It couldn’t happen now

Linda Hall

I WAS feckless as a young woman, so feckless that I once had a daily who came on Sundays too, an arrangement which suited both of us very well.

I suppose some people had a dishwasher that long ago in Spain, but we didn’t and said cleaner, whose name was Paca, happily washed and scrubbed what I’d overlooked. The non ­ stick frying pan, for instance.

Not long after she began cleaning for us, she cornered me and scolded me for burning the frying ­ pan.

“It’s taken hours and I can’t get that brown stuff off,” she said.

We both looked at the pan and where Paca saw a dirty frying pan, I saw one where half the Teflon had been scratched off.

I explained that the brown stuff stopped things from sticking. She looked thoughtful and impressed.

“Like tortilla?” she asked. “Exactly like tortilla,” I answered.

As anyone who makes a Spanish omelette soon discovers, turning it in anything other than a non ­ stick pan requires nerves of steel and a large amount of luck, even for dab hands like Paca.

Unsurprisingly, she immediately went out and bought one for herself.

Innovations were slower to spread 50 or so decades ago, but mobiles and their uses still held their mysteries in the late 90s.

I was riding my bicycle into town once when I heard a text message arrive. I stopped, took my phone out of my bag, and hunched over it to read the message.

A car stopped on the other side of the road and the driver stuck her head out of the window.

“Are you all right?” she called. “I thought perhaps you were ill.”

“I’m fine,” I answered. “I was just looking at a message on my phone.”

At which she looked slightly puzzled and drove off.

Now there’s something that could never happen in 2023, not when practically everyone has their nose in their phone, earbuds in their ears and eyes for nothing but their screen.