I’m old enough to remember..

Using the phone with letters and numbers on the dial, taking an age to dial the numbers to make a call (still remember our number!)

Diplomat

Using the phone with letters and numbers on the dial, taking an age to dial the numbers to make a call (still remember our number!)

Or using the red phone box at the end of the road, which cost 4d.
It always smelt!

Diplomat

Using the phone with letters and numbers on the dial, taking an age to dial the numbers to make a call (still remember our number!)

I’m annoyed now that I can’t remember our actual number from the 50s/early 60s, but I still remember the code - UPL (Uplands).

I was twelve years old when GraceArcher* died in the stable fire.
I can still clearly remember her distraught husband Phil Archer calling her name, but being unable to rescue her.
That episode was in 1955.

I haven’t read them all so I’m probably repeating many -

The siren and then the all clear. The siren gives me shivers now when I hear it in films
An indoor shelter rather than an outside Andersen shelter
Toasting bread on a brass toasting fork over the fire which was only lit in the late afternoon
Cod liver oil
Iron tonic after measles, which turned the spoon black
Cats, which I don’t think saw a vet
Half a crown from uncles and aunts when they visited
The cream at the top of the milk bottle poured on to tinned fruit
Horse delivering milk and coal.
I remember Mum’s Co-op divvy number
Also our first ‘phone number
Could only join the library at 7
Teachers using the ruler and throwing the wooden rubber at boys (primary school)
Rationing ending when I was about 14
Mum giving more to my brother, because he was a boy
WW2 was not taught as it was not history and although I was born in 1940 I have learnt much more about it as an adult, but did live through some of its unpleasant features such as bombings and all the hardships at the time. However as this was the world I was born in to it was just normal, everyday life.
I couldn’t understand my father’s excitement when he lifted me up saying “we’ve won the war”.

I am 8 years younger but remember some of what you mention bellamonna.
Half a crown ? I got 6 pence. If I was lucky. 😅
How about winkles twirled out if their shells with a tiny pin, some vinegar on top with bread and butter., probably marge. Sunday tea at grandmas house.

Johnny Onions on his bike coming over from France to sell strings of onions 🧅

I have enjoyed reading many of these posts. I was born in 1945, so at the end of the war but the rationing lasted for a lot longer than that. I always particularly remember a time , must have been about 1949, because my younger sister Denise, who looked to be the little angel with blonde curly hair and blue eyes (but wasnt!) caused a major upset. My mother who was very good at dressmaking and made all our clothes, including coats, had got her ready to go out, in her new light green coat with dark green buttons, which she had just made, and I was able to dress myself, so mum had gone up to change herself ready to leave. Suddenly there was a shout from the Milk lady , further down the road, who used to leave the milk bottles and the butter on the doorstep. "Mrs Cook, Mrs Cook, your Denise is sat on front doorstep and she's eating your butter ration"

My mother ran downstairs and I can remember her now, going The butter ration, the coat, the butter ration. My sister sat calmly with the opened half a pound of butter . which was our ration for 4 for the week I think - and she had butter smeared all over her face and down the new green coat, beaming merrily and not the slightest bit bothered by the fuss she was causing. We couldnt understand why she liked butter like that anyway!! Then a memory for the coronation of Elizabeth 11. As loyal familes all up and down our road and in the town had borders of red white and blue (alyssum, lobelia and salvias) everywhere, my mother , who as I said made all our clothes. had made us checked dresses to match with white pique collars for the childrens teas that were planned for the occasion. Our dresses had red white blue and yellow lines in them, and my mother told us that it was red white and blue and the gold of the crown, but I suspect that she couldnt get any without the yellow in!!

We had a sort of outhouse across from the back door, and on the right was an outside toilet, brilliant for when we were playing in the garden or with friends and didnt need to traipse through the house and up the stairs is we needed to "go" Opposite that was the coalshed, which the coalman used to dump the coal in and it had a sort of half door so that the bottom bit kept the coal from falling out and then straight ahead from the back door was into the main part where we stored our bikes and the lawnmower etc and of course the "washer". This was quite up do date for its time which was a copper that you filled up and the electric warmed it. It had a mangle thing at the top and that had a safety release on it in case you caught your fingers in it, but it mostly shot up as you were trying to put folded sheets through. We had what we called a "possher" which was like a brass colander on the end of a pole, which you worked up and down in the washing. As children we didnt mind doing that job as we liked the water springing up through the holes and the sound of the possher getting the clothes clean. The "Laws " lemonade lorry used to come round once a week and you could buy quite lurid bottles of raspberry or ice cream soda or dandelian and burdock. The tops of the bottles had a bright orange rubber band round it and then a marble was the actual stopper in the top.

Well time to go and do a bit of checking of washing here now. Glad that I no longer had to possh it all. I could be on here for a week remembering different things.

Auxiliary nurses who were a caring and dedicated presence until the need for nurses to have degrees saw their demise.
I also remember hospital almoners whom you could go to for advice.

I remember when you had to flush the toilet by pulling a chain that must have been attached to the ceiling.

I think it's still possible to install an old fashioned toilet with a high level cistern.

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Pably15. toilet with a chain. Yes!! In my childhood home our house had a loo with a long chain attached to a cistern. When we "pulled the flush" the water would crash down!! There was an ancient outside loo, with identical flushing, huge crashing noise. I thought modern loos were so quiet!! Lol.

Those were the only kind of loos I knew for a long time

pably15

I remember when you had to flush the toilet by pulling a chain that must have been attached to the ceiling.

Pabley15
I have to ask, what did you thing the chain was attached to in the ceiling 😂

We lived abroad but returned ‘home’ when I was five for me to have an eye operation. I knew nothing of England but my mother took me to Moorfields hospital and left me there for a week.
Even in a local hospital parents could only visit children once a week and the belief was that visitors upset the children so were best kept away.
My squint surgery is now done as a day case. When I was young, sick children were often in hospital for weeks or months.

Teachers using the ruler and throwing the wooden rubber at boys (primary school)

Our junior school was just girls but one teacher used to throw a piece of chalk or the board rubber at us!

petra I really don't know, I just remember it being so high up

I remember the air raid shelter and the sound of the bombers coming over. Remember saying “are they naughty mum?” and I can hear her voice clearly now as she replied “V E R Y naughty”. Just after the end of the war, when I had just started school, our headmistress came into the classroom and said we would be having two German children joining our class. I thought two aeroplanes were coming.

The siren sounding for the volunteer fireman who lived in our road to run up the hill to the fire engine.
The horse drawn green grocers cart visiting. Milk deliveries and the sign with the arrow to ask for an extra pint of milk.
Playing on the concrete bases where internment huts had stood.
Collecting a little pack of live yeast from the bakers in the next village to make our bread.

In the 1950's going into public toilets which had an oblong wooden box on the door with a slot for the one penny and a brass knob you slid to one side.

When a gilet was called a body warmer or is there a difference?