Coffee Break

The home where I was raised included a room called the 'pantry'. It was indeed the room where food was stored, in freestanding cupboards, open shelves, a refrigerator, and a 'meat-safe' (a cupboard with fly-proof, metal-mesh sides, rather than wood). Crockery was also stored there, and many household items

Oddly, the room also contained an electric cooker and a table that was used for food preparation (and at other times for ironing). There was no water or sink, that was in an adjacent room. There were meat hooks fixed in the ceiling; at one time, a budgerigar in a cage hung from one of them! Around three sides of the room, was a low brick platform, perhaps 60cm high and 60cm wide, that we called a "thrawl". I have never googled the word before today, but I find myself vindicated

I don't think much of this was typical, even of a rural farmhouse; I think we were just peculiar - to some extent the product of a mentality, forged in the 1920s and 30s, that spent available capital on the farm business, and only on living accommodation as a last resort

At the extreme end of the highest shelf - a position for items that were rarely required - was a tall, square bottle of dark glass, containing an even darker bituminous syrup. I could only reach it by standing on the thrawl. Even then, I thought its label design odd and old-fashioned; I now recognise it as imperalist and racist 

Of course, I'm talking about 'Camp Coffee'. The glutinous syrup, which always made the cap sticky, and dripped down the outside of the bottle, (discolouring the label, like the last picture on the linked page) actually contains only  4% coffee; its major constituent is chicory - specifically the dried, ground root of this plant, growing beside a rough track where I was riding between public roads. Chicory is cheap, coffee is expensive; the product, and its presence in our house, were also a historical hang-over: from war-time blocades and post-war austerity

I don't remember the bottle ever becoming empty, or needing to be replaced; it was kept 'just in case' a visitor asked for coffee. I tried it once and was repelled. Eventually, I made it to university and instant coffee became a compulsory component of social intercourse. We were modern, we were open minded, we were going to change the world. As far as coffee is concerned, perhaps we did