Spoons and forks

We need a little light-hearted banter to balance out the seriousness of what's going on in our personal lives, our country and the rest of the world. I love Greatnan's thread which provides a rich source of jokes (ok, I know it's everyone's thread, but credit where credit's due).

I remember my grandmother's small terraced house, which had a coal cellar, scullery, kitchen, main family room where everyone ate, cooked in the large black grate and bread oven and sat by the fire, and the parlour, which held the piano and was used for any member of the large family who was courting, or to receive the priest. It was the biggest room in the house and could have been used for so many things.

My front room is the sitting room - my mum would have liked a drawing room, but never managed it!

I don't have a front room,or a back room, I have a through room! Both rooms were knocked through with an open staircase.

We get very confused with front room/back room so maybe ought to give the rooms specific names e.g sitting room & drawing room !! When we moved here the front door opened onto the back garden and the back door onto the entrance drive. We have subsequently moved the front door & porch to where the entrance drive is and put an extension where it used to be & so turned the house back to front! When referring to the rooms OH still calls the rooms front/back according to original organisation..I am using current organisation..we waste time looking for things in the wrong rooms all the time!Very

In the house where I spent my very early childhood, we had a 'morning room'. What was that?

I've always wanted to live somewhere with a boot room.Anagram The morning room is the room where the lady of the house (not Hyacinth Bucket) sat in the morning to write letters and invitations and to discuss the days meals with the cook.

Ah! I could call one of our rooms the morning room as it is light & sunny(?) and is lovely to sit an read in in the day. The other room is darker, has the TV and we use it in the evening. Maybe a day /morning room and the TV room would sort us out!

Helooo as the orginal poster of this thread have to say I love the way things wander off at a tangent , it"s great !!

Thanks for that information about the difference between pudding and dessert, absent, I didn't know that!

We have a 'drawing room', otherwise called the den. It's a lean-to built onto the side of the house where DH and DD go to draw and paint. It also houses the bikes, a motley collection of chairs, our archery equipment, and my shredder. It has a built-in bunk high in the roof that is big enough for three people (four if they're small), and a small wood-burning stove in one corner.

Dh likes to call it the studio! [haha]

Oh, and DD is using it as a greenhouse at the moment too.

We had a room which was known as the 'stag' room because when we bought the house there was a horrible motheaten stag's head mounted on the wall! This diferentiated it from the sitting/drawing room depending upon which parent was referring to it. We also had a kitchen and a scullery but I have a kitchen and a untility room, what's the difference?

I suppose it was being a silver service waitress (one of my many jobs when children were young) but a spoon and fork are really necessary to eat dessert. I hate chasing food around the plate or dish whether it be starter, main or dessert and require the proper utensils (or irons as referred to in our house!) Needing special cutlery due to RA in my hands I take my own with me to eat out and I ask the restaurant/café to rinse them for me too! They usually oblige.

The thing that I find weird though is over here the French use their cutlery the other way round - fork in right hand and knife in the left. My grandchildren have started doing the same since starting school here and eating at cantine. They always used them the 'proper' way, learning in England. To me it is so cackhanded!

BurgundyGran My mother was left-handed – couldn't do a thing with her right hand and even ate left-handed. My ex and my son-in-law are both left-handed, but eat right-handed; my eldest grandson is right-handed but eats left-handed.

DH calls cutlery eating irons as well, burgundy. I'd never heard that before I met him. He's Welsh.

My father also called them eating irons, is it something to do with the RAF?

Ah! Could be - my father also said it, and he was in the RAF during the war.

Trivia is sometimes just that, and a little light relief. I do spend quite a bit of time sorting through requests for aid from less economically developed countries, it can make you heart ache.

Not just the RAF. Eating irons in the army too.

That's right, Elegran! I'd forgotten.

I have got over my slight attack of the grumps, having had a wonderful two hour walk over the ski slopes in sunshine, with a view of Lake Geneva, sparkling in the distance, and the snow-capped peaks of the Mont Blanc Range in the other direction!
I am usually all in favour of trivia, banter, light-heartedness,, etc but I think I might be a tad over-sensitive because I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and I hate the idea that anyone is judging anyone else because they use the 'wrong' word.
All the terraced houses in Salford had a parlour, kitchen and scullery. Even quite large families would hardly ever use the parlour. Cooking was done on a range in the kitchen and the family ate and relaxed there as well. The scullery had the sink - a shallow brown 'slop-stone' with a white enamel bowl in it.
I am reading Bill Bryson's 'At home' in which he traces the development of the home from its first roots. It is fascinating. The rooms in some big houses are mind-boggling - cheese room, preserve room, bread room, ice room, boot room, tackle room, ironing room, laundry, gun room.........
I have a kitchen, dining room, living room and bedroom - well actually, they are all the same room! I do have a separate double bedroom but I prefer to sleep on my settee so I can watch TV or surf when I can't sleep.

I have never noticed anyone eating with their fork in their right hand in France, and certainly place settings in restaurants are always conventional. Perhaps it is a regional thing. I do find it odd that you are often expected to keep your dirty knife and fork from from your starter to use in your main meal. I used to put them tidily on my plate, as you would in England, but the waiter would often remove them and dump them on the table quite grumpily. I now know that you use your bread to clean them!

I remember the call at RAF Padgate (square-bashing hell) "Outside with your mug and irons" - before being marched to the mess... eating irons were occasionally also referred to as "gobbling rods"... very occasionally.

Greatnan it happens all the time here knife and fork wrong way round and keeping your cutlery from one course to the next. In one Auberge we had to use the same plate for starter, main and cheese, luckily got a clean plate for the dessert, phew

As to the reference to irons, I haven't been in the forces but believe it started with my grandad who was in the army. I have just heard it all my life. I thought everyone said it.

I think I might try asking for clean cutlery - might end up with a knife in my chest!

My nana called her kitchen the back kitchen! There was no front kitchen..just the parlour for 'best'..whenever that was.. and the back room where every day living happened!

We have a "utility room" which opens off our back door so is the first room we enter and where all the boots and coats are left. My DGD has christened it "the mud room" and it has stuck because it was so descriptive!