Intemperance

This is the back cover of one of Mrs Oons's reference books. I always associate the Temperance Movement with very fierce people of the Thou Shalt Not persuasion. The Temperance (Scotland) Act 1913 enabled these fierce folk to organise local referendums to get the local pubs shut down. As you can imagine this was a trifle controversial. And as you can see from the extra, it was still a live issue in the fifties. You can find out more here.

There was much Signing Of The Pledge around then. It's something my paternal grandmother had done, and she maintained that she was teetotal to the end of her days. This, despite a daily slug of Mosaic Cyprus sherry, which didn't count apparently because my father had persuaded her it was medicinal.

One Christmas I bought her a really good, proper Spanish sherry, albeit a sweet one to match her taste. Yuk! It wasn't anywhere near as good as the Mosaic. So the following day we furtively decanted the new sherry into an empty bottle of the old, whereupon it tasted fine.