remember

Oh the excitement of the rag man coming down the street! Ours used to give live chicks in exchange for rags. Can you imagine? The poor things never lasted long.

Playing netball in freezing cold,wearing shorts, teacher in a track suit telling us to run about to get warm. Then having a shower and going to the next class with wet hair.
School dinners foe 1/- a day.

I can remember the man on a bike who sold bunches of watercress for Sunday tea, and another man on a bike who sold water ices in a triangular cardboard tube. We sucked the cardboard after the ice was gone until the last bit of flavour vanished. I remember chilblains, and hot bricks wrapped in old bits of blanket to warm the bed. I remember steamy Monday washday, washboards and bar soap and a huge mangle in the yard and cold meat and beetroot for dinner. I remember my penny pocket money and nothing to spend it on (rationing) except Oxo cubes at Mr Jones' shop at the top of the road. What will my grandchildren remember--who knows? I think it's usually the hardships you remember and they all have so much. Hang on--my youngest GD who left this country 8 years ago when she was eight is always nostalgic about my strawberry and gooseberry jam!

I remember fish and chips wrapped up in newspaper. My mother packing up a picnic , well most of the mums did the same and we younger children in charge of the older children went to the park from morning till tea time. And if anyone didn’t have a picnic we all shared. Making a call to granny up in Scotland in the old fashion telephone box. The old police box as well and the policeman on the beat and a great respect we had for him. Going to school in the snow and frozen milk!

I remember all these, but also I remember having large containers of horrid looking blck stuff delivered and changed weekly, in order to listen to the wireless. They were kept on the pantry floor, and we were warn ed, on pain of death, not to touch them. My step-father was a miner, and I remember coal being delivered and dumped, loose, at the gate, on the footpath, and the whole family had to muck in with buckets and shovels, getting it into the coal shed round the back of the house, after taking out the pieces of shale that we kids used for chalk when marking out our hopscotch pitch, then using it to slide along the ground when playing the game.

Do you remember spring cleaning?
I used to dread it. We had a carpet in the sitting room and Mum used to drag it downstairs (we lived in an upstairs flat) and into the back lane to put on a washing line line. Then beat the dust out of it with a carpet beater
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_beater
One year our downstairs neighbour helped Mum to put the carpet on the line and the line snapped, with him underneath it!

What will our grandchildren remember? I hope they remember the holidays they spent with us in the french countryside, where they could be relaxed and fancy free.
They were sad when we left it.

Having bread, milk, pop, and paraffin delivered at the door and the insurance man and the rent man coming on a Friday night to be paid. No central heating in our new council house, a coal fire in the living room, a paraffin heater in the kitchen and nothing upstairs, it was freezing in the bathroom and bedrooms in the winter, bare feet on the Lino when you got up, only carpet in the living room.

Going out all day with my cousin to play in the fields with a bottle of pop and a sandwich to eat, nobody worried about us. I walked 20 mins to school 4 times a day when I was 8, came home for lunch. My 9 year old granddaughters are only just being allowed out to play with their friends just in the next street and then we go and check on them.

I do remember toast and dripping I loved it, can taste it now, and having a cup of tea at my Nanna's house with condensed milk in it because she didn't like cows milk.

Getting two buses with my father to visit my other Nanna, we didn't have a car until I was 12, and that was the first year we also went on holiday, we could only afford a day trip to the seaside before that on the steam train. I never went abroad until I went on my honeymoon at 19, my grandchildren have gone abroad since they were babies.I also remember having a phone party line ( in the hall so you never had any privacy as a teenager)

So many things that wouldn't happen now, this is a good thread.

Am I the only person my age (78) who has never eaten bread and dripping? I’m not even quite sure what it was.

I remember arguing about sweet coupons with my brother as we walked to the village to buy our few sweets.

I still have milk delivered to the door in glass bottles, and most of my house still has single-glazed windows.

in the 50s our local shop opened on a Sunday but were only allowed to sell certain things, ie newspapers.Everything else was covered up with sheets.Seems amazing now.

Those round paraffin stoves that had a funny smell and reflected a rose pattern on the ceiling.
Small sachets of shampoo enough for one hair wash.

My children often do remember the wonderful holidays we had in Bournemouth. The beach hut., the carnival, and the presence of their grandparents always in their lives .
My 2DGDs are sadly .more distant .I hope they will have good memories of us and the things we did together.

Gas mantels that hissed and flickered when they were lit and left a sooty black mark on the wall.
Frozen milk bottles on the doorstep that pushed up the foil top.
The little 1/3rd pint of milk at play time at school.
The bottles of concentrated orange juice given out for young children.
Child benefit books that were perforated in the middle of each page and the post office tore one half off when they were cashed.

National Savings Stamps stuck in a little paper book, travelling on a non corridor train to school myself, New Year parties at my Gran’s that lasted for 2 days with her playing the mouthorgan!!

There were 2 kinds of savings stamps of different value. One had a picture of Prince Charles and the other, Princess Anne.

I had a go on a coconut shy and thew the wooden ball at the coconut. There was a bang as it hit the coconut but it didn't fall off. He wouldn't let me have it and I cried. The other mothers were having a go at him, really telling him off but he wouldn't budge. Rotten meanie!

The worst experience I recall is the old garden "privy" with cobwebs at the corners and toilet paper yesterday`s newspaper cut neatly into squares.
Monday`s washing laid out to dry on the nearby hedgrows,having being washed in an old tub and just wrung by hand!
Ladies at the age of 50 wearing aprons daily as almost
their staple uniform,hair in hair nets and yes "Nora Batty" stockings!
No Bathrooms but a good wash in a zinc tub in front of a roaring fire with water heated by kettle.
Those icy frosty winter windows.
Travelling mainly by horse and cart.
Fairs and Market days were The Entertainment where people gathered and exchanged gossip and produce.
Milk arriving in Milk churns.
That first small box T.V in black and white..........making you feel proud and as though "you had arrived!!"
Net curtains being the "in thing"
Those hand me down clothes that had been handed down quite a few times!
Buying sweets by the ounce.
Buying bread by a third of a loaf.
Buying eggs two at a time.
Medication being such that when administered it would take 2 people to hold the sick person down.
Life under the glow of just a paraffin lamp night after night.
No `fridges or freezers but a cold slab in the larder sufficed(and bugs were far rarer then than now!!)
Orange juice for children..................and yes there`s more!!

Milk bottle tops made of waxed cardboard with a little circle in the middle you could press out and put a straw through. Afterwards you could wash them and use two of them for making woolly balls by winding wool round them, then tying between them and cutting the wool at the edges, removing the cardboard and fluffing out the wool. I am now beginning to wonder if I’ve imagined this. Anyone else remember?

Poppit beads
Lovely lovely toast and dripping lots of pepper and salt
Sugar sandwiches
Getting the last of the bus ticket roll from the conductor
Listening to Radio Luxemberg or Caroline under the sheets
Blankets, sheets and eiderdowns on the bed
Liberty bodices with rubber buttons
Belts for monthly pads
Red legs from toasting the bread on a toasting fork
Blue legs from playing hockey in freezing weather
Bed at 7.30 reading Enid Blyton
Youth clubs
Tradesmen coming to the door with bread, groceries,milk
Corona man coming round
No Sunday shops
Buying broken biscuits from Woolies
Nans mincing machine helping to turn the handle
No washing machine but a mangle
Green shield stamps
waiting till after 6pm to make a phone call
Trains waiting for you if you were late
Cats roaming, not pampered dressed injected like pincushions and kept in a house
Dogs not on leads
Tiger nuts, Dads cookies, and pear drops

I remember quite a lot of the above - I grew up in a fish shop in a two up two down terrace - the front room was the shop.

Outside toilet at the end of the yard but had the luxury of a bathroom in my bedroom - just the bath with a huge geyser that exploded every time it was turned on. It was freezing cold in there so remember sitting on my mum's knee in front of the fire being washed from a bowl of water.

The pop bottles being returned to the shop
The boxes of dripping stored under the stairs
The first telephone being fitted
Playing out in the street in the gutter filling pokey bags with grit and playing shops
Going roller skating at the park with my friend
Going to the caravan each Saturday night and stopping at a shop nearby to buy pineapple chunks
Going to the farmer at the camp site (just two big fields with a cartwheel roundabout and a toilet block) with my dad to collect the milk fresh from the churn
Going to a family friend's van at the top of the field - they had an oven and would cook Yorkshire puds for us
Getting picture stamps at Sunday school
Freezing cold winters and very hot summers
Penny chews and palmer violet sweets on the way to school
Penny lollies from my friends shop across the road
The sugar dolly in cellophane being put on the Christmas tree each year and the twirly foil strips pinned to the ceiling - dad trying to get the lights to work.
Only having chicken for Christmas dinner
Mum mincing the Sunday beef next day for lunch
Wash day was Monday and a blue bag put in the washing to make it white
Always wanting a swing till dad hung one up under the tin roof in the yard
My grandparents outside toilet that had a hatch in the back of it into the back lane where they had once come to collect the soil from the toilets.

So much nostalgia. I'm sure our grandchildren will have memories but they will mostly involve ever changing technology and designer clothes - hopefully also happy times spent with their grandparents!

I wonder if all these personal recollections have been recorded somewhere. Even, dare I say it, written down. All the big events of history are recorded but its the everyday lives of ordinary folk which are so interesting. My mother in law was in service and told us such interesting things about the era but I didn't think to write them down at the time.
I remember many of the things other posters have mentioned, bread and dripping, black leading the stove, donkey stone on the doorstep etc. A very enjoyable thread.

Yes Grandma70 that is how you make pompoms - but we had to cut out the cardboard circles first.
I am so loving this thread - what amazing memories to think back to.
BTW mrsmopp those coconuts were glued in - that's what my dad always said.

I remember windows with ice on the inside, no television, telephone or fridge and my mother getting them only a few years before she died.
Parents never had a car and we had to walk everywhere. We were never escorted to swimming baths, Brownies or any other activity. At seven years old I used to go into town to the Saturday morning cinema on my own.
Modern children can not understand a time before TV and technology, GD when told we never had TV asked if I watched it on catch up on my computer.

Mum on her hands and knees scrubbing the quarry tiled kitchen floor, steam rising from the bucket, the smell of disinfectant and bleach.
Telling me a woman's place is in the home, not going to work stealing men's jobs because men had to pay the rent and the bills.
Carrying the shopping in string bags.

My Grandmother remembered Queen Victorias funeral. That still freaks me out!!!!