Though I can’t remember it myself – I’m 43, and have been for some years – I know that 1964 was pretty groovy, culturally speaking. Top of the Pops was broadcast by the BBC for the first time, the Beatles released A Hard Day’s Night, and at the cinema, audiences flocked to see Goldfinger; it was also the year Jackie was born, a magazine my mum would later ban. But for the purposes of this column, the most significant event by far was the opening of Terence Conran’s Habitat, where those with revolutionary instincts and a cool eye for design could newly avail themselves of flat pack furniture, duvets (AKA continental quilts) and Japanese-inspired paper lampshades.
Sixty years! To celebrate this birthday, Habitat is once again selling its famous chicken brick, in a shiny black earthenware that makes it look a bit like a piece of liquorice (the 1964 original, basically a tiny clay oven, was made of terracotta) – and how clever of it. Some people will buy one for nostalgic reasons; others may go for it on the back of the revival of slow cooking more generally (bricks take longer than roasting trays, plus you have to soak them in water for 15 minutes first, to avoid cracking). Either way, though, the chicken brick 2.0 will set you back only £20: an absolute steal compared, say, to those heavy coloured pans that were so popular two years ago, and about which everyone seems now always to be complaining.
