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Authors: Margaret Powell
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of your
home for new surroundings and what do you find? Thick carpets, soft armchairs, a sort of cocktail-lounge effect. And the breweries say that’s what the customers want. How do they know? Did
they ask them? And if the customers want that why aren’t they there to use it? A lot of people – people like my husband and me – feel out of place in these cocktail-lounge kind of
places. But you’ve got to go there because they’ve done away with the private bar and you’ve only got two grades now – public bar and this kind of phoney set-up.
Then they haven’t got the drinks you want. My husband likes drinking beer – mild beer. And they don’t serve it except in the public bar. And when you ask you can see them
thinking, ‘What are you doing in here then if you can’t afford expensive drinks?’
It’s not just television. Maybe it’s because in an affluent society people don’t need what we do – the support and company of other people as a sort of prop in our
leisure time. Perhaps money does that for you. Makes you independent. But if that’s what being rich means, I don’t want it. I still need to depend on people for my enjoyment.
It was strange how packed the pubs used to be during the war – and I don’t think this was just because we had to have the alcohol. In a time of adversity we wanted the feeling of
togetherness. It’s a pity that it takes a war to give us this kind of unity with each other.
7
G LADYS WAS THE under-housemaid at my first place in London. She was a year older than me and although she wasn’t what you’d call a pretty
girl she had loads of personality. I used to look forward to our Sundays off together. Every other Sunday we got and we always started by going out to tea.
We used to go to rather posh places where they had all gold paint and plaster cupids and marble pillars, and for the price of a pot of tea and two or three cakes you could really feel that you
were living it up. We’d sit there and there’d be well-dressed people all around us with their high-faluting talk. And wooing young men would have their girls there.
Personally I could never see why people wanted to do their courting in restaurants. I think there’s nothing less conducive to love than seeing people opposite you chewing all the time. I
never could understand this mania that English people have for eating out. Either the food is so wonderful when you eat out that you’re not in the least bit interested in your partner, or
else you’re so interested in him that you aren’t taking a bit of notice to what you eat.
When I was trying to get a young man I’d never go eating because the way some young men eat – shovelling away at their food, chewing with their mouths wide open – you
can’t help thinking, ‘Heavens above, would I have to sit opposite that every day of my life if we got married?’ So it’s best not to know.
All men have got defects, we know that, but you don’t want them paraded in front of you before you’ve taken them on, do you? After you’re married you can do your best to
eradicate the defects but you can’t start eradicating before you’ve got your man up the aisle.
Then there’s the kind of man who always props a newspaper in front of him. Of course you can’t see him eating but you want a man to talk to you.
The whole art of spending a married life together is not just popping up to bed. Your husband should be able to talk to you. Perhaps when you’ve been married years you don’t worry so
much, but when you first get married you visualize dainty food, a nice tablecloth and the man sitting there and talking to you about interesting things. Of course it’s all in your mind. It
doesn’t really materialize, but that’s what you think it’s going to be.
So I don’t think eating goes with courting.
Drinking is another thing altogether. You go into a pub or a lounge and you have a glass of wine with a stem to it and you sit there holding the
home for new surroundings and what do you find? Thick carpets, soft armchairs, a sort of cocktail-lounge effect. And the breweries say that’s what the customers want. How do they know? Did
they ask them? And if the customers want that why aren’t they there to use it? A lot of people – people like my husband and me – feel out of place in these cocktail-lounge kind of
places. But you’ve got to go there because they’ve done away with the private bar and you’ve only got two grades now – public bar and this kind of phoney set-up.
Then they haven’t got the drinks you want. My husband likes drinking beer – mild beer. And they don’t serve it except in the public bar. And when you ask you can see them
thinking, ‘What are you doing in here then if you can’t afford expensive drinks?’
It’s not just television. Maybe it’s because in an affluent society people don’t need what we do – the support and company of other people as a sort of prop in our
leisure time. Perhaps money does that for you. Makes you independent. But if that’s what being rich means, I don’t want it. I still need to depend on people for my enjoyment.
It was strange how packed the pubs used to be during the war – and I don’t think this was just because we had to have the alcohol. In a time of adversity we wanted the feeling of
togetherness. It’s a pity that it takes a war to give us this kind of unity with each other.
7
G LADYS WAS THE under-housemaid at my first place in London. She was a year older than me and although she wasn’t what you’d call a pretty
girl she had loads of personality. I used to look forward to our Sundays off together. Every other Sunday we got and we always started by going out to tea.
We used to go to rather posh places where they had all gold paint and plaster cupids and marble pillars, and for the price of a pot of tea and two or three cakes you could really feel that you
were living it up. We’d sit there and there’d be well-dressed people all around us with their high-faluting talk. And wooing young men would have their girls there.
Personally I could never see why people wanted to do their courting in restaurants. I think there’s nothing less conducive to love than seeing people opposite you chewing all the time. I
never could understand this mania that English people have for eating out. Either the food is so wonderful when you eat out that you’re not in the least bit interested in your partner, or
else you’re so interested in him that you aren’t taking a bit of notice to what you eat.
When I was trying to get a young man I’d never go eating because the way some young men eat – shovelling away at their food, chewing with their mouths wide open – you
can’t help thinking, ‘Heavens above, would I have to sit opposite that every day of my life if we got married?’ So it’s best not to know.
All men have got defects, we know that, but you don’t want them paraded in front of you before you’ve taken them on, do you? After you’re married you can do your best to
eradicate the defects but you can’t start eradicating before you’ve got your man up the aisle.
Then there’s the kind of man who always props a newspaper in front of him. Of course you can’t see him eating but you want a man to talk to you.
The whole art of spending a married life together is not just popping up to bed. Your husband should be able to talk to you. Perhaps when you’ve been married years you don’t worry so
much, but when you first get married you visualize dainty food, a nice tablecloth and the man sitting there and talking to you about interesting things. Of course it’s all in your mind. It
doesn’t really materialize, but that’s what you think it’s going to be.
So I don’t think eating goes with courting.
Drinking is another thing altogether. You go into a pub or a lounge and you have a glass of wine with a stem to it and you sit there holding the
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