What the younger generation missed! Do we?

London suburbs in the 1930s. Tradesmen, Baker, butcher etc calling daily at the back door. Sundays cart coming round with, cockles, mussels winkles in time for Sunday tea. Van came round selling bottles of lemonade, Tizer etc. Money on returned bottles. Milkman with the churn so you took your jug out to be filled. Could get bones for soup. Rabbit stew, tripe and onions. Fruit and vegetables, eggs (you could buyqq one or two) in brown paper bags Brown carrier bags with traders name on them. Biscuits loose from large tins. Bacon sliced t your thickness. Fat left on meat. Dripping toast.

Electric iron plugged in to light socket continually blowing fuse. Water heated from back boiler behind living room fire
My mother used perfume called Evening in Paris. Toothpowder in a tin. Melrose to rub on sore hands from washing up in hot water with washing soda. Soap for washing clothes and hair. The latter dried in front of fire or the sun.

Doctor would come to the house any time day or night including Sundays.

1934 moved to Surrey we were allowed to play in the woods all day and we were one of the few people who had a house telephone and a motor car.

Had to wash
pieces of towelling used for sanitary towels.

My Dad did stop smoking his pipe when he had a scare, and lived to mid 80s.

Yes, St Bruno Flake was what my father smoked in his pipe. He was always puffing away hidden beneath a cloud of smoke. He died at the age of 75 of cancer of the oesophagus thought to have been related to pipe smoking.

My father smoked a pipe, he had quite a collection. You rarely see anyone smoke a pipe now.

Was the tobacco called St Bruno Flake?

Nearly all the above except for Maywalk’s I am too young but I still have my ration card for sugar. MawtheMerrier I am a couple of years younger. My adopted mother from Yorkshire was 40 years older than me, I wore a liberty bodice, maybe is was to do with the parents’ upbringing.
I also had to wear galoshes to cover my shoes.
I remember the blue bag for washing and also the other blue bag in crisps.

Living in a ‘back house’, with one and a half bedrooms, living room and tiny kitchen. Outside loo in back yard. Cold water tap only. Coal fire in one room.
The horse drawn travelling shop, from the Co-oP which was called the store man. Fentimans pop deliveries including ginger beer in stone bottles. The ice cream man in his van, ditto the fish man. Playing outdoors for hours. No television till I was 12. No phone. Being the second family in our street to own a car when I was five.
So much more comes to mind 😂. Happy days nevertheless.

I was married in winter 1971 and my young bridesmaids had quite flimsy mini dresses. So my mum gave them liberty bodices to wear underneath.

I used to buy Woodbines for my mum at the corner shop that used to put in a little paper bag. And I used to take my dads bets to the illegal bookies up the road. Much more recent but when my children were growing up we ate out once a year as a special treat and never had a coffee whilst out until we started taking them to MacDonalds: again that was a very rare treat.

Bread delivered by Co-op horse & cart
Sweet coupons (my Gran had a sweet shop in Birmingham and I used to help count the coupons when the shop closed for the day)
Corona pop delivered weekly
Andersen shelter in back garden
Queuing for public phone box - coins & press button A, B
Toasting pikelets on open fire with brass toasting fork
Counting sacks of coal as they were delivered to make sure the coalman wasn't diddling us
Making fire lighters out of old newspapers
Outside toilet
Smokers everywhere - in the street, on buses..
Paraffin stove in first home DH and I bought - an upper maisonette where first DD was born (the paraffin fumes surely weren't safe for a newborn but now at the age of 54 DD seems none the worse for it}.
Nappy pan - a large former jeely pan [for making jam] used for boiling up terry nappies on the cooker.

We used to use Izal loo paper as tracing paper when we were at school 😂

I first met Izal toilet paper when l went to school in 1969. On the subject of toilet rolls, my grandmother, along with many other people, kept her spare roll under a doll wearing a crocheted crinoline dress. A staple of bazaars in the seventies. Dinner usually being in the middle of the day and usually meat and two veg followed by pudding. My mother had a single tub washing machine with a spin dryer then later a twin tub before finally having an automatic machine. As a student sharing a house in the mid-eighties, we had a single tub/spin dryer that was bought very cheaply and saved a fortune by not going to the launderette. We had to sit on top of the spin dryer as it would dance all over the floor. Happy days. We had a black and white television until l was eleven and it was so exciting when we had the colour set. Still only three channels, though.
I do think we had a lot more freedom. We would be playing outside with our friends from an early age. We walked to school by ourselves when we were quite small, too. From the age of eight, l took the bus to the next village for my piano lesson by myself, too.
This is a very interesting thread, especially as there people aged from their fifties to nineties here so a big range of memories. Thinking of this, when I was small it was still quite common to see older men with missing limbs who had fought in the first world way. Alongside this, there were still many elderly spinsters who had lost sweethearts and fiancés in the same conflict.

MayBee70

Why didn’t Izal block the sewers?

Perhaps there weren't so many bottoms to wipe in those days and the sewers could cope!

Have the water companies built any new sewers since then? And the ones we do have are often blocked by fatbergs, wet wipes etc.

Free orange juice
Free cod liver oil yuk
Cuban missile crisis
The cold war
Attlee's Labour government making the NHS
The 1963 winter brrrrr

Why didn’t Izal block the sewers?

Having to queue outside a telephone box to make a phone call.

grannybuy

Bus conductors, scrambles ( coins thrown to kids by bride’s dad before he and the bride were leaving for Church), queuing at each side ( one side for dry goods, the other for bacon, cold meat, cheese etc ) of the Co-op, biscuits rarely in packets, instead, taken from a large box, then weighed and bagged.

In my part of Scotland it was the best man we shouted
"Hau' a penny oot!" to as the newly married couple left the church or registrar's office and he obliged with a shower of ha'pennies and pennies that we scrambled for.

And it was the only occasion when we were allowed to except money from grown-ups we were not related to, or being lasses, allowed to scrimmage with the boys for the booty!

Well, I went back to the hand knitted sanitary towels as I was allergic to the disposable ones and found them both more comfortable and much, much cheaper. I might have objected to washing someone else's used cloths, but never to washing my own.

Izel and the like was for me a feature of public toilets - no home I ever was in used it. And I certainly don't miss it!

I doubt any child of today would know what a box of matches was for, and you can't get the household size any longer here.

I miss the small shops where you handed in your sheets and tablecloths for mangling, when you had finished the washing and they were dry or nearly dry.

Electric irons with no theromstat so you had to be careful they didn't become too hot for the garment you were ironing. They worked though, far better than modern steam irons.

Mangle
Liberty bodice
Roll on, my mother made me wear one when I was 17 and weighed eight and a half stone, she said my stomach muscles would collapse if I didn’t.
Virol which I loved as long as it had no cod liver oil
Phone with no dial in a freezing hall
Heavy bedclothes, woolly blankets, eiderdown and candlewick breadspread.
Grilling bread pre toaster days.
I now have my milk delivered in proper glass bottles again.

Oh yes, rags in your hair overnight to make ringlets.

They hurt! But I had lovely ringlets 😀

grannybuy

Bus conductors, scrambles ( coins thrown to kids by bride’s dad before he and the bride were leaving for Church), queuing at each side ( one side for dry goods, the other for bacon, cold meat, cheese etc ) of the Co-op, biscuits rarely in packets, instead, taken from a large box, then weighed and bagged.

Yes, I remember all that too. Also having to leave your shopping bags as you went into the self service co-op and collect them as you got to the till. And broken biscuits - a paper bag full for a penny.

I remember my grandma putting rag curlers in my hair at night to curl my hair. Wearing liberty bodices and itchy wool vests

The desert trolley that used to come round to the tables if you ate out somewhere, so good to be able to see just what you fancied having!

Someone mentioned twin tubs? They were very modern, most people had the single tub with a mangle over it. My mother used to boil the whites in a galvanised tub in the outhouse over a gas flame on a rubber hose - very dangerous I would think.
She later had twin tubs and eventually got an automatic machine. It really irritated her that she couldn't do a second load of washing in the suds, so she used to put the hose in a bucket and soak clothes in that.
I remember that the first time I realised that my (now) husband was serious about me was when he bought me an automatic washing machine for my birthday. Previously we'd had to go to the lauderette on Sudays.

FannyCornforth

Maw we had the lemonade man in the 70s Black Country.
It was Corona I think.
He had ‘It’s the Pop Mon!’ (sic) emblazoned on his van.

I remember this in Lancashire in the 50s and 60s and I think some still had the stoneware bottles. Dandelion and Burdock was a favourite for many.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned bottle deposit money?
Or the tiny Hovis loaves sold by the bakers?
Or the very small Cadbury's bars that were 1d?

Having one of dad's old socks as my Christmas stocking.
Mum doing the laundry by hand.
Mum darning socks.
Being caned at school. (Awful)