Trip to the past

On a wet, windy Sunday, what could be better than to visit a museum. Milestones near Basingstoke is a network of streets with shops, a village green and a pub, dating from Victorian times up to the 1930s, recreated inside a massive modern building.

20,000 objects that ordinary people used in the past are on display - tin baths, Spong bean slicers, mangles, toasting forks, wooden split pegs, hat pins, liver pills... the variety is astonishing, yet each thing has been carefully placed to tell its own story.

Memories came flooding back to me of my grandmother's scullery.... my mother's kitchen... and then my own first home. This was less welcome! I found it hard to believe that things I had once used were in a MUSEUM! Made me wonder if I shouldn't have been exhibit 20,001....



It did make me appreciate how the technology of that time moulded our characters, how hard physically we had to work in the home with no washing machines, fridges, vacuum cleaners, convenience foods, supermarkets, transport.... it was very character building but I'm grateful for the modern appliances that give me freedom from domestic servitude, allowing me to live a fulfilling and much more comfortable life-style.