I’m in the middle of scribbling a couple more things about the bloody pandemic. Then I’m done. It’s weary keeping up with the information, misinformation and disinformation. An inner voice pleads, ‘just put up and shut up’. And then by chance, I trip up over this revealing photo and text, tears come to my ageing eyes, remembering my grandma and my mum. Simple, sentimental nostalgia of no significance. And yet………

Helen Ashton writes:

I don’t think most kids today know what an apron/pinny is. The main use of Grandma’s apron was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few. It was also because it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and aprons used less material. But along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.

It was wonderful for drying children’s tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.

From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.

When visitors came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.

And when the weather was cold, she wrapped it around her arms.

Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood or coal stove.

Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.

From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.

In the autumn, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.

When unexpected visitors called it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.

It will be a long time before someone invents something as useful as a good old pinny.

[And today] They would go crazy trying to figure out how many germs were on that pinny.

I don’t think I ever caught anything from a pinny – but love.

PInched from The Wigan Nostalgia Facebook page and thanks again to Helen.