What ever happened to snuff? I remember as a child my paternal grandmother always seemed to have a finger and thumb stuck up her nose sniffing away. She used to babysit for me and my sister Pat on the rare occasions our parents went out together.We used to live in the tenements then,no electricity or hot water with one coal fire as our only heating.It was a big old range with a built in bread oven and my old girl used to black lead it until it shone. Nana would arrive with a half bottle of cheap sherry sort of wine I think it was called V.P or something like that settle down in an armchair close to the big old fireplace with it's brass fender and single gas light above the high mantle-piece pour a snifter from the bottle and dig into her pinnie pocket for the little silver snuff box as we sat on the floor at her feet. Is that how you spell pinnie is or is it pinny or even pinney?.I know it comes from pinafore. It's an old word for apron anyway and she always wore one.The one she wore for going out even for mass she kept for best, always clean and had never been used for the purpose it was made but I don't remember seeing her without one. Anyway Lizzie as she had been baptised was a great story teller as most Irish folk of a certain age were then because things were mostly handed down by word of mouth and she used to tell us tales of club footed devils,demons,ghosts and evil witches (throwing a little of what she called the old language in) that would excite and scare us senseless at the same time. She would pause at a cliff hanging moment to take a pinch of snuff,stick it up her nose and snort like an old mare sip a little wine and terrify us some more. Then she would pack us off to bed in our shared room with a candle which we didn't dare not blow out as we snuggled deep in our beds hoping the evil that lurked wouldn't find us and hoping even more our parents would be home soon then everything would be all right and we would be safe of course because Dad could fight anything,after the Germans devils were a pushover. Great memories of a lady who had such a hard life even many of our generation could not imagine never mind the younger ones. So did snuff die out with her generation? can it still be bought?
I can't remember seeing it since those far off days.Yes you remember them, when four seasons was the weather we got not a bunch of singers.