General Chat

See I can count on one hand the address I have lived in my life time we have lived in this house for the past 24 yrs ...all had flushable loos and running hot water, by eck I dint know I 'wer born :-D

Your life was one aventure Maggie ;-)

Oh, that's generous of you! :-D

Of course I read people's posts!
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Madge, I suppose it was unusual.
Probably because dad was in the Fleet Air Arm, and neither of our parents would live in married quarters, so we ended up in fairly strange places.
Then I met my ex, whose father had been in the Navy, and we carried on traveling until the children were born.

When I moved here, I was 34, and it was my 28th move.
Some moves had been to just down the road, others to miles away.
Ex and I moved 4 times in Shetland.
6 months in a tent at Clickimin Broch, then we moved to a mouse infested croft house, at Eswik, with gas lighting in the kitchen and candles everywhere else.
Then another croft house on East Burra, and finally, a caravan next to Sumburgh Airport. The caravan actually had a flushable indoor toilet - the first we'd had in Shetland!
It also had a tiny, empty shower cubicle, with no shower so we bought one of those huge pumps for weedkiller, which we filled with hot water.
One of us took the nozzle in the cubicle, the other was the other side of the curtain, furiously pumping the container - Our shower! :-D :-D

Maggie your childhood always sounds more like an adventure from a childrens book I read in my childhood :-D Maybe thats why I have always enjoyed reading about it on here I am often mesmerized. :-D

I remember as a boy that big freeze. Ice on the insides of the windows

Snow ? it was half way up wall !! No cars or buses running.

How people got to work and back beggars belief.

My Father worked for Wimpey. I remember him getting picked up

in a lorry, he travelled in the back. He must have been frozen to the bone.

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.

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

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

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

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

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).

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 ;-) ;-) ;-)

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.

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

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.

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 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.

Thanks for the laugh, Kense.

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.
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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.