OUR OLD PORCH

When I was a kid in the Sixties and Seventies we had a glass porch. 

It stuck out of the side of the house like a glass box with steps.

Basically it was the front door and a greenhouse and my Mum used to grow house plants on the glass shelves which ran across the two windowed sides. The other two were frosted glass doors, one into the house and one was the external front door. For some reason it was hardly ever used as a front door, everyone preferring the back door into the kitchen. 

I do recall that the porch door was good for sneaking girls into the house. My older brothers did it and I followed suit later. It was largely out of sight once our folks were sat down watching TV in the telly room. Girlfriends could be ushered in and out of the boys' lounge without too much fuss!

The porch itself had thin glass shelves. These ran across the window panes so that house plants were layered from floor to ceiling on ladders of glass. There were spider plants, sedums, catcti, yuccas and flowering plants I can't name.

There were also vases and small tools. I still have one of the vases and the wooden stand it stood on, which is amazing as we left that house 40 years ago and I've moved at least 10 times since!

Mum's tools were miniature garden tools like a fork, a rake and a spade. They all had brown shaped wooden handles like a big cocktail fork set. I can see those tools now stood up in a vase on one of the glass shelves.

Next to them was always a bottle of Baby Bio. I didn't know what this was at the time. One of those unidentifiable chemicals that used to fill houses back then. It was shaped like an onion with a long neck and always coloured dark brown with a black cap. I can't remember the label. If I did think it was anything at the time it would have been something you gave babies to help them grow, which was odd as there weren't any in our house.  I've since found out that Baby Bio was simply plant food!

I don't recall ever playing in the porch. It was mostly glass after all. I could have at least got Action Man to have climbed up the ladder of shelves. I imagine, if its door was open, I did zoom a few Hot Wheels and Whizzwheels in there across its black and white tiled floor as it was at the end of our hall. 

There was a big painted stone step too outside it below the frosted glass front door. I'm pretty sure I sat on that outside step with my mates, who were mostly Action Men!

Once my nephew drove his Raleigh trike, Shining style, furiously down the hall and straight through the porch's inside glass door. I think he was cut quite badly. I remember that the new glass door had a big wooden diagonal bar across it after that in case anyone else rode into it!

I miss that porch. It was an unusual and really quite beautiful add-on to the house and I've nowhere like it at all to put my old original vase and plant stand now.

Did you or have you got a porch readers?