Good housekeeping, offending people

Good Housekeeping

This was the magazine my mother always had and which I occasionally bought for that reason: amazingly, it has not “re-branded” itself despite a) housekeeping being out of fashion and b) the fact that it is only partly about housekeeping and also, like every other woman’s magazine, about diets and shopping. However, you can still imagine a farmer’s wife in what used to be Cumberland and has now been re-branded something like Lakeside, reading this magazine and it still has the Good Housekeeping Institute, which tests consumer goods. It also has quite long worthy articles about ailments and the menopause, and often features the real size16 women that dominate the UK getting makeovers in which they generally look worse than before. I admit to liking the magazine quite a lot: it is partly atavism, if that is the right word, because of its familiarity, but also the fact that it is a bit worthy and stodgy with only a dash of modernity, like M&S individual sponge puddings. Also, I am a secret housewife.

For years I have not liked the word, and as noted before, in Spanish “ama de casa” can mean something a bit like a comedy fishwife. The other day, Gary from Orange Box passed me in the town market and asked me how I liked being a housewife. My immediate reaction (as it so often is) was to bristle and say that I was doing a lot else besides housework, and of course when I was bustling about in a suit and never seeing the morning or evening, I was quite scornful of housewives who read the Next catalogue and pushed a trolley about before having a coffee. Now, however, I am officially one, and I do some of that, though I draw the line at the Next catalogue, (not least because I would be back in the land of junk mail from which I have nearly escaped – last week I got rid of a sheepskin company and, for the third time, the Amnesty shopping catalogue). I suppose there are as many types of housewife as there are career women, or businessmen: the ones whose houses smell overpoweringly of dog, ones who write novels or who lie in bed depressed, and ones who murder their husbands and bury them under the patio.

As I have no radio, when I am cleaning the kitchen floor or cooking, I spend the time thinking about what I will write, or just thinking, which I generally didn’t do at home because the radio was quite good. (Here, the radio is quite crap and also very opaque – I have no idea how the programming works and have never seen anything like the Radio Times though it is just the kind of magazine that ought to exist in Almería. RNE, which is national, seems to have 1, 3 and 5 – none of which appear to represent any particular constituency, though 5 appears to be mainly endless news bulletins about industrial and traffic accidents, of which there are a lot in Spain. On another one of the channels, you get a man philosophising about how Cervantes is like Virgil – then it skips back to some pop music. As for the local channels, Canalsur appears quite interesting when you can hear it, otherwise it is “Fiesta” channel which is a kind of manic teenage party, or the English channel which plays hits from any decade except the present; the presenters sound like they are retired ex-pats who are doing it for a hobby and are a bit slow on the uptake – the other day the man said “Clocks go back this weekend, don’t forget or you’ll be late for work.”)

Today, in a self-referential way, I was thinking about housekeeping and what I knew about the theory. I have identified five sources which make up my knowledge of the subject:
1) My mother. I don’t think she was much of a housekeeper; her mind was on higher things. However, I did follow her about while she did the housework and I do remember her telling me you should dust before you wipe.
2) Good Housekeeping magazine. I can’t actually remember any tips but there must have been some: things like using vinegar on the window, which I would never be bothered to do.
3) Anne of Green Gables. For some reason, I always remember Mrs Rachel Lynde commenting that Anne had turned into a good housekeeper, on the basis that there was nothing that shouldn’t be there in her breadbin or her scrap pail – or something along those lines. I imagine this means she didn’t waste food or keep it when it was mouldy? Wasting is a big issue these days: Jane was very disapproving of Sandy throwing out food we hadn’t eaten, but he said good chefs always do that and look at Raymond Blanc who hand makes ice cream every day and throws it all out the next. I do try to just buy what I need, but this is quite hard with children, who say they want something and then change their mind and also have become so strong-minded you can’t make them eat things they don’t like, as they used to have to eat rice pudding. Interestingly, the Spanish school comedor still has this rule: the children must eat everything on their plate, a rule which applied at my primary school and which meant we had to squash it between the stacked plates to hide it. Also, I do buy the fruit and vegetables at the market on Wednesday and aim to make it last the week, largely in the fridge as advised by my builder. Apart from that, living a way from a shop, you have to use the freezer – freezing bread and taking it out in the morning, something that would have been considered beyond the pale on Prince Edward Island I am sure.
4) The hymn with the words “A man that looks on glass/On it may stay his eye,” which are by Herbert. From memory, it says you can either look at the glass, or beyond the glass to the heavens; it then goes on to say that if we do things with the right purpose they will be bright and clean, or something like that. I can’t help it, I always think of cleaning windows when I hear this, and what work it is making the glass transparent. Vinegar is clearly the solution.
5) Farewell, rewards and fairies. Slut used to be a very useful word for a bad housekeeper, the kind who would sweep the dust under the bed forgetting that the Almighty was watching, or not bother to get out the vinegar. In the past, apparently, fairies used to reward good housekeepers – presumably these were the kind of fairies that want to live in a clean house, like hobgoblins, and not the wild kind. But as Kipling asked, “who of late for cleanliness/Found sixpence in her shoe?” Those days are gone.

Forget farthings, in the old days a good housekeeper was worth her weight in gold. Today, does any man look out for a woman who can cook or clean? Certainly not: they look at other things, and then perhaps if she had a good job. I read in Spanish Cosmopolitan the other day that when surveyed as to what they like in a woman, Spanish men, compared with other Europeans, like her to be passionate about her career. Germans, English and the rest prefer a woman to put them first, and her work second: a surprising result, if it is even partly true. I suppose our evolutionary mating criteria constantly change with society and perhaps there is a reason why a Spanish man will survive better with a career woman than without: certainly, women here, though quite overtly feminine, are not at all shrinking: they are very confident, bold and assertive, rather like Carmen, and there seem to be a lot of them in public life so perhaps the ama de casa will soon be shut in the dusty broom cupboard of the past.

Offending people

I have been thinking more about the Spanish lady telling the shop lady that she was fat, and how the latter didn’t seem remotely offended. Spanish people don’t seem to be offended by personal remarks of this kind – so what does offend them? I would like to know. There was a hint in Alexander saying that his teacher said the UK could not be a post-industrial society, because Spain was not: as I was writing yesterday, they are quite “patriotic,” though I don’t think patriotism is quite the word I am looking for. For instance, I imagine they would take offence at someone criticising Spanish food, where an English person would quite happily say that English food was shite. Noticeably, too, the Spanish here are pretty insular – and although this is Almería, I have a feeling that it is not just them. For instance, they are surrounded by English people, but show no interest at all in their culture, cooking, or anything, really: I haven’t ever heard a Spanish person here ask a question about the UK, except once about Princess Diana, the exception that invariably proves the rule. I am sure they think Spanish food – which while very good, is very unvarying, is the best, and that there is not much need to try anything else. For instance, at the food fiesta, Juan Mañas was waxing quite enthusiastic about showing me how to make migas or the strange goat’s milk dessert they have, but I know would not be remotely interested in learning to make an English dish; he looked quite vague when I said Sandy could do a haggis for the fiesta next year and didn’t ask any questions about what a haggis was. I should think it would be just what they would like here, too, anything out of entrails and blood should go down a treat. In the same way, they don’t really go on holiday outside Spain that much – and this is true of the smart madrilenos that work in Sandy’s office, just as much as the local people here. They go to Cadiz, for instance, or Grenada, in the summer, not on a plane to England or America, or the Caribbean. I suppose they have all they need here. This makes me think that they would be offended by criticisms of Spain or the Spanish way, and also if you refused to work with their uncle, or buy his not very nice olive trees, as I did the other day. You could offend a person by failing to appreciate their community, family or business, I think – whereas criticising their hair or clothes would probably just make them shrug or laugh. Perhaps they are less conscious of themselves as individuals and more as a group; they certainly relate quite differently to their family, village, town, country, than English people, who would dismiss these, at least outwardly, with ease.