Wax and hot chips tell their own stories

THERE are some aromas which are able to evoke memories, so clear that it is as if the recollection was that of yesterday.

The smell of bacon takes one back to cold, misty Sunday mornings. Dad in the kitchen cooking up a storm; breakfast with everything, including fried banana, battered slices of brinjal and, of course, platters of fried eggs and the finest grilled bacon. That smell wafting through the house was enough to entice me out of bed and into the kitchen even though the frost was thick on the lawn outside.

My Dad was an outstanding cook and an adventurous one too. Sheep’s brains fritters were also a favourite addition to the Sunday breakfast until we children realised what we were eating.

Among other memory joggers are hot chips, 5c a paper bag, bought at the general dealer staffed by two Greek sisters, doused in salt and vinegar and eaten with burning fingers, the morsels hot out the packet, on the walk home from school.

Dimly lit and filled with an assortment of items archaic and new, the shop attracted passers-by of every hue and the neighbourhood children who arrived with cents in hand for a weekly dip into the jars of multicoloured sweets. On a chair in the gloom sat Papa in his overcoat. He was more ancient than anyone I had ever met. We greeted him but he said nothing beyond a grunt. Perhaps his English was not good. The floorboards were old and creaky and smelled of Cobra floor polish, but the eccentricity of this little shop was part of the charm of a small city and those delicious “slap” chips were the best in town.

Last week, drifting down the passage at work was the distinctive smell of hot wax. There is no telling where it was coming from but it took me back to the newsroom of 30 years ago, when this branch was much smaller and was housed in a warehouse in Caversham Road.

Newspapers and the methods of production have come a long way in a relatively short time, from the days of the typewriter to the digital age, newspapers in print and online continue to evolve and with this the defining elements of certain jobs.

Before the digital age, hot wax was an integral part of the production process and was presided over by the chief sub-editor. The carpet under his work station was stiff with solidified wax which was from the drippings of a little machine fitted with rollers and which heated the wax. Newspaper copy was cut into columns manually with a Stanley knife and then these strips were dipped in the wax and sent though the rollers to remove the excess. These strips of stories were then pasted on a firm paper grid, everything measured and exact.

Headlines were set in another department and the editor would scribble on a piece of scrap paper instructions such as “headline bla blah blah, 48pt bold.” This was all gibberish to the terrified rookie but my, was it exciting!

One of the hazards of this manual cut and paste, particularly in cold weather, was that bits and pieces would fall off the page as it was being carried to the platemaking department and reporters would be sent scurrying about, picking up bits of story from the floor.

Photos were mainly black and white and were developed on the premises in our own darkrooms. We even rolled our own film, collecting bags of empty spools from some kind photographic shops, for this purpose. With the arrival of colour photographs the darkroom became redundant. All film was processed elsewhere.

Little did we know that this too would become old hat as the ignored novelty called the world wide web was on the march and would soon become the method by which we all communicate and by which we do business, and lay out pages and write news.

The wax roller has gone, the carpets are clean but somehow a little of the romance has gone out of the rigours of producing a newspaper.