General Chat

I live in a Market town and we are proud of heritage. Still used for filming. People used to come on coach trips to visit it.
I belong to a group on FB that show some fantastic old photos of the town as it was busy market packed full of shoppers on a Friday and Saturday, I really do tire of the comments of "bring back the market, so sad its gone all the councils fault". No actually it is not. Its us the shoppers who choose not use to the market anymore. Would I use it if it was still there ? No I don't think I would, would the stall holders want to go back to standing out in all weathers to sell their tat? Who knows.

Madge, the first few lines of my response clearly indicated that I disagreed with you and Rollo. I would have thought that my reference to ice on windows would have given you a clue and that no names needed to be mentioned.

It is the first time in my three-quarters of a century of speaking as I find that anyone has thought that I did not have any bottle. You are quite wrong if that is what you think as I am known for direct but subtle speaking and writing.

So, for reasons of clarity IT WAS YOU AND ROLLO to whom I referred.

Back in those days Mother did family washing in a poss tub using a posser, then put it through a mangle. Then it was hung out in the yard or the back lane..
Other times she would take the family wash to Gibson Street wash house in a pram
where it was washed and dried.
Years later a fellow name of John Bloom was selling washing machines door to door
on the HP. That's a long time ago.

We all speak from our own experiences and they depend on numerous factors so, as some have mentioned on this thread, even siblings don't have the same experiences because family and world events often have effects in homes - one need go no further than the war as an example.

Yes, Rollo, there were brutal attacks, murders, rapes etc but they are endemic in society and not confined to the period from 1945 to 1965. I can remember one immediate relative being called out from our home to a particularly vicious and bloody murder on Christmas Eve, in the midst of a family get-together after those decades but we knew no details until much later. Even then none of us believed we had been told the whole gruesome story and children, never! So I would think that times were not better in the 70s or 80s with strikes and four-day weeks included and, as has been written on the thread, life has been harder this century for youngsters seeking work or a mortgage.

Learning and hearing of life in the 1930s and during WW2 has convinced me we were the lucky ones.

Most parents did the best they could to shield us from all that was bad in the world when we were very young and for that I am grateful. They allowed us to be children as long as possible. Even so, most of us felt strong compassion for children in our class who had lost parents during WW2 and we all understood that their lives already had a deep sadness in them.

I hope and pray that my children feel the same about their childhood as I do about mine.

I remember a hard working Indian or Pakistani door to door salesman.

He had suit case full of shirts and ties and the like and he'd sell on HP

You need a new tie Mister ? Or shirt ? People bought from him.

His sons are now probably most of the corner shops :-D

You lot all had it better that these four chaps:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE

:-D

The 1930s were a mixed bag for the UK.

The London region and most of the country south of the Trent experienced unparalleled economic growth during the 1930s resulting in a very marked improvement in living standards.

As well as as expanding suburbs of owner occupiers - who could buy a house in Metroland far more easily than today - the LCC carried out an ambitious slum clearance program in such areas as Old Ford and Vauxhall. Most of this housing survived ww2. Older housing deep in dockland did not hence the post war London housing crisis. As well as housing schools, hospitals were improved.

I know all this because it was my extended family's experience not from books. It is in our photo albums. From pearly kings and queens to a new Ford Zephyr.

The north had a very different experience for all sorts of reasons but the root problem was that the traditional heavy industries such as shipbuilding and steel making had lagged a long way behind foreign competition due to lack of investment in skills and technology. On top trade focus had moved from Liverpool and Glasgow to London Docks and Europe.

Getting back to the 1950s and 1960s it was not a question of whether bad stuff happened or not - it always will as you say - but attitudes to it. That is the central message of Ken Loach, Virginia McKenna and others not, hey look this or that is bad but "what are you going to do about it it is your problem too?"
The stance taken by "Boys from the Blackstuff" or "When the Boat Comes in" of northern problems would not have got an audience in 1960 when Orwell, DH Lawrence were seen as dangerous communists and top art critics did not see the work of L S Lowry as art, just scribbles.

A program with the ethics of Spring Watch, Countryfile or "Call the Midwife" would have been inconceivable in 1960.

People don't like a big shake up of their notion of right and wrong.

And that's why the world we live in today for all of its many faults is a better place than the post war period. Attitudes have shifted and they cannot be shifted back again though some may try. Look at Hong Kong recently for example.
.
There will always be problems the crucial issue is the way we all engage with them.
Families are just as close as they ever were maybe more so in many ways. They tend to be more dispersed that's all.

Sure nostalgie has its place in our hearts but life moves on it always has. It is up to us to get the best out of modern technology without chucking out everything that went before.

Thanks for the laugh, Kense.

Joylouise just because I disagree with the good olde days being better than today, I got out of bed on the wrong side? How rude and condescending of you. No wonder hardly anyone posts on this site anymore.

Madge, I was not rude or condescending at all. It was written jokingly as a preamble to what I was about to write. Rollo has not objected, instead he has written a rather sensible piece even if I don't agree with everything he has written.

I could have taken your comment about bottle as a provocation but I know it is always used as a stock jibe by some people so it didn't work, apart from me raising my tone to you.

As far as people posting on this site is concerned, the choice lies with the individual but I just can't see why a bit of banter would put people off and I can give as good as I get so I am quite happy to continue posting.

JoyLouise to suggest that I am grumpy by getting out of bed on the wrong side of bed is not banter it was rude and condescending because my opinion is different than yours, you than shouted at me by posting in capitals !!!!

Rollo probably did not object as I did because to me he does not read other peoples posts, as he thinks only his copy and paste opinions off the web are important.

People have been driven off this board because of they are constantly got at by having a different opinion to others and its no wonder its the same handful of people left with the same people posting the same threads.

My mum talked a lot ( you wouldn't guess would you) she was born in 1920, had a largely happy childhood and by most standards relatively comfortable. Born above the bank where her father was a clerk, there was food and outings, convent education till 14 when she went to work. Long hours but again generally happy, loads of friends up to and during the war and after. Good times, she might say the best of times, in spite of the war and sometimes because of it, because when life is precarious perhaps you live it with more spirit?

She loved all the various family owned shops, the post on Christmas day, the Muffin man lol , the market in Chester( I'm writing this really because Madge mentioned a market) I remember it, just, from when I was little, before they pulled it down to build a concrete monstrosity.

Each of us has a particular period in our lives that we look at with hindsight as being good, for much the same reasons, the happy things.

That 'best of times' might be the 50s or 60s. or it might just be in the future ( my mum would have said that, she was much more glass half full than I am lol) , I really hope Rollo is right when he says "Attitudes have shifted and they cannot be shifted back again though some may try. "

edit, just in case anyone is interested re Chester Market back in the day https://www.chesterwalls.info/gallery/market.html

It was certainly not rude and condescending, Madge, so I offer no apologies and don't expect any from you for your words of provocation.

Rollo, though, may look for an apology for what you've just written unless he replies in kind - in which case, gird your loins and get the tin hat on.

As far as 1945 --1965 is concerned, I thought the poem was spot on but I am aware that no two people have the same life experiences. I enjoyed life then and I enjoy life today. There have been ups and downs and I have not lost sight of the fact that life is fleeting and anything can happen in the blink of an eye. When one is struggling, another can be sailing through ... that's life. You take it as it comes.

I am so glad I was brought up with manners I actually feel sad for you Joylouise right now ;-)

................ohh by the way I am sure Rollo can fight his own battles ;-) ;-) ;-)

I just accepted what I got as a child - I knew no different!
As for ice on the inside of windows, it happened a lot in the Bessacar (caravan) in Scotland when I was out 6, but we also endured it in a house in Essex in the 1980's!
Actually, we even had ice on the WALLS in that house! (A badly constructed kitchen and bathroom extension on a badly built 1960's house).

Madge, a stock jibe again! Your manners have slipped somewhat.

Maggie, I think most of us accepted our lot in life when we were children.

Those of us who were war babies seemed all to be in the same boat and, as you wrote, we just got on with it. Whingeing got us nowhere and was a waste of time as we learned pretty quickly.

My experience of ice on the inside of bedroom windows was the same as everyone else's but beyond 1973 that experience was long gone as far as I was concerned.

One thing no one has mentioned is the prefab that really came into its own after WW2. My aunt had one and her kitchen was envied. :-D

The only reason that we can all appreciate what we have today is because we have lived in a previous era, and can make comparisons. Many have not been that fortunate

Like many, I was brought up in a large industrial city (Manchester) and my memories are like many on here.

Whether through rose-coloured glasses or whatever, I had a decent enough childhood despite having diphtheria.

Would I want to travel back to those times, even though they seemed pleasant then?

Not on your Nellie !

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be :-D

It's a strange thing but when I think of how hard the Depression era was for some, I recall speaking with my aunt and uncle whose teenage years were spent in that era- and not in wealthy families. Their take on it ... our teenage years were the best of our lives. Life is what you make it.

They had very positive attitudes which I thought was the way to go.

I thoroughly enjoyed my teenage years too though, as I believe I've said before ... I'm not sure my parents enjoyed them. :-D

My gran lived in a prefab from, I think 1944 until 1986. She didn't want to move.

I lived in one, exactly the say as Gran's from 1985 to 1987.