and is also rich in potassium, manganese, folic acid and calcium.
Tea contains half the amount of caffeine found in coffee.
One cup of white tea contains the same amount of antioxidants as 10 cups of apple juice.
Tea can help soothe a sore throat, black, green and oolong tea have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that may help alleviate symptoms.

Times to avoid tea:
Black tea can block iron absorption from foods and supplements so it's best to avoid tea when taking vitamins or eating foods that are rich in iron.
Green tea is a significant source of vitamin K, which can interfere with the effects of blood thinners such as warfarin.

A few other uses for tea: 

The used tea leaves can be beneficial as fertilizer for the garden.
Used tea leaves can absorb odours in the refrigerator.
Tea in a foot bath can eliminate some foot odours.

Interesting things said about tea:
The water source, temperature and brewing time effect the taste of the tea.

Half a kilo of loose tea can make about 200 cups of tea.
An experienced picker can collect over 30 kg of tea a day!
Until the 19th century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.
Tea breaks are a tradition that have been with us for approximately 200 years.
Drinking 4 cups of tea a day is recommended for health.
Tea is a natural source of fluoride that could protect against tooth decay and gum disease.
The first book about tea was written by Lu Yu in 800 A.D.
Apart from tourism, tea is the biggest industrial activity in India.
98% of people have milk in their tea, but only 30% have sugar.
Tea bags were invented in America in the early 1800s. 
Tea bags were originally made of silk and were used to hold tea samples from India.

Slightly damp tea leaves can repel insects.

And I don't know if any of these things are true.

'Women are like tea bags. They don't know how strong they are 

until they get into hot water.'   Eleanor Roosevelt.

ICE TEA FACE TREAT

2 cups water

1 green tea bag, or loose green tea (for antioxidants)

2 teaspoons turmeric powder (antibacterial, exfolient)

1 tablespoon honey (moisturiser and softens)

2 -3 teaspoons rose water (smells nice)

Prepare:

Steep the tea in boiling water until you have a brew of very strong tea.

Open the teabag if using one, the leaves act as an exfolient.

Stir in turmeric, honey and rose water. 

Pour into a standard ice cube tray and into the freezer.

Use:

Wash your face with warm water to open the pores.

Rub a tea ice cube all over your face for several minutes, paying attention to the forehead, nose and chin.

With your fingers, gently massage the turmeric/tea leaf residue over your face to exfoliate.

Rinse off with cold water.

Finish with a splash of witch hazel or other toner, and moisturise.

-----

... and WASHING clothes.

Australia currently has quite a few interesting female comedians, or comediennes as was once the female term. A little list of some I enjoy is strangely Irish in flavour - Kitty Flanagan, Judith Lucy, Corinne Grant, Michelle Laurie, Julie Morris, Fiona O'Loughlin, Denise Scott, Gina Riley - with Fiona being a favourite.  Her dry-as-dust tales of life with five kids and a husband in Alice Springs actually make me laugh out loud - and it must be funny, not just silly, for me to laugh.

Fiona claims that she escapes to the stage of comedy clubs as a way of coping with family life ... though as I can't imagine there are too many comedy clubs in Alice Springs, in the middle of the desert, her escapes must include a long weekend in Adelaide or Melbourne. Nice.

One of her top tips for surviving the daily grind is - just chop some garlic and onion into a hot pan with oil and stir. When they all come in with stomachs growling they'll smell it and think something is happening - clear out of the kitchen and don't bother the cook - thus buying yourself another half hour to finish your coffee before starting the real meal preparation.  The phrase ' chop up some garlic and onion' is applied to a number of situations in our house.

I've recently realised that washing on the line has become my version of this.  After a 3am session of writing, editing, drawing, sewing etc - activities I really enjoy, I crawl out of bed at 10am and stagger to the washing machine.  If, late the night before, I'd put on a load of washing it would be there in the laundry basket, and I'd just have to peg it out -  giving me half an hour to doddle around the house until I am fully awake. When Big R comes up from the paddock for his 10.30 cuppa the washing line is full and housework seems to be underway. Big grin.

My washing line

And watching the drying process is very relaxing. It's lovely to sit back and admire that line of clean sheets or blindingly white nappies flapping in the breeze.  I was delighted to hear my darling nephew Jos, back in the day his youngest child, who is now 12, was a very little baby, say he thought a line full of clean white nappies was a lovely sight.  Delighted .... because men usually do not fully appreciate that style of domestic art.

J and K with middle child and a line full of nappies

Of course 'washing on the line' can be translated as laundry.  Why we use the verb washing instead of the noun that belongs there is a mystery, but that's Aussie English.  We 'do' the washing, peg out the washing, dry the washing, bring in the washing, fold the washing and put it away. Some of these jobs are done in the laundry - and that should probably be laundry room, where we keep the laundry basket and the laundry soap.

One of my favourite family stories came to me through one of my grandmother's sisters. They lived in a one room house on a dairy farm at the foot of the blue mountains west of Sydney.  The seven children were born between 1883 and 1894 and they were poor farmers - though I have seen, in old newspapers, that they won prizes at the local show for cows and jam etc. 

There was no electricity in the house, cooking was done over a wood fire, the children wore underwear sewn from flour sacks and slept on bags stuffed with straw. With the house full of children the parents had very little quiet time. The children remembered falling asleep to the sound of their parents voices coming from outside, as they discussed the day's work and future plans - mother Annie pegging washing on the line, and father, John, holding the hurricane lantern and helping with the big heavy items.  When people are so busy with hard physical work, simple tasks may seem like a break.

Bush washing line with prop

I don't think Annie bashed her clothes on rocks in the river or scrubbed them with sand to get the dirt out, but washing for a family of nine people would have been hard work and a never ending job. 

First collect the water - from stream, pump or tank, possibly in buckets and carry to whatever tub or basin she used for washing.  To remove dirt from clothes you soap and rub and rub and rub. If Annie was lucky she had a wood fired copper - and that's an adjective turned noun. The copper tubs were on legs, or stands, with room underneath for a fire. When the water reached boiling it melted grease and the bubbling action agitated the clothing, removing the dirt which was trapped by Annie's homemade soap flakes. A long stick, in our house called The Copper Stick, was used to move the clothes around and also to lift them from the hot water. I've actually continued to have a 'laundry' stick for poking things into the machine ... and killing spiders. 

I remember these wooden pegs, often called dolly pegs
because children like me turned them into dolls

Then more water was needed for rinsing before wringing everything out by hand. That requires incredible strength of hand, wrist and forearms. Just imaging trying to wring water from sheets! Two strong men would find it hard work.  Hand wringing hot cloth made incredible wrinkles so good clothes were often ironed before they were completely dry just to get those wrinkles out again.

The wringer, or mangle was another laundry aid. The heavy metal device, with wooden rollers was mounted over laundry tubs and operated by turning a handle. The washing was fed through the rollers, handle turned, fabric squashed flat and the water ran into the tub to be saved and used again. Many fingers were squashed flat, and long hair torn out, in wash houses and laundries. They were even more frightening when attached to washing machines and powered by electricity.

A wringer mounted over concrete laundry tubs

During the 1950's our new laundry had both electric washing machine and a gas powered copper. But, later, as a student I lived in a few old houses where a copper was the only furniture in the laundry (room). I hated the whole procedure and would usually opt for the Laundromat. To me the copper was time consuming, unnecessary, hard work, and I had the alternative. 

The coppers also came in handy for boiling Christmas puddings. My grandmother made about a dozen a year as gifts - that was the number of puddings she could fit into the copper. The puddings were then 'hung' in the laundry for about two weeks.

Boiling puddings

The invention of washing machines set women free. and moved puddings back to the kitchen, but even the first of the 'modern' washing machines were mechanical, and very hard work. But then electricity was invented and that changed the world.

The Hill's Hoist was an Aussie invention and was a great space saver in the backyard
and a play area for kids - we've all been in trouble for swinging on the Hills

My great grandmother Annie Wilmington Morehead was born in 1854 and died in 1940.  During her 86 years she went from hand washing clothes in tubs to boiling them in a copper using wood fire and then gas. I'm sure that even if she didn't use an electric washing machine herself in her later years she certainly would have seen one, and that's amazing.

AN AFTERTHOUGHT:
When my children left home it took me two or three years to adjust - the washing was one thing I found difficult... or lack of it after all those years. I'd go into the laundry and wonder what to do. When I saw this sign on facebook it meant a lot - and I agree, be glad of the washing you do, it means you have someone to care for.