Evoking memories and smells of a bygone age

ONE of Ian McMillan’s many talents is the ability to elicit nods of recognition from people like me and evoke memories we normally would never think of recording. Like Peter Meal (Yorkshire Post, December 5), I grew up with the “reight good wesh”.

This was a misnomer if ever there was one.

Despite the spluttering and vigorous rubbing, its only concession to cleanliness was that the face and armpits were fresh: if it comes to personal hygiene I can think of better places to start.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, I am convinced that miners were the only members of our community who were really clean as they had to take a bath after every shift. Once a week was the norm elsewhere.

We were rather posh, my father being a train-driver. Curiously, we had a magnificent cast-iron bath in the bathroom but no toilet or wash basin.

During the day, when answering a call of nature, my father would always declare his intent: “I shall ‘ev to go outside”, he would announce, donning his overcoat. How we coped at night can be left to the imagination.

Incidentally, unlike Peter Meal on childhood visits to the barbers, I didn’t appreciate the “skilled use of comb and taper” on senior clients. The practice of singeing made an awful stench and, to this day, I don’t know what purpose it served.