SWEENEY PLATES

There’s an old episode of “The Sweeney” where Sergeant George Carter (Dennis Waterman) does the washing up with ’is Missus (played by future “Juliet Bravo” star Stephanie Turner) which always tickles me. It might very well be the actual episode in which said Missus “cops it” in a dastardly plan designed by some villain (or possibly the producers) to make our co-hero have a life of a more freewheeling nature alongside his Guv’nor, Jack Regan (John Thaw), which, for the series if not for George himself, was probably for the best.

It’s a nice little moment, a last chance for Sergeant Carter to have a shared moment of domestic bliss, and counterpoints nicely with the seedier home life of the Guv’nor, whilst also being an opportunity for the Missus to criticise the Guv’nor’s lifestyle, setting up that very choice which then, because of the tragedy that unfolds, never has to be made.

After all, if it ever came down to poor old downtrodden George to have to choose between the Guv’nor and the Missus, I’m not sure which choice he might have made. Poor old George was destined forever to be the sidekick because, whilst he was obviously a capable young Sergeant, much like Lewis was to Morse, promoting him would have changed the dynamic of the series and possibly killed it stone dead, much like the replacement “Minder” did in later years. Rather fortunately, “The Sweeney” only ran for four years, so that the constant question of potential promotion prospects never had to be addressed in the way that they had to over the thirteen years of “Inspector Morse” but then Lewis did put in the time and got his own primetime reward later on.

Not that any of this preamble is really relevant to my point, though. The reason that particular scene always leaps out at me is because of the plates that they’re washing up. The particular dining set is identical to the one that my grandmother and grandfather had at their house when I was growing up, and any number of Christmas dinners and Sunday lunches were served on them over many years.

They were obviously a design that was widely available in the mid-1970s when that show was filmed, and were quite possibly a very cheap set, otherwise the film company wouldn’t have had them as props, I suppose. Strangely enough, my grandparents weren’t really ones for the gimcrack or the cheap when it came to their household goods, although he certainly knew how to get his hands on a good bargain, so I don’t imagine that they were all that cheap at all, being made of the finest glazed Pyrex that meant that they have survived many years of being blasted by the various furnaces they have had to languish inside whilst being “warmed through”.

As is the nature of these things, time passed and, inevitably, so did my grandparents, and those plates were passed on and I still use them nearly every single day, thirty-six years since that episode was made and God only knows how many years since my grandparents bought their own set. Not for me this modern idea of having “fashionable” crockery and changing it every year, oh no. If a plate is serviceable and fulfills its purpose of keeping the food off the tablecloth then that’s fine by me and it can be reassured of a long and useful future unless I cause it to explode one day by accidentally superheating it and putting some wet peas onto it.

I do sometimes find myself wondering whether the remaining ones that I’m still using are the last surviving ones in the country? Am I perhaps the only person still eating off these examples of mid-1970s design? Has the current desire to be fashionable in every single aspect of people’s lives left me looking extremely strange and eccentric by deciding to hang on to these, admittedly still very useful, examples of tableware from an earlier era? Or is this just nostalgia gone mad which could, if the mood took me, be dressed up as great wisdom in an age of recycling and conservation?

It’s a funny old series, “The Sweeney”. Not only does my current crockery of choice turn up on a semi-regular basis, but most of my old cars (and a fair few of my old haircuts and clothing choices...) come back to haunt me too, and I do sometimes wonder whether that particular time, as photographed between 1974 and 1978, is the time of my life I feel most comfortable with.