Signs that standards are seriously slipping.

trisher

We always had to clean the silver; that sounds terribly posh, but we weren't. Each piece had a story, given as wedding presents.

Ooh Callistemon did you use Silvo? We cleaned brass with Brasso. It made your fingers black. Newspaper on the table. Mind mum didn't do it that often she had a healthy disrespect for housework. She always said she saw too many lovely pieces of highly polished furniture hanging out of bombed houses and thought about the women who had spent their lives polishing it

Yes, Silvo.
Newspaper on the kitchen table and that smell which I didn't like very much. It probably polished half of the surface away because it was mainly all silver plate.

I don't think Mum cleaned it often - it was always the children who got roped in to do that! Mum looked after my cousin too and she remembered being roped in to polish as well.