Times Past

My mum's family were farmers; my dad's family were shopkeepers and bakers. This clock sat in the bakehouse, next to the shop. It now hangs in our kitchen; wound every Sunday morning, it keeps good time

The bread ovens were fired by 'coke' - a fuel derived from coal, that I have not seen for years, though a quick Google suggests it is still supplied to blacksmiths. Although in principle 'cleaner' (at the point of use) than coal, I found it unpleasant stuff to shovel and carry; I didn't like the metallic, ashy sound it made when one piece rubbed against another

Coke is created by heating coal in the absence of oxygen. It has been made for several hundred years, but only in the 19th century were the gases that this "cooking" created captured and used as a fuel - eventually being piped to towns and cities all over the UK as "Town gas". This was the source of domestic gas in the UK well into my childhood. I well remember using it - from the taps in my secondary school science laboratory - as a source of hydrogen, in order to investigate the chemical properties of that element. Coal gas is roughly 50% hydrogen; the other 50% is carbon monoxide. It must seem incredible to anyone born even just a decade after me that we once had a huge infrastructure of manufacturing, transmission and storage facilities (the "gasholder" was a landmark in many towns) to deliver this fatally toxic gas directly into domestic kitchens. And it was indeed a frequent cause of accidental death and a common means of suicide

My father stopped baking bread commercially before I was old enough to remember him doing it, confining himself to the cakes and pastries that I do remember. Modern manufacturing methods - specifically the "Chorleywood" process - meant that factory-made bread could be sold (by the "Co-Op" that he spoke of with dark malevolence) much more cheaply than he could make it. The backlash against "cotton wool" bread, and the resurgence of artisan bakeries, was decades away

Coal has was replaced by "natural" gas while I was still at school. I guess Vladimir Putin was too

Time moves on