Christa Ackroyd opens a sliding door on a lifetime of happy memories

Not the film. You know the one where Gwyneth Paltrow lives two parallel lives to illustrate that split second of fate which changes your life forever. No this week it is about real sliding doors and memories triggered by seeing a set of them thrown in a skip.

Sliding doors played a big part in my childhood in our 1950s semi on the outskirts of Bradford.

You know the ones I am talking about with dimpled or in our case dotted glass and an inset brass well worn circular handle. I was only three when we moved in, but I know that when I sold the family home some 50 odd years later to a lovely young couple starting their lives together they would be the first thing to go. And I don’t blame them. It is their home now and their special place to make memories. But those sliding doors played a big part in our lives.

Firstly, they separated the best room from the everyday living room. They were there to be kept closed until someone came to tea. Then they were flung open to ensure the groaning table in the living room was in full view. Open sandwiches, vol au vents filled with Campbell’s condensed mushroom soup, boiled eggs sliced with the sharp wires of a Tupperware slicer, pickled beetroot, silverskin onions and home made cakes not to mention in the centre, a quiche, though to us it was always egg and bacon flan.

To use the ‘best’ room was a sense of occasion, for birthdays at Christmas or on visits from aunties and uncles who were not really aunties and uncles but mum and dad’s friends, events that were special. In that best room was Schreiber or G plan furniture that has suddenly become oh so trendy and has been rebranded as mid century, the kind that used to light up when you plugged it in. In one corner was a stereogramme that only dad was allowed to touch and in the opposite corner a standard lamp for ambience.

We very rarely put the big light on unless we were reading and then it was so as not to ‘strain’ our eyes. On all other days we lived in the living room with table and chairs and the piano and a small portable tv which by today’s standards still looks as big as a house with the sliding doors shut and perhaps a table lamp glowing through the ripples of the glass just to make it seem inviting. Because to be invited into the best room was an event that was always filled with laughter and joy, so much so I used to sit at the bottom of the stairs listening to snatched conversations between the grown ups when a good night in often ended with one of Dad’s famous slide shows when he would make a trip to the loft to retrieve the projector and free standing screen on which he showed our latest holiday snaps. Simple life simple pleasures. Everything in its place and the best room kept for making the best of memories.

Over those years those sliding doors were repurposed. They shut off what became dad’s study room when he was working towards his police exams on the fold away green baize card table when we were told to shush because dad was revising.

Mum meanwhile huffed and puffed that they couldn’t invite anyone around because his ‘stuff’ was all over that table but of course she was immensely proud when he passed with flying colours. At Christmas Susan filled the place with once-a-year treats and placed them on the nest of coffee tables. Out came the Blue Tac and the sliding doors were used to display the 100 or so Christmas cards they received every year, a ritual that remained until she died.

In that room dad’s chair was still there, reserved for the man of the house, and quickly vacated as soon as he came in to sit down right next to the fire which metamorphosed from open to teak surround to decorative stone throughout the decades.

They will have all gone now along with the sliding doors but I can still picture every transformation from cut mouchette to dralon suite, brocade to velvet curtains.

And yet they say everything comes around, not just the furniture. Now we cherish sliding doors to let the outside in. Open fires (or at least stoves) are back in fashion. And guess what I am pricing up this week? Yes sliding doors for my own home.

Not the glass dimpled ones that mum used to insist we didn’t bang because we would break them. Not the ones to close off best rooms and keep them special. But in this open plan world where energy prices have gone through the roof, the sliding door is making a comeback.

The tracks they are now placed on are of an industrial feel, to be on display not hidden under wooden permets on top of which mum kept her display of Toby jugs when they were all the rage too. But to all intents and purposes they are the same. The keep the warmth in and the rooms cosy.

My mum could never bare to leave a door open because it let in the cold. She could never cope with a light being switched on when it wasn’t necessary and more importantly cost money. Things were bought to last, saved for until they could be afforded. And they were treasured and more importantly never thrown away until they could be mended no more.

Her vacuum cleaner lasted 50 years. Dad’s stereogramme was gifted to one of their granddaughters. The pouffe which he put his feet on in the best room recovered and treasured to this day. Even the sheets on her bed were decades old and turned side to middle using her ancient Singer sewing machine.

And so she never did replace those sliding doors because they were perfectly serviceable. I suspect in keeping things just as they were was a reminder of dad and happy times in that best room in a little semi in Bradford. Just as those sliding doors in a skip reminded me of growing up there. And it didn’t make me sad. It made me realise how lucky I was to have been taught there are many things in life far more important than having the latest this or that.

Mum was never one for fads. Instead she spend her money, what little she had, on her children and her grandchildren because giving she always said was better than receiving.

And I tell you one thing, whenever any of them came to call, as they did often, out would come the best china, the homemade cakes from an ancient tin and the best room was once again filled with laughter and memories. Who could wish for more?