General Chat

With cardboard milk bottle tops you put two together and then wound wool around and around as thick as you could get it - until the hole in the middle was full. Then you got a pair of scissors and cut the wool between the two bottle tops, tied a piece of wool around it and lo and behold you had a lovely pom pom!! Our milkman came with a horse and cart, Ginger the lovely old horse, a few churns on the cart and a pint and a half pint measure hanging on the side. Milk jug on the doorstep with a saucer on top.

Dad used to send me out in the field alongside our cottage with a tin bucket to collect sheep, cow and horse manure for the garden as he grew all our veg. We had no flush toilet, just one round the side of the house that had to be emptied every couple of weeks. This was also good for the garden and in the summer when we had been eating tomatoes, the seeds in the toilet would germinate in the garden and we had tomato plants. Now that really was recycling at it;s very best.

Dad mended all our shoes on his last and always put stick on soles on his own shoes and little things called segs on the heels. I don't think the actual sole of any of his shoes ever touched the ground!

He shot most of the meat we ate - pheasants, pigeons, hair and rabbit. Always a row of little lead pellets around the edge of the plate when you'd finished eating.

Mum made jam from crab apples and blackberries picked in the fields and we knew where all the best mushroom fields were. In fact I still go mushroom picking in the same places but the fields are now part of the city's crematorium!! People must wonder what on earth I'm doing picking my way between plots collecting mushrooms. Most people would never pick them cos they are afraid they'll be poisoned, but I know which is which.

We had a large fireplace with ovens each side. This used to get blackleaded regularly and the fender which was stainless steel was also done weekly with wire wool Mum used to cook rice puddings in the ovens either side of the fireplace and we used to keep firewood in one oven for lighting the fire.

At Christmas time Dad used to get a very large tree trunk and when the fire was really hot he'd place this tree trunk part way up the chimney and it used to slowly burn down all over the Christmas holiday period.

Those of you who post on here have very vivid memories, you put your experiences into words most eloquently, I sometimes only log on just to read your stories, please don't stop posting them.
Lynda

This brings back lovely memories of my child hood .My mum taught me to knit with string to make dish cloths.I dont know if you can still buy it .Maz

liberty bodice - why was it called that I wonder? fleecy lined with tape running down it and rubber buttons at the bottom. Had this over your vest and navy fleecy lined knickers with a pocket in.

Off to school with gas mask hanging in a case round your neck and sandwiches for dinner - usually tomato sandwiches as they were cheap and plentiful in summer - usually soggy by dinnertime but nobody cared. To this day the smell of a tomato sandwich transports me back to infants school - lovely!!!

Long walk to and from school for me about two miles each way and most of it along a country road with few houses. On the way home to make the journey seem quicker I used to walk to one telegraph pole and run to the next and so on. About half a mile from home the lovely Airedale dog called Wolfie used to meet me and walk the rest of the way with me. He never went on Saturdays and Sundays! He wasn't even my dog, he lived in the big house where we paid our rent - 10/6 per week!!

n

Wonder if anyone remembers the great bigEWS water vats - giant metal containers containing emergency water supplies for air raids or whatever - which sprung up almost overnight on available pieces of land.
No covers where I lived - no elf and safety neither in those days.

Happy days

Cant remember if I have said this before, (I'm not up to reading back 18 pages.)

Bombsites

Bombsites often provided some food if you were quick enough and there were no signs up saying keep out
some of the things we collected were, Fruit off the odd tree that re-grew, Rhubarb, Raspberries, Blackberries, Gooseberries, Mint, re-seeded vegetables and anything else that was edible.

One or two people fenced off bombsite gardens and grew vegetables until they were moved off later

Most of the gardens were overgrown with Rosebay Willowherb, which in those days had the name Fireweed as it grew anywhere there had been fires, like the bombsites and along Railway lines.

Of course the Kids enjoyed playing in these areas, but they could be a bit risky, I broke a leg falling off a wall onto rubble on the way to School, I got to the School and was put on a BUS to the Hospital where they plastered it up.

I think every kid was a toughy in those days, broken bones, cuts and bruises were all part of growing up then, not like today.
Mummy's little Soldier or Princess mustn't get hurt or its "compensation"

Mac

My nan told me a story once of how she and her sisters had to regulary empty the contents of the matress that they slept on so that they could wash it, and then re-stuff once it was clean!
Old coats were also used on the beds as extra warmth in the winter.

I can remember the old overcoats.

We didn't have any heating in any of the bedrooms in those days, only one fire in the front room that had a back boiler for hot water

Mac

Living accomodation in the house shrank or expanded during the summer or winter due to lack of heating. In the winter everyone lived in the kitchen where the oven range was. It was the only warm place in the house. Going to bed was like was like being interpid explorers on an expedition into the dark frozen unknown. As we only had gas lighting the house was completly dark in winter except for the kitchen. With gas you could not turn a landing light on at the bottom of the stairs and then turn it off again at the top.

Even as small children we had to carry a candle in a holder in one hand and a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel in the other hand. The hot was bottle was one of those earthenware cylindrical things always colured a mottled brown. It had a screw stopper which usually had greaseproof paper wrapped around the threads. This was to stop it leaking in bed which felt very nasty when it happened. The towel around the hot water bottle was to stop us young tots burning ourselves.

Outside of the kitchen the rest of the house was freezing cold in winter and we used to run as quickly as possible by the glimmer of the candlelight, put the hotwater bottle in the bed and change into pyjamas as quickly as possible. Jumping immediately into bed was a survival necessity. We would shiver under the bedclothes for the first few minutes with the occasional ouch if we accidently put our feet onto the hotwater bottle.

In the morning the windows were opaque with frost. Lines of ice forming patterns stretched across the glass. I used to like putting a fingertip on the window and watching a little clear hole appear caused by the warmth of my hand. Either that of blowing hot breath onto them. I recall once putting the tip of my tounge on the windows, I don't know why but that it's what kids do.

My mother used to come and get us up in the morning. I remember awakening on my own one day and for some reason my mother was late getting us up. I said to my smaller brother who was in the same bedroom that if mum doesn't come and get us up soon, we would be late for school. Somehow the idea of getting up on our own never occurred to us.

Michael

Michael,
Talking about the stone hot water bottles,that I remember well,I have known my gran putting a piece of old blanket over the oven shelf,and warming the bed with that.
Necessity is the mother of invention.

Brenda

I am a baby of the late '50's but a lot of this I remember as clearly my parents never recovered from the war habits. They were small children in the war.

Re-sewing worn sheets - my Mum was still doing this in the '70's. Hoarding and saving - oh yes. my Gran died in the early '70's and there were 24 tinned syrup sponge puddings (grandad's favourite) in her cupboard.

Flambards is near Helston, Cornwall, and well worth a visit for the war years experience, as is Dover Castle, Kent.

Helen I am the same but everytime a bit goes on my parents habits make sense .we still have astone water bottle which is used to air the beds when I go home to visit Maz

all the water used in our cottge came off the roof - it went into a large galvanized tank on the side of the cottage. brilliant to wash your hair in rain water - such a shine it made on your hair

boiling it up in the gas boiler for a bath and then filling the galvansied bath - sitting in the bath with the steam condensing on the galvanised roof of the kitchen and dropping back on you freezing cold!!!

I have been reading through these lovely pages, it is so nice all the memories.

We had Liberty bodices... fleecy lined and so warm. I had them for my own children in the late fifties too.
Today the children would would drown in their own perspiration wearing a liberty bodice. We certainly don't have the cold winters which we had then , do we?

We had the stone hot water bottles too , which mummy used to wrap up in a clean towel, and place in the bed before we got there.
tow spoilt were we as children, no matter how little out parents had at the time?

We had gas lighting and do you remember the little 'china' mantles( I believe they were called) which went over the flame and gave a nice defused light to the gas .
I remember they had to be replaced when they were burnt out. came in tiny boxes just like a bulb does now.
My mother gave me one to hold while she took the broken one off, I stood with it in my hand and was so enthralled with this lovely *Lacey* thing...... I crushed it!!
No... she was not pleased but I was only 4 so she was understanding, but I knew she was upset.
I believe they were just as difficult to get at times , as anything else.

When we went to Germany after the war... the October that the war finished.
We had an Ice box, the ice went under it on a shelf, and dripped out onto a bowl on the floor. All the perishables went into the box. Fresh VEG..... were kept in a mesh box attached to the wall outside. That was in winter of course.
The ICE MAN used to deliver the ice a couple of times a week on the back of a lorry. he had an ice pick, and would grab the block of ice with it and then carry it on his shoulder.... I wonder, did he suffer badly with arthritis in later years?

Euthymol tooth paste and carters little liver pills, were still around when I was a young married woman. I used them.

And we had a milk man who came around with a horse... in my young married days... there were two women in the street who used to actually FIGHT over
the horses droppings. For their roses of course, but it was an amusing sight to see two old dears arguing about who had it yesterday, while waving their buckets and spades around!!

And I can't remember who said it, but the women did a lot of make do and mend, and yes... it was something which we carried on through our married years.
Even my daughters did it. No one does it now. It is a bit sad that we buy buy buy, and just chuck stuff away without a thought.

Keep going here. I am loving this thread, and although I don't add daily, I would really miss it if it went.

Deanna X

It's amazing the things I remember from all of your texts, even though my parents were so young in the war. In particular I remember the tooth powders!!!

My parents were tiny in the war in Derby, which was bombed as they had the Rolls Royce factory there that made aircraft engines. My Mum remembers her infant school playground being bombed and a child being killed.

My Grandad was an air raid warden in Derby and had a Jewish evacuee family's father in his patrol. This poor man was (understandably) very nervous so my Grandad did both his own plus this man's shift and got a medal at the end of the war, which I have.

Many of my parents' cousins were evacuated to Canada during the war. I am still hoping to trace these people. My mum was an only child so her mother wouldn't let her go; my paternal grandmother point blank refused to let her sons go.

My sister married in 1944, and all furniture was rationed. You had to have Dockets to show you wre entitled to things. Most of her bits and pieces came from house sales. Their first bed had a slatted lath base, with a straw palleasse as mattress.( When I first joined up in 1953 we were issued with 2 square ones, Biscuits they w ere called, and we had to strip our beds down to them every day, leave the bedding in a pile folded to a special pattern and remake the bed at night.) They had one old armchair, a nursing chair , a scrubtop table and two dining chairs. Curtains were bought 2nd hand as new ones required coupons which were few and far between. You have to remember that in this area electricity didnt exist until 1953, so everything done after dark was done by lamp, candle or torch light. No gas either, so all cooking was done by coal or paraffin cookers. I set my bedding alight one night by upsetting my candle when I was reading in bed. No real damage done but it gave me a fright! Jean

One thing I recall about the winters was when my mother used to take me to the library. The nearest one to Dulwich Village was in Lordship Lane near a pub called The Plough. Our journey used to take along what always seemed a long road to me named Woodwarde Road It was probably because I had short legs at the time.. In winter although the snow might be heavy, the pavements were always clear. In those days, everyone used to make it part of their household chores to clear the stretch of pavement in front of their house. Heavy snow used to be on all the rooftops but at the edge of every roof there used to be a snow board. For anyone who has not seen one before, it's a strip of wood at the edge of the roof to stop an avalanche of snow sliding down the roof and either damaging the guttering, or injuring, I believe sometimes killing, passers-by below.

I notice tha now-a-days, no house has snow boards. Although our winters have been getting milder, there is bound to be one sooner or later that bucks the trend and when it does, once more mini avalanches will fall on people below. I wonder why they stopped using them?

Trams used to run along Lordship Lane, it was one of the last areas of London to still have them. I can still feel the hard wooden benches and the seat backs that tilted from one side to another for the return journey, Trams did not turn around, they simply went in reverse. My Grannie always had to restrain me as I was forever fascinated by the levers that the driver used to operate. I always wanted to go and watch him.

As far as I can recall, on another main road their were also trams that had to navigate a steep hill at Dog Kennel Hill. The hill was too steep for the tram to get up the hill on it's own. At the top of the hill was a wheel with a long cable fitted with hooks running down one side of the road. The tram had to wait at the bottom of the hill for another tram to come in the opposite direction going down the hill. The cable and hooks were attached and the downwards tram assisted the uphill tram to climb the hill. I think the upgoing tram also acted as a brake for the downwards tram. Although I was too young to remember too much about the trams, I liked them.

My mother once told me that some years before I was born, the night the Crystal Palace burned down, the news of the fire quickly spread and whole streets turned out to catch a tram to the Crystal Palce on an impromptu sightseeing visit. Perhaps thats why I became fireman although today firefighter is the correct expression.

Michael