When baby boomers were young, most houses seemed to have a room called the Good Room.
It had the best sofa, the best rug, the best chairs and usually a polished sideboard containing the best glasses, the best dinner set and a collection of ornaments nobody was allowed to touch.
The strange thing was, the Good Room was rarely used.
Families could be living on top of one another in a small house, children everywhere, coats hanging on doors, somebody doing homework at the kitchen table and another person trying to watch television, while an entire room sat empty.
Children certainly weren’t allowed in it.
You might be permitted to look through the door, but that was about it.
The Good Room was for visitors.
Except most visitors never went into it either.
They came in through the kitchen, sat around the kitchen table, drank tea and stayed there for the next two hours.
I often wondered who exactly the Good Room was being kept for.
The bank manager perhaps.
The parish priest or Methodist minister.
Or some distant relative from England who might arrive unexpectedly and need to be impressed.
Christmas was usually the exception. The Good Room might then be opened up and brought into service, although children entering it were given enough warnings to make you think you were being allowed into a museum.
Don’t spill anything.
Don’t put your feet there.
Mind that ornament.
And whatever you do, don’t sit on the arm of the chair.
The Good Room was only part of it.
There was also the good crockery, the good cutlery, the good glasses and, of course, the good biscuits.
The good biscuits were never for us.
They were kept for visitors.
You could have been starving after school, but somewhere in the kitchen there was a packet of chocolate biscuits that you were not allowed to touch because somebody might call.
Nobody ever did.
Or if they did, they were probably given Rich Tea anyway.
Some boomers will also remember mothers keeping a good nightdress and good underwear in a drawer.
These were not necessarily worn.
They were for hospital.
The thinking seemed to be that if you were suddenly rushed to hospital, possibly gravely ill, the main thing was not to disgrace the family by turning up in an old nightie.
I don’t think this tradition has survived.
Certainly, from the hospital visits I have made in recent years, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of people arriving in their best pyjamas.
The Good Room itself has mostly disappeared too.
Modern houses are much more relaxed. People actually sit on their sofas. Children are allowed into all the rooms. Glasses go into dishwashers. Furniture gets scratched.
But I don’t think the idea of the Good Stuff has completely gone away.
Certainly not with our generation.
Most of us still have everyday glasses and good glasses.
The everyday glasses are slightly cloudy from years in the dishwasher and may not all match.
The good glasses are somewhere at the back of a cupboard.
They are brought out for visitors.
We also have everyday mugs.
Then there are the better mugs.
And beyond that, somewhere further up the social scale, there is the porcelain cup and saucer.
That only appears for somebody important.
You know you’ve reached a certain level when you visit someone’s house and they don’t give you tea in a mug.
Out comes the cup and saucer.
Then you have the problem of trying to drink from a tiny cup with a tiny handle while balancing a saucer on your knee.
All the while, you’re hoping you don’t drop the thing, because you know perfectly well it has probably been in that cupboard for thirty years.
And the funny thing is, when those same people come to your house, you’re probably doing exactly the same.
Are they good-glass people?
Good-mug people?
Cup-and-saucer people?
There is definitely a little bit of Hyacinth Bucket in a lot of us.
Or Bouquet, as she would have insisted.
That was why Keeping Up Appearances worked so well. We recognised her.
Maybe not quite to the extent of Royal Doulton with the hand-painted periwinkles, but we all knew somebody who had a dinner service too good to eat dinner off.
Our children don’t seem to suffer from this problem.
They buy things and use them.
Straight away.
New towels are used.
New glasses are filled.
A new sofa can have somebody lying across it within half an hour.
To our generation, this still seems slightly reckless.
Our parents had an excuse. Furniture was expensive and expected to last. Clothes were looked after. Plates were not thrown out because fashions changed.
Things had value.
But somewhere along the line, looking after something became the same as not using it.
And some of us are still at it.
There are probably thousands of cupboards across Ireland containing sets of perfect glasses waiting for the right occasion.
The worrying part is that one day our children will find them.
They’ll open the cupboard, take them out and wonder why they were hardly ever used.
And the answer will be simple.
We were keeping them for visitors.
Just not the visitors we actually had.
