Saturday in 1959: Library Adventures and the Mediterranean

It must be somewhat obvious that I've not been performing my weekly Saturday historical experiments that enthusiastically for a while. For one thing, I've unexpectedly grown to find the 1950s a little bit repugnant. For example, with regard to gender roles: it didn't so much reflect the old-fashioned way of the previous decades so much, I'm tending to agree with the benefit of having 'lived' through these previous decades, as forge a further artificial distinction that seems to still be messing things up today. The Cold War in general, also not great; McCarthyism, not great; the looming presence of atomic war, alongside a plethora of happy little accidents with nuclear warheads etc. (e.g., admittedly in the 1960s, the Palomares Incident) that I think haven't sufficiently been highlighted in history books and that make me facepalm now, also not great.

For another, it still feels difficult to research the UK in the 1950s due to online copyright restrictions on contemporary newspapers and cookbooks, although I recently went to the trouble to purchase a Berlin public library card in order to help. (One cookbook by wartime British personality Marguerite Patten is listed online as being in the stacks of the American-sponsored building of the Gedenkbibliothek, the cookbook's presence apparently being a legacy of the British Council's former Berlin-based library. But it appears to be missing, a mystery that greatly perplexed the librarian with whom I spoke. She gave me an email address with follow-up instructions, which I'd like to take care of soon.)

Thirdly, when there's a contemporary war going on, the appetite for make-believe is a little weaker. I just read in the local news yesterday that over 200,000 Ukrainian refugees are believed to have arrived in Berlin.

That said, today I did 'do' 1959 reasonably well. Inspired by a photograph of the computer scientist Grace Hopper that is part of the lesson material for an Open University introduction to an online computer science course, I put on a flared skirt and a three-quarter sleeved button-up shirt that I even ironed, wore my hair pinned up as usual, and briefly stalked around on the pump shoes that I'd bought 'in the 1920s.' Quoting from the Grimm version of "Cinderella," my mother remarked, 'Rucke di guck, Blut ist im Schuck' when she spotted them. 

Then I went to a market hall in Kreuzberg, Elizabeth David's period cookbook A Book of Mediterranean Food in hand, buying Mediterranean vegetables as well as a bottle of white wine. (If you're wondering, the temptation to wear period costume when shopping for Saturdays is not very strong; this morning I went shopping in jeans and running shoes.) It wasn't that busy indoors, and I felt smug for going before noon. Then I went to an organic grocery store and bought lemons, sheep's cheese, a watermelon, and seltzer water.

Lunch was a salad of fennel, radicchio, cherry tomatoes, and cucumber that was improvised; and the white wine. In addition I made David's recipes for "Carottes au blanc," "Salad of sweet peppers," and "Courgettes aux tomates." Serving the sheep's cheese with the meal made it less overwhelmingly vegetable-y, and trickling olive oil around the sheep's cheese and topping it with freshly ground black pepper and pieces of basil made it look festive.

Later I went to a local tailor's shop, where the doyenne was cleaning the wooden plank floor the old-fashioned way, scrubbing with a rag by hand. A trouser had a hole, a summer wool skirt's lining was becoming tattered; she promised to try to repair both by Friday evening.

Going to a secondhand bookstore in search of 1950s sewing or crafts manuals, or British cookbooks from the 1950s, was less successful. In the end I bought a pocket Turkish dictionary.

Back at home, I attempted to repair a winter sock. It was badly worn through at the heel and sole, and rather than waste good leather by attempting to make it over into a hapless slipper, I resolved to sew parts of an even worse-looking sock over the holes. The outcome, of course, was a Frankenstein's monster of a sock. I will only test it next winter, so the suspense has plenty of time to build.

Another housewifely task was cleaning up my desk a bit. I've amassed old grocery store receipts in a paper bag, waiting for the winter too. It will presumably be an adventurous winter, in the possible absence of traditional sources of heating for 'geopolitical reasons'; but let it not be said that I don't have enough fuel for 1 to 2 minutes of zero-degree weather.

Besides I played music. Chopin mazurkas, excerpts of Chopin's ballades, another counterpoint piece from Bach's Art of Fugue, ragtime pieces by Scott Joplin (since these were 're-discovered' in the 1970s, playing these was doubtless inauthentic), a Scarlatti sonata or two, the beginning of the Bach-Busoni chaconne, a "Seguidilla" by Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados's "Orientale," and so on and so forth.

Let's see what the 1960s will offer!