Today I received several Christmas gifts but the best present of all was the one that the badgers of Palmer's Scrubs Wood gave to me down in Bedfordshire on Tuesday afternoon.
You can see the little bottle in my top and tail images. It is four inches tall and I say "inches" because my brain is still not au fait with any foreign metric systems of measurement.
At first when I saw the word "Lemonade" embossed on the side of the bottle I was confused. I mean - it's such a little bottle - what would be the point of such a tiny amount of liquid refreshment?
Later, internet research taught me that when the bottle was sold over a hundred years ago, it would have contained lemonade crystals or powder that could then be used to make up several pints of lemonade.
On laptops in their woodland setts, wild badgers will often trawl through the blogosphere on cold winter nights. If any of them happen upon this humble Yorkshire blog and see this blogpost, I would like to thank them heartily for their antique glass Christmas gift. Much appreciated.
Badgers? Is that a football team? Soccer? Cricket? The bottle is nice, well preserved. 4 inches is 10cm, a good depth for hems on little girls dresses, I remember this from when I made skirts and dresses for my daughters. Following: 8 inches is 20cm, basic cake pan size for making cakes.
ReplyDeleteBadgers are most likely to find you on an I-phone. Neat bottle, a nice find.
ReplyDeleteMaybe some badger blogger has been following your blog for years and decided it‘s about time to thank you for hours of fun, entertainment and food for thought, and has placed this gift for you to find.
ReplyDeleteFour inches is easy to calculate at 25mm per inch, or 2.5cm. Either way, it isn't a very satisfactory figure. While I wouldn't use River's cake pan measuring comparison of a cake tin, 20cm is quite a good figure.
ReplyDeleteRather clever that lemonade crystals could be made so long ago, but I wonder what it tasted like.
A nice find indeed!
ReplyDeleteI used to love those Lemon Crystals. As a boy I'd lick my finger, then dip it in the bag. Heaven on earth for someone in short trousers.
ReplyDeleteMy son's large hairy dog is named Badger. He's wondering who these other badgers are who gave you the gift.
ReplyDeleteAnd in such perfect condition! Canada switched to the metric system 50+ years ago (when I was a teenager), but I still think in terms of feet, inches, and pounds. But I do think of temperature in Celsius and speed in kilometres now.
ReplyDeleteThere is something magical about coming upon a very old bottle. I mean- genies don't live in tea pots. That's a good one.
ReplyDeleteInteresting!
ReplyDelete2.5cm, what an easy conversion to remember! Egad, this blog is not only entertaining, it's informative! While I do wish our benighted country would finally go metric, what I really want is conversion of cooking measurements from our awkward and antiquated volume measurements (how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon? how many ounces in a cup??) to the far superior weight measures.
ReplyDelete