I’m old enough to remember..

Grannybags

Ten shilling notes
Half crowns
Florins

I took two half crowns to school every Monday for dinner money 😁

Occasionally someone (I remember a GGF) giving us each a half crown. Riches!! Enough to buy 5 Mars Bars!

Stealing a spoonful of Virol from younger siblings.
Standing with arms outstretched for mam to wind the wool from a skein to a ball.

It’s lovely to read all these memories, some of them remind me of things my mum told me and things she has written in what she called her “ memoirs “. Tales of the cat meat man who sold dried meat for pets- putting the weeks supply through the letter box wrapped in newspaper one day when they were out and of course the cat ate most of there and then! Apparently ‘Mother was not pleased when he sicked up most of it up on the rug by the range!’
I do wish there was a like button on here!
Don’t you think it would connect us more as a Community?
But then maybe we would need a dont like button and that might be depressing?

I remember writing and drawing on a slate when I first went to school.
The accession of Queen Elizabeth 11 in 1953. We were given free sweets on a field near our home.
We had a pantry with a stone floor. Milk and cheese were placed there. Too bad if they went sour.
Flannel washes. Bathed once a week.
Freezing cold bedroom shared with my two sisters. We didn’t have central heating.
And today I remember the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and all the people that died.

I remember my mother curling my hair (with protest!)
She had two sets of curling tongs which she heated in the coal fire, then used to 'perm' my hair.
Also, my brothers harvested samphire from the marshes. My mother pickled it, and we all enjoyed eating.

Night-watchman keeping warm by a brazier along my road. Scrumping apples 😳🍎Playing marbles, or “beads” if we had no marbles - same rules applied. Milkman’s, coalman’s and rag and bone man’s horses resting with a nose-bag outside my house.

The coal being delivered to the houses in the street, in big sacks on the men’s shoulders. The poured it down the coal hole at the front.

I remember the paraffin man coming round with his little boy. Years later I married his son!

I remember when Heathrow Airport was Nissen huts, and there was a slope between different ones as you walked through. Plus the outside glass-walled observation area beside the runway! And walking to the plane, no buses, climbing up the steps. and when it was considered safe to leave a 6 year old child (me) on the plane at Paris while they refuelled, rather than wake me up to make me get off!!!

Co-op divvy!

Frozen jubblies!

Green shield stamps
Little blue bags of salt in packets of crisps

Knitter43

Co-op divvy!

I can still remember my Mum's co-op number.

I can remember being sent to the local greengrocers as a child with a special, strong shopping bag for 5 pounds of spuds. I used to have to hold it open in the shop and the lady would tip the spuds in.

The death ☠️ f Queen Mary, the Coronation is f Elizabeth II and the Ascent of Everest.

Knife sharpener coming round the streets with cart.

Lovely thread. I am finding it very interesting reading about things I remember and also things further back like WWII.

When I was about four I liked to see how many words I could pick out from newspaper headlines.
I remember asking, ‘What’s SMOG?’

Liberty bodices , corsets and sanitary belts.

Thanks for all these lovely memories.

I too remember the night the whisky bond in Glasgow went on fire. We could see the red glow of the flames on the night sky seven miles outside Glasgow.

When the police phoned to ask of my doctor father could attend to help the search and rescue teams, my mother replied, he had already left to do so, and had a friend, an ex-RAF bomber pilot with him to help as well.

Liberty bodices.

The smell of the paraffin heater in the bathroom where we made a dash from our freezing bedroom in the mornings.
Listening to Journey into Space on the radio, or wireless as it was then. Being able to buy four sweets for an old penny. Counting the sacks of coal delivered to make sure we weren’t being diddled. Trying to light our open fire when we got home from school, our only form of heating, and nearly burning the house down by holding a sheet of newspaper to make it draw. Living in a house with no electricity and the excitement when it was installed. Magic!

Lunes, Oxford bag trousers, cheese cloth shirts, baseball boots and platform shoes

Playing on bomb sites, someone in a metal coal bunker ‘tank’ while we threw bricks at it! Balloons going up from the park behind our house.

tanith just shows what your father thought of the neighbours. That's a derogatory term.

Muffin the Mule! I still have my Muffin the Mule teabagwoman 😀

The term spiv was frequently used during WW2 and just afterwards to describe black marketeers, Peaseblossom. I expect tanith used it in that context and I certainly remember it being used in those days. It wasn't used to describe hardened criminals, usually rather flash individuals operating on the fringes of petty criminality.

One of our neighbours was like that, he somehow avoided being called up and he made a lot of money during the war.

Children not coming to school in the winter because they couldn’t afford wellies to wade through the ford.

Standing around the tortoise stove in the classroom when we came back from our nature walk and the resulting chilblains.

The outside school loos that froze up.

The brilliant school dinners that were cooked on the premises.