IDEAL HOMES In London
By SEPTIMA TAYLOR 0 LYMPIA seemed to be a trifle less crowded this year, but not enough to affect one's idea of the supreme popularity of this exhibition. As a puller-in of people I can think of only two parallels, the Motor Show and Radiolympia, and the glossy car and the seventeen-inch screen are, after all, essential adjuncts of the Ideal Home. And once again, this year, the heart of the Exhibition's appeal lay in what might be called the Realisable Dream. There is of course on the one hand a great deal of strictly practical interest at Olympia—the latest kind of floor-polisher, duster or water-softener—and on the other there is plenty of material for pool-winning fantasy—mixing machines. dish- washers, refrigerators big as icebergs. But what seems to interest most people most is the kind of kitchen or bathroom or whatever, which, with a fair measure of luck and abstinence (a husband's promotion, cutting down to ten a day, and anyway we're bound to get Uncle Fred's legacy sometime) they may really hope one day to possess.
The Dream Kitchen has been styled like a laboratory for decades; now even the Realisable Dream Kitchen has this air. There has been a real advance in the design of ordinary equip- ment like gas cookers in the last few years, so that a gas cooker bought in 1946 or 7 looks definitely old-fashioned. (But surely it is time all burners in all gas appliances of every kind were self-igniting?) Built-in eye-level cupboards and formica tops to working surfaces have now become standard, and have done a great deal to make a reasonably inexpensive British kitchen into a machine for cooking in. Almost every- thing is much easier to clean. One may feel a little suspicious of the ability of all the bright-painted light metal to stand up to hard wear, but on the whole all kitchen equipment. and other household equipment of a quasi-mechanical kind, gets high marks.
One can make a pleasant light meal at Olympia out of free samples. I had soup, a morsel of tinned meat, biscuits and cheese, and fruit juice. The bottle of orange juice (a brand new to me) in particular. was really good. and this is worth knowing. since so many soft drinks in this country are insipid or nasty. This orange juice is not especially cheap. but it is precisely the fact that a good soft drink is worth paying for which seems to have escaped the British catering industry up to now. All these agreeable samples were nicely and hygieni- cally served, especially at the Danish and Dutch stalls. There is a welcome emphasis on hygiene this year; the BMA's magazine, Family Doctor, has several stalls devoted to propaganda. (But the café where I had a cup of coffee, a café run by one of the best-known of London caterers, was ill- organised, sloppy, and downright dirty.) I think I sa'w about half of the exhibition; this being about as much as can be managed in a single visit. I did not see the Regency rooms for example. partly because the queues for these were so great and partly because, after all, one can see Regency rooms elsewhere in calm and comfort. But I did see the YWCA flat, intended as a model apartment for a single woman. A good idea, I thought. and well carried out; most women who live alone could probably learn something here. The gardens. this year, were not very exciting. And out of a million odds and ends I should like to mention a little stall showing double windows—the kind you fit on in bad weather. My own Ideal Home would have double windows.
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