Sami’s Blog: Warm Plates

Remember when Gran warmed the dinner plates in the oven, so the meal stayed warm? It was not a fancy thing to do to impress the family.  It was a simple thing that was thoughtful.  My friend Benny visited his grandma and reminded me of this little slow act that has been largely lost in our fast world.

It sent me down a rabbit hole of deep nostalgia about the little things we used to do before we were sucked into the world of mobile phones and the internet. Remember we would use talcum powder after every shower. Just because it felt great. Remember when you would be allowed one bottle of sarsparallia at Christmas or your birthday. Just the one. 

What about how we would all send postcards to people we loved to show them how great the holiday destination really was.  I still remember sending a post card of The Big Banana to my bestie in year eight. Imagine the cringey cries that would lead to these days! Remember we collected stamps and $5 for your birthday was stuck inside the card from your Gramps with sticky tape.

Remember we had burn offs in incinerators in the back yard.  We read the paper from front to back and that included the announcements such as who had died and who was now engaged. We had sprinklers that made us laugh for hours in summer when we ran through the arms of water.  We sat on back steps and ate cold watermelon.  Our milk was delivered to our door by a milkman and left in a glass bottle. We drank straight from drink taps and troughs at school and didn’t need water bottles that cost a quarter of your pay packet. We ate white bread covered in sliced banana and sugar sprinkles.  We hitched a lift in the back of Dad’s Ute. We only had TV with ads in every show and had to wait a whole week for the next episode of our favourite series. We collected ice cream sticks in the hope of winning a prize and then used the ice cream sticks to make Christmas tree decorations. We shrank chip packets in the oven and used them as fancy keyrings. Sheets were starched and ironed.

We had so much less yet so much more effort went into everyday things that seemed to punctuate the act of living with importance.

Today it feels like we are just surviving. And my favourite thing in the world to do was to sit in front of my tape deck and record each song from the Top 40 countdown so I could make my own playlists of music. No wonder I went into radio for my job.