General Chat

Back in the days of tanners and bobs,
When Mothers had patience and Fathers had jobs.
When football team families wore hand me down shoes,
And T.V gave only two channels to choose.

Back in the days of three penny bits,
when schools employed nurses to search for your nits.
When snowballs were harmless; ice slides were permitted
and all of your jumpers were warm and hand knitted.

Back in the days of hot ginger beers,
when children remained so for more than six years.
When children respected what older folks said,
and pot was a thing you kept under your bed.

Back in the days of Listen with Mother,
when neighbours were friendly and talked to each other.
When cars were so rare you could play in the street.
When Doctors made house calls;Police walked the beat.

Back in the days of Milligan’s Goons,
when butter was butter and songs all had tunes.
It was dumplings for dinner and trifle for tea,
and your annual break was a day by the sea.

Back in the days of Dixon's Dock Green,
Crackerjack pens and Lyons ice cream.
When children could freely wear National Health glasses,
and teachers all stood at the FRONT of their classes.

Back in the days of rocking and reeling,
when mobiles were things that you hung from the ceiling.
When woodwork and pottery got taught in schools,
and everyone dreamed of a win on the pools.

Back in the days when I was a lad,
I can't help but smile for the fun that I had.
Hopscotch and roller skates; snowballs to lob.
Back in the days of tanners and bobs.

All so true, Mr M :-D :-D

Rule Britannia
two tanners make a bob
Three make one and six

and four two bob :-D :-D

Oh what memories Mr M
and 5 tanners made Half a Crown
Ann

The postwar period 1945-1965 was boring, uncomfortable,. cold , unjust and dangerous. Hindsight is a wonderful filter.

Between about 1964 and 1970 the UK managed to catch up over 50 years of being mostly stuck in the mud. At least the last ten years have given those with a taste for olden times a good helping.

Rubbish RTR

Had a fantastic childhood as did all my friends. Yes there were areas of deprivation just as there are today. Our lives were a lot less complicated than children experience now.

I say that even though I contracted TB (before you mention illnesses).

I too had a great childhood in the 50s, you should make it clear Rollo it's your personal opinion do not lump us all together.

I was in the Midlands, not a great deal of money about but we had lots of fun with friends and relatives.We shared and didn't expect the world so were happy when we got treats. We knew we were loved and cared for and everyone gave us time, what more can you ask for?

I can never understand why people go on about the good olde day, waking up on a winters morning with 3 and half inches of ice on the windows. Fighting with your siblings so you could get dressed for school in front of the fire. Doing the weekly wash took all day stood over a twn tub washer and then 3 more days to dry it, yes we were modern no mangle for us. Money did not go further because no one had any, women pushing prams loaded with children looked downtrodden and knacked. There was no help to lone parents, such as help with nurseries as there are now. You had to walk miles to make a phone call wait in a queue and stand in a smelly phone box.

Thank god for progress thats all I can say .

I can only remember 2 big families near me a six over 20 years and an 8 over about 14 yrs. Most people around me had 2 children through the 1950s, I had 1 aunt have 3 children everyone else 2 children.

Had a little ice on the window but I only had a sister so no fighting for the fire and mum had a Service washing machine with an electric mangle so it didn't take too long for the washing to dry.

Free school meals for the one parent family children and no one made fun of them, we knew things weren't good for them. People gave hand me downs because the community cared. I had twins in my class whose father died of a heart attack in front of them. My aunt kept giving me my cousin's dresses as she outgrew them but she was much taller than I was - guess where my mother took them. Nice seeing the twins in them. I'm still in contact with the twins 60 yrs later.

Things weren't ideal they never will be but society cared and there was respect and people had time for you. You could play out all day and were safe because you were in a group of friends who weren't trying to outdo each other with the latest whatever. We looked after each other, and adults in the area knew us and looked out for us. I was not in a village, I was in a large industrial town. You don't need much to have a great childhood.

It all depends doesn't it, yes I remember lovely sunny days playing in the stream with friends, or the pretty patterns the frost left on the inside of windows, , but I also remember permanent chilblains all winter ( you never forget the smell of analgesic balm!), Illness all round, burst pipes, lack of enough food in the house, all the blankets and a coat on top at night. etc.

Few people write poems about how bad it could be back in the good old days, but this with footnote is one of them

https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/timothy-winters

PS. Butter is STILL butter in this house :-) but trifle was never for tea, it was only for birthdays or Christmas.

My Mum was widowed when I was 6 ( the youngest) we were all under 12, no free schools for us because my mother worked full time, some of the community was kind to us and so was we to them in return, children did take the piss because I had no dad, I remember one nasty boy asking me what I was getting my dad for fathers day and the rest of the boys laughing. He couldn't even laugh on the other side of his face after my sister had beaten him to a pulp. His own father came to our door shouting and bawling at my mum till she told him why his son had recieved a good hiding and he called her me and my sister a liar. Some Male neighbours thought they could do that because there was no man in our house till they realised my mother had been brought up with 7 brothers and could certainly fight her own battles, some of the male neighbours were very protective of us.Of course times were tough and despite such heartbreak at a young age, there was happy times we had holidays decent meals most of the up to date stuff toys and clothes, the house was always cleaned because we cleaned it, playing out in the long hot summers, swimming in the river which was not suppose to do ( 2 boys drowned). We were always alerted to the same dangers as I alerted my own children. There was crime, little of ladies were mugged for their pensions, children were abused, women often beaten by their husbands and everyone turned a blind eye, I can remember 2 murders in our community, 1 mother stabbed her toddler daughter to dealth as she sat in her push chair and another man beat his wife to dealth wtih a stick ( rumour has it, it was actually the teenage son and the dad took the rap.

No I did not live in the Wild west just a council estate in a then industrial town, I remember it how it was, not through rose coloured glasses :-D

I didn't get hand me downs, my sister was 19 years older than me and three brothers in between.

The only complaint I had was being sent to bed when Quatermass came on the radio, this was in the 1950s. My 2 brothers who still lived at home took great delight in pulling faces at me.

I had 6d each day to spend on the way back from school. A wagon wheel was my favourite treat.

My 'make believe' game was soaking large sheets of cotton wool in water and pretending I was a fishmonger..lolol strange but true.

When I was 5 there was a children's TV programme where birthday gifts were sent to some lucky children. I was one as my eldest brother was in Singapore and I had the message from him read out and afterwards my Mum then brought me the gift of a black dolly. I felt incredibly special.

Can't remember ice on the inside of windows but don't doubt some houses had that.

Remember that liberty bodices was brought out in October and put away end of April.

oh what memories that invokes
despite the lack of modern day facilities we had fun and a happy childhood
i feel sorry for the kids of today where innocence and childhood is snatched away at an early age

It's plain to see who got out of bed on the wrong side this morning. ;-)

I was born before 1945 and my recollections of those two decades are more like those depicted in Mr M's ditty than Rollo's or Madge's.

In that era we moved from one side of the country to another, swapping city life for village life then back and forth once more. I thoroughly enjoyed those two decades.

Boring? You weren't allowed out with your friends? You weren't encouraged to use your imagination?

Uncomfortable? Don't get that at all.

Cold? No open fires where you lived?

Unjust? Take off your goggles, it's unjust for millions still.

Ice on the inside of windows? It wasn't limited to the 40s, 50s and 60s. I recall staying at a friend's house one night in the 1970s and there was ice on the windows in that period.

Dangerous? No more than any other time - and certainly not as dangerous as the previous decade.

The war was over, the inception of the NHS helped thousands of families.

Rationing did no harm as long as our bodies got the sustenance they required.

If it wasn't exactly a land fit for heroes when troops came home they benefited from a raft of social policies that their parents' generation could never have dreamed of.

If my parents worried about an atom bomb dropping on us, they hid it well and, certainly, as young children we never gave it a thought. Much of the population was not affected by the Korean War even though some of our troops were there (ostensibly in a training capacity!). Towards the end of that twenty-year period and only as a teenager did it cross my mind that perhaps we could be dragged into the Vietnam War that escalated when the French withdrew. It could have been worse had the UK government acquiesced or even brought in a lottery of birth dates to send troops to Vietnam (as the Australian government did).

I can only remember stories from those who lived through the 1930s and that was a tough period - not only in the UK, but around the world. Germany suffered more than any other nation, with Australia coming in second. Is it any wonder that Hitler and his cohorts managed to garner the attention of its citizens as they struggled to survive?

1945-1965 was a doddle in comparison and I can recall hopping out of one job into another with ease - a rarity even today.

I appreciate that for some, such as those who had lost parents in WW2, life was not the same but, in my opinion, for most people, life in 1945 to 1965 was a doddle compared to the previous decade.

If you are referring to me JoyLouise regarding getting out of bed on the wrong side at least have the bottle to say it. I am saying it as I remember it.

Am I glad I go on at least 3/4 holidays a year? am I glad I wake up to a warm bedroom, step in to a hot shower on a winters morning? have the use of a car, can make a phone call without walking down the street, have the internet at my finger tips when I want or need it. Then yes am I. The only thing I am glad for, is I am not young (there is a sentance I never thought I would ever write) to be starting out buying a house and because I have known harder times and have experience it, which was nothing compared to my own parents I can appreciate the life I live now. Do I long for the old days? Not on your nelly ....oh and not to forget the ;-).

Not one of our memories of childhood is going to be exactly the same is it? we're different ages ( I'm surprised I am rather younger than some of you ;-) ) and all from probably quite different backgrounds.

Even my older brother remembers differently to me, I said to him the other day "do you remember" a trivial incident but one that has always stuck in my mind, and he didn't at all lol. Likewise I mentioned on FB before Christmas about being thrilled to get Cadbury's buttons in a Christmas stocking when I was little, and my SIL who is about the same age as me, viewed getting them very differently. But to me they were a treat beyond price lol.

I remember vaguely a little girl at school, about 1964 (edit might have been earlier) She was wearing leg irons, I guess now she'd had polio? But her memories, even from the same school and even assuming the same financial situation, will be very different to mine.

None are exactly wrong, but they are coloured by time and either rose or grey tinted glasses, depending on so many things. If you only remember a time ( whatever time) as being good, then aren't you lucky :-)

My Mum died when I was 7 so I am aware I could have added sad times but they would have been personal to me.

I choose to remember the good times and I was spoilt by my siblings especially after Mum died.

Didn't stop my brothers tying sewing thread around my loose teeth, tying the free end around half a house brick and lobbing the brick from a first floor window! Having a competition as to who could get the longest strip of skin from my sun burnt, peeling back!

Finances weren't a problem obviously but that wasn't something I realised until much later in life. Money doesn't compensate for lack of love though and that I discovered aged 9 when step mother number 1 landed.

Quite so Sue, leaving out the bits that aren't good in our memories is ok for a little rhyme passed round via FB, but not to be taken as anything like the whole truth for any of us.

And certainly not a basis for hankering to bring back some golden age for all, an age that never was :-) But that's another thread :-)

( edit ) Personally today I'd happily go back to any year before 1995, the year that I first got this dratted hayfever.

Tin bath in front of an open fire, no inside loo. Mum took washing to the 'Bagwash' on the corner.

However, we were never cold, never hungry. Mum and Dad loved us, so there is no downer for me.

Annual holiday in a chalet or bungalow at Canvey Island on mud.


Do I feel hard done by, not a bit. Everyone was the same. :-D :-D ;-)

And yes, liberty bodices. I had so many clothes on, vest, liberty bodice, full length slip, blouse, jumper AND cardigan! Top that off with a school mac. :-D :-D :-D :-D

I had a perfectly OK childhood, nice house in London, good school, father senior met officer ... def not short of money it is other things I remember.

Top of the list was the environment which could hardly be missed in London - smogs every year, especially bad 62/63 when finally "something was done" but too late for my GF. The Thames was little more than a sewer though the Upper Lea and Barking Creek were ok. Northern rivers from the Trent to the Tyne were no better.

After that it was the sheer wanton, unmitigated and uncontrolled cruelty and abuse. My parents saw a lot if it in their jobs, drunken men beating up their wives and children, my mother ( dep. matron) fixing the results not only of this but many other sad conditions rarely seen today. The abysmal treatment of women is well known.

Wildlife was for the most part either hunted to oblivion or saw its habitat disappear - usually both. Domestic animals endured a half life of hell to put milk and meat on the table. All of this was seen as perfectly normal. We still have way to go:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1057072/fox-hunting-news-fitzwilliam-hunt-hound-hit-car-dual-carriageway-northamptonshire-anti-hun

even if we are least shocked at city knife crime ( but relaxed when most of the victims & perps turn out to be BAME ).

Away from physical cruelty there was the mind numbing cultural censorship to contend with. That eventually came down thanks to Lady Chatterley, PrivateEye . Oz, TWTWTW and other satire, and the need to keep consenting Tory MPs out of jail.

Even then we had to suffer Mary Whitehouse and pompous 60s relics running the country - badly - in the shape of Heath. God help you at school if you didn't think that the British Empire was the best thing since Noah's Ark and the H bomb was better than the Russians. Then there was the never ending drumbeat of "we won the war" to a background of endlessly repeated movies such as the Dambusters, Cruel Sea and Dunkirk (lont list) at least two of which would be shown on Christmas Day.

Then there was any amount of overt racism of which Powell's "Rivers of Blood" was just the most educated rendition. Remarks during the current Tory contest suggests not much has changed at the top.

Safety at work or play was a really novel idea. There was a lot of opposition to crash helmets, seat belts, the breath test, hard hats and working boots etc etc. Hospitals served ciggies and Guinness to patients. Right now we are going backwards.

Getting reliable information on pretty well anything was utterly time consuming an expensive pain. That slowly improved through the 70s.

Then there was the housing mess a gigantic lottery - "Cathy Come Home", slum landlords such as Peter Rachman, another was a rellie, the Byrne family :-( ,
with terrible slums in Leicester, London and many other cities, made worse by the blitz.

Sure lots families were close knit and happy, rich or poor but no thanks to the way we all had to live like it or not. It takes a pair of very rosy spectacles to remember the 50s & 60s as the good old days.