Memories of the 40s

What traumatic early years for you aggie. The kitchen table?? My DH had scarlet fever too and was not allowed visitors. Shame about your plaits, but it was for hygiene I suppose.
cherry how sad your great aunt didn't make it. What dreadful times those were.

Not because of hygiene , it was thought that long hair sapped your strength ! Our relations in Ireland posted eggs and bacon to us , they were some mess when we got them , the Customs opened the parcel and didn't close it ! My Gran "borrowed " our sweet coupons ! but I still have atrocious teeth

aggi my granda helped to get the poor souls out of the rubble for your granda's coffins
I have heard about scarlet fever hospital. My dad also said about going to the TB hospital to visit his uncle, he said was the worst place had ever been in.

bella the things the mums had to do, like your mum bartering for butter just to keep the family fed.

Its like another world now

I'm not sure about alphabetical.
Think HQ need to rename site to 40s memories.

Re the fourties, thanks all, very interesting stories. I always wished my parents had kept up with my dear nanny, who both my brother and myself loved, although I was two years of age when we moved to northern Ireland from Scotland, then in 1954 to Kent.

You may not believe it, but I can actually remember why I was a breech babe and how I loved swimming before birth, which I do now. For this reason, when getting stuck upside down before the birth, I wanted to get back to try and swim again. It was very difficult turning around, but that is as far as I can remember before my birth.

Seeing bomb craters and houses like open doll's houses, bedroom wallpaper and small cast iron fireplaces revealed on the walls not destroyed. The occasional orange, no bananas or balloons until 1946, lack of fathers and uncles.

The nursery class which was part of the infants' school - they used to have little canvas camp beds and we were supposed to lie down and have a sleep after lunch.
Going on the back of Mum's bike on a little bicycle seat.

Elrel that reminded me - my brother rushing home and calling out 'They've got oranges in P******' (the local greengrocer's). Oranges cut in half, sprinkled with half a teaspoon of sugar, you squeezed each half to drink the juice, then you ate around the half then turned it inside out to get the last little bit.

I was born on 1946 in the heart of Birmingham.

We lived in a Semi with a small kitchen and tiny pantry with a meat safe in it with a mesh front.

At the bottom of our garden we had express steam trains travelling between Birmingham and London. I still love the sound of the chuff chuff of a steam train.

Also born in 1937 Aggie so I remember taking gas masks and sandwiches to school although we lived in Derbyshire and it was a very safe area. We had an evacuee who stayed with us quite a long time. Her name was Maureen Abbott and we !ost touch in the 50's,so if you are on GN Maureen.....

These memories are.so.good. Could we.have a proper.title.so.people.can be attracted to it rather than this thinking it is a rerun of the 50s. Can that be done?

Wow aggie what different times. Did you have anything to stop the pain of having your tonsils out? ,

They shoved an ether mask on my face, my brother had a massive asthma attack the same day , we think it was all the trauma . I had nothing after except from Granda , who managed to get the local Italians to make me ice cream , very rare in our village .l remember the glass box thing that was for the baby in case of gas ! The children's gas masks were Disney characters , mine was Donald Duck lol . School dinners were another thing , we had rabbit often , and tapioca pudding with a spoonful of jam in the middle

Born 46.

Remember coupons
blue sugar bags
Paper cones for sweet
Listen with Mother
Bathing in front of the fire
Life before penicillin was in common use - badly infected knee with a huge blister of pus that kept bursting and then build up again
Copper boiling up the washing
Sunday best hat with elastic under my chin and velvet collar coat to match
Big bows in my hair
Voil best dresses with smocking
Sunday school

I must stop

Oh yes meat safes
Scalding milk to stop it going sour in hot weather
Washing raw meat in vinegar if it had gone slightly off in warm weather

Ear ache before anti biotics - oh! The pain.

Bad enough after antibiotics WW !
We kept summer milk bottles in a pail of water. Sometimes we listened out for the distant clip clop sound of the horse and I had to run up and get a pint from the milkman if we'd run out.

Bread by horse too. He'd knock at the door with a selection in a basket. Nothing wrapped back then.

Any manure on the road was scooped up by my father - good for the roses, apparently.

Cherrytree59, yes, Clydebank was north of my home town in Ayrshire. My mum remembered the bombers going over the night before I was born and she was sheltering under my granny's kitchen table. There was a small oil refinery just down the road It was all bricked up during the war so that it wouldn't shine in the moonlight and I was astonished when, as soon as the war in Europe ended, the bricks came off and the shiny surface was revealed. The explosives factory where my dad worked was an important strategic target and was bombed by the Luftwaffe but they missed the buildings and the bombs landed in sandhills. My dad watched the bombs falling.

Ok then, added:

ABOVE VERY INTERESTING STORIES OF THE FOURTIES

Born in 1944, in a Welsh mining village in the valleys. Quite a prosperous village then, not so now. I well remember my grandfather coming home from the pit and having a bath in front of the fire in the kitchen. My sister and I would scrub his back. His pick and shovel were kept in the rafters of the outside toilet.
Going home on the bus , us children were thrilled if it was a miners bus with long wood slatted bench seats.
We played on the mountain. Eating the whin berries and sliding down on pieces of cardboard.
Lovely memories of a wonderful childhood

Whitewave I had knee infections also and my mother had to put hot poultices on them every day. Agony. Does anyone remember the boys with boils on their necks? Also the purple stuff that was used to treat face and mouth infections. These poor children seemed to have them regularly and for quite a while.

Oh yes hot poultices. It was pink. I can remember the smell.

And boils. I can remember big holes when they burst, and smelt. I never had one luckily but remember seeing them.
Canes at school. This would be very early 50s for me. I can remember my friend -next door neighbour Nigel - being marched across the playground with Miss Smith walking behind him tapping his legs with a cane. I was impressed by how red his legs were!
Bomb sites - Plymouth was badly hit, and I can remember the search lights used in celebration of something- not sure what, but they light up spitfires in the sky. I could tell the difference from hurricanes and spitfires just by their engine sound.

Water fountains banned because of polio.
Outside loos at school. Remember how cold they were. In fact my Aunt had an outside loo all her life-she died in early 70s.

Born 1943. We lived in south London. I remember rushing into the house and hiding under the dining table every time a plane came over. This was after the war and I did not understand the compulsion that made me do it. In fact my experience would have been the V1 and V2s coming over and there engines cutting out, then the wait, but at 3 or 4 you cannot tell the difference between them and a plane.

I remember the snow of 1947 because my mother got out the big pram to go to church with my younger sister and I and then putting it away and having a Sunday with no church, because the snow was too deep to push the pram through.

I remember all the bomb sites. They were everywhere, in every street, or seemed to be.

In fact I have a lot of 1940 memories. I have a good memory that remembers all kinds of details. As distinct from DH and especially DD whose memeory seems to wipe clean after 5 years.

BBbevan. Winberries . I thought I had made them up. We picked them when we visited my Welsh granny when I was about 3/4. ! They were like little blueberries. No one else in London had heard of them......Thanks.

Whin berry tart was very very special Lully