What the younger generation missed! Do we?

Combining the 4d a friend and I had been given for bus fare on a small bag of twiglets - our preference to walking 3/4 of a mile home from school.
Making raffia table mats: on the back of the class room door there was a string, tightened between two cup hooks, upon which were varying colours of raffia.
The winter of 1963: short socks, water butts frozen for weeks, no central heating. Nithering.
Party lines Wyllow3… passion killers 😂

Callistemon21

Wyllow3

"Sitting in a freezing hallway talking to your beloved of the moment on the phone" oh yes, in full hearing of younger giggling sibs.

You wuz posh. 😁

I had to find 4d and trek down the road to the telephone box if I wanted to phone a friend.

We didn't have a fridge until I was about 11 and then only because my father worked for a firm which manufactured them and got a discount. It was put in the pantry and we all had to admire it.

Phones were for essential use only for a long time.....as in one phoned "in emergencies". I never recall ringing friends for chats, but did make arrangements on phone with first b friend 1967. But the I lived a hippy life in my 20's no phone for years, all letters or dropping by. Still have a lot of those letters.

Now there's a thing - writing long letters to friend and boyfriends. Still got many.

I was allowed a Snowball at Christmas when I was very young.

My Dad called it bloody custard! (Said in a Yorkshire accent)

I recall nearly all of this and have so enjoyed this thread.

Wyllow3

"Sitting in a freezing hallway talking to your beloved of the moment on the phone" oh yes, in full hearing of younger giggling sibs.

You wuz posh. 😁

I had to find 4d and trek down the road to the telephone box if I wanted to phone a friend.

We didn't have a fridge until I was about 11 and then only because my father worked for a firm which manufactured them and got a discount. It was put in the pantry and we all had to admire it.

I thought a blue bag was something you put on yourself if you had been stung! I would say izal toilet paper and dr whites sanitary towels

"Sitting in a freezing hallway talking to your beloved of the moment on the phone" oh yes, in full hearing of younger giggling sibs.

dogsmother

Freedom to go out to play and wander.

This. Just going out in the street and waiting for other children to come out to play in the road. At age 9 being able to ramble with friends in nearby fields. Safe to cycle for miles with friends at age 10.

As well as many of the above.

Oh, and how could I forget Welfare Orange Juice? Thick and syrupy and gorgeous. I think it was supposed to be diluted but I liked it best neat.

When I was little and we used to travel the 100 miles, pre-motorway, to visit grandparents we used to pass the Blue Works at Backbarrow on the river flowing out of Windermere, where the dollybags were made. It was amazing when I was a child, and would probably seem bizarre even now. The road through the village was narrow and twisty and everything there was blue, a particularly luminous shade of blue at that. The factory buildings were blue, but so too were the houses, the trees, the rocks in the river, even the people looked blue. The factory closed down a long time ago and Backbarrow was by-passed 60 years ago. There's a hotel there pointedly called the Whitewater but there's also a vintage car museum in a newish building deliberately coloured that particular shade of blue.

Anyway, thinking about visits to grandparents reminds me to add

Dolly tub and mangle
Outside privies in the concrete yard
Chamber pots under the bed
Toasting forks by the fire (in an early showing of dyspraxia, I called it the forking toast)

to the home-based list of

Frost on the inside of the bedroom window in winter
Paraffin stoves
Coal sheds
Coal men delivering in big sacks
Coal scuttles and fire irons
Snow speckled with black
Ladybirds with the colours reversed
Big wireless sets with a dial marked with names evocative of a bygone age (Hilversum, Sottens, Kalundborg, Beromünster¸ Daventry…)
"And the next Tonight is tomorrow night"
Blackjacks, Mojos and Fruit Salads at 4 for a penny
Telephone boxes with buttons A and B
Black and white films with subtitles on prime-time TV
Spangles Olde English
Fry's 5-Flavours bar
Brutally-boiled cabbage
Sitting in a freezing hallway talking to your beloved of the moment on the phone
Bunty comics
Medicines in corked bottles

I could go on …

I miss quiet Sundays…. No shopping

Blue bags were swished in the final rinse water of white washing to enhance its whiteness. Not used on other fabrics, only white.

We had bellows to get the coal fire going once it was lit. I had to set and light a fire for a Brownie badge and remember blowing air into it with bellows. Do you remember putting a newspaper over the grate in order to get the chimney to 'draw'? It sounds like a hazardous task and I'm very glad my GC don't have to do it.

And surely this is just all a bit of lighthearted fun? Are the things you mention invalid just because you don’t recall them

I don’t recall them because I did not experience them.

Yes I remember….Warninks Advocaat plus cherry on a stick😃and still like it at Christmas ( not evenings and mornings though) and remember the Davenports beer at home tv commercial.
Used to like Mackeson stout in a bottle - nicer than Guinness (imo)
Yep it was The Corona Man who delivered our pop in the 60s and 70s ( I was very spoiled and got to choose) still love dandelion & burdock and cherryade
Twin Tubs ✔️
Bri Nylon petticoats and nighties when very little, but no to liberty bodices this was the 60s mind.
Trolley buses ✔️ -took ages to get to town
Rag& Bone man on horse drawn cart or sometimes just a wooden barrow ✔️
Dustmen and coal men hoisting sacks and bins on their shoulders ( had to leave the back gates unlocked for access to the yard and coal grate) ✔️
Which leads nicely onto dogs 🐩 that is pets legging it and not to be seen all day, -ours went out a white poodle came back black! Dog Licenses. Lots of “57 Variety” dogs on the streets then. Not frightening though.

Definitely remember seeing disfigured and horribly disabled men ( my Dad would explain to me why) as well as proper Old Ladies wearing hats. ✔️

Women wearing headscarves. ✔️
Navy blue knickers ✔️ blue bags:pretty sure my mum used one on navy blue gaberdine type school skirts. Was it to intensify the colour?

Butchers shops and the array of carcasses adorning the windows, the smell of bleach, ditto fish mongers. ✔️
Puppies and kittens for sale in our market hall; on Saturdays used to go just to look ✔️

The hardware shop and the smell of paraffin oil and freshly cut wood. ✔️

Being sent to the co-op ( no roads to cross, just a jitty) with a wicker shopping trolley for butter or sugar usually. Remember your divi number?

Being sent to the chemists and being served with no questions asked. Dashing to the off license, fiver in hand and a written note, to buy cigarettes for my older sister and often tights (American tan)

Barely any cars parked on our street except our car ✔️ No seatbelts. I travelled on the front bench seat, elevated by the arm rest between my Mum and Dad. The only restraint was my Dads big left hand!

Cruel, horrible NHS dentists and the routine use of anaesthetic gas on children ✔️

Having my straggly hair viciously brushed and styled by my mum to go somewhere special and having to have a “strip wash” ( way to long to heat the hot water tank up for a bath) this involved me standing on the toilet lid while a hot very soapy and itchy flannel was swiftly applied over legs arms and face (particular attention being paid to behind the ears and neck) shivery in winter.

My mother was referred to as “yer Mam” by my dad and the others

Television sets with no remotes obviously, ( weren’t allowed to touch the buttons on pain of death or worse) indoor tv aerials, and vertical and horizontal hold buttons on the back of said tv.
The Test Card😂
Answering the phone with your telephone number and asking “who’s speaking please”
Such was life then.

VioletSky:

'I think new generations will never understand life before the thing in your hand that allows you to do or plan anything you want to do with your time'

Sometimes - it's the wrong thing - so I'm trying to answer the remote, turn the TV off with my mobile or close the blinds with the house phone!

I still use a toasting fork, though.

I lived in a rural part of Banffshire in the fifties. We were occasionally visited by "Ingin Johnnies" - beret wearing French onion sellers who pedalled around the villages on bikes laden with strings of onions. Apparently they came to Aberdeen by boat from Brittany. I don't know how they made a profit.

I realised how much time had marched on when my 3 year old GS picked up one of my ornaments and asked 'where are the buttons. What does it do?,' His dad called him tech boy as everything has to have a purpose.

I remember wearing a liberty bodice over a full length petticoat and a vest underneath , no wonder I always felt smothered.

We had a fridge and a twin tub washing machine at home and a paraffin heater in the kitchen, coal fire in the living room no central heating so upstairs was freezing.

We had corona pop, bread, milk, paraffin, and newspapers delivered and the insurance man came for his money on a Friday night . He was my dads friend and he always came in for a cup of tea.

I remember little triangular bags filled with 2ozs of sweets from the sweet shop all in big tall glass jars and 1penny and 2penny cadburys chocolate bars which tasted much better than it does now. My dad would buy me a weekly bar of five boys ( remember that) and my comic on the Friday night when he came home with his wage packet.

I remember helping my nan do her washing on a Monday in the school holidays stirring the copper and turning the mangle, there was an actual fire underneath to heat the water. She wouldn’t let me “feed” the sheets through the mangle in case I caught my hands and me and my cousin (2 years younger) would be out all day playing in the fields and nobody ever worried about us. You wouldn’t do that today

Wedding receptions in Scotland, in a local hall, steak pie dinner, followed by Scottish country dancing - and lots of alcohol. A great time was had by all for a reasonable outlay

I remember going to an aunt's house, (in Scotland) to view the 'show of presents' before my cousin's wedding. All laid out on the table, with the gift card beside so all could see who had given what. Tea, homemade cake and judgement

Poppyjo the only one I remember is Izal or similar at school and no, I don’t miss it!

FannyCornforth

South Wales, apparently, Calli, in the 1880s. Interestingly, it coincided with the growing Temperance movement in Wales at the time.

(I don’t remember any growing Temperance in the environs of Dudley in the 1970s!)

No, my Dad didn't drink much but he did have Davenports beer delivered and we always had a bottle of sweet sherry and "medicinal brandy" in the cupboard. And Mum's Warnink's Advocaat at Christmas, made into a snowball complete with a cherry on a cocktail stick 😁

Gosh, that reminds me of the horrific Dr Whites with loops on, and the uncomfortable sanitary belt that hooked into the loops. Those pads were so bulky - wads of cotton wool and tissue. Nothing like the slimmer, sticky backed pads my g’dtrs use. In my family tampons were frowned on. If you used them it was assumed you weren’t a virgin.

MawtheMerrier

I feel I am in a time warp
Brought up in the 50’s in Scotland - no horse drawn milk floats, no eggs in isinglass, - we had a washing machine and a fridge - basic, but still. Lemonade van what was that? Never wore a liberty bodice, certainly did not make my own STs.
Perhaps others are (even) older than me (75) but many of these memories sound like my parents’ youth, not mine!

I grew up in the 1960s. I wore a liberty bodice in the winter. Unfortunately I can also remember have to use home made ST. I was one of four girls and when money was tight we had to. Mum did have a twin tub but didn't buy a fridge until I had left home.

As a child I wore a liberty bodice in the winter months.
I clearly remember the brewery dray horses pulling the cart loaded with barrels of beer. After the barrels had been unloaded the horses would stand outside the public house, munching hay from the bag clipped to the bridle. Hook Norton Brewery still have four shire horses.
As a young child I used to see a man, lying flat, being pushed round the town on a whicker stretcher. My mother told me that he was wounded in WW1.
In the 1960's we had a neighbour whose face was dreadfully scarred from burns. He had served as an RAF pilot during WW2.
We lived in the countryside during the 1970s and an older lady taught me how to preserve eggs in isinglass.
Isinglass was readily available in the local market town.
I'm eighty and share many of the memories of others on this thread.