Back in Time for Dinner

My mother worked full time, shopped by bus, cooked, cleaned, made all our clothes and washed by hand. Don't think she had time to be bored. I hate this myth that women didn't work outside the home in the fifties and sixties. Of course they did.
I saw a bit of the liver one but was do angry at the misrepresentation and the appalling cooking that I switched off. Of course people cooked tasty food in the fifties.
My MiL had spent years living in Cairo so she said she was forever walking miles in search of an aubergine or an avocado.

Yes, Flickety I remember laughing at those articles in women's mags on how to keep your home perfect and always look wonderful when your man came home from work. That was not how real people lived. They didn't eat the strange meals that are featured in the programmes either - well maybe sometimes, but not exclusively, as they are picturing it.

And the children don't seem to be having much of a life. Why aren't they going out to youth clubs or listening to Radio Luxemburg? Or playing board games or noisy card games, or hanging out with their friends - we did have friends, you know, and they came to the house, where the girls did each others hair and discussed boys, and the boys - I don't know what the boys did, whatever boys do, I suppose.

jane10 - thanks for the mum also got it into her head that she was like the mother in "Sorry" you remember Ronnie Corbet was the poor son still living at home.

I still sort of miss her though because she was a character.

I loved the bit in Home in Time for Dinner when the girls were sharing a bed-sit. I could almost feel how liberated they were. The sixties were the best time to be a teenager. I was 14 in 1960 and grew to womanhood during that swinging era. It was GREAT.

There have been a series of books and these programmes talking about the 1950s recently and they have all left me wondering whether the authors/programme developers have actually talked to people, and there are an awful lot of us, who lived in the 1950s.

They seem to go entirely on average statistics and what they read in magazines and newspapers. Translated to day, how representative of life in the 2010s are tv reality shows, tv advertising, the Women's pages in the Daily Mail or the home décor hints and tips in house magazines? Yet this is what is being used as the basis of these books/programmes.

When I got married in 1968 I can remember articles for the 'new young working wife' listing how I should combine my job with my household responsibilities, complete with time tables and list of chores. I thought them bizarre and pathetic then and neither I nor anyone I knew ever took any notice of them.

My mother was a good and adventurous cook and I can remember her cooking goulasch, risotto and spag bol in the 1950s. All recipes in the little recipe book that came with her new Prestige Pressure cooker. For Prestige to include these recipes suggests that my mother wasn't the only exploratory cook by any means. She also cooked curry regularly, but my father was in the army and we did live in the Far East in the early 1950s

Their food research is from something called the UK National Food Survey: www.data-archive.ac.uk/deposit/use?id=2164

I don't know of anyone who contributed to these records.

Yes J52, I am enjoying it too, but wish it were a little more accurate.

Well I didn't recognise much of it either! I did live in the London suburbs and was used to going to places like Barkers in Kensington when someone needed a new coat - but that was if the really good C and A there didn't suit! We never ate any of that tripey food and our house was far more comfortable - my parents bought furniture before the war - most of our neighbours were the same even if they had been bombed out. I realise that the house my parents bought during the war was quite far seeing - had a fitted kitchen with a hidden ironing board - my mother was greatly upset when Dad changed some of the cupboards and that went but the main guts of the kitchen was still there when the house was sold after their deaths in 2006!!
I went to college at the end of the fifties and we could go out to a pub or a restaurant quite easily and Cambridge was full of lovely eating places - I had a couple of boyfriends at UNI there. There were also many different types of eating places about too - a Swiss restaurant off Leicester Square and also an Omelette house too. Also up there was a Chinese restaurant owned by a some famous person (i think maybe Henry Cooper) and the manager was a Chinese actor who had parts in many films. Do you remember - Chicken Inns - always reminded me of a fish and chip shop but sold chicken and chips instead!
I married in 1962 worked full time and never cooked those awful meals - I did much meat and veg and also made pastry etc with no problems. Vesta we did not have till the 70s and then it was very occasional fare.
We watched the 1966 World Cup on a much better TV - rented from Radio Rentals or similar. The motorway service stations could be good - the best one I ever encountered was at Aust just the English side of the old Severn Bridge. We called there once in the early seventies and it was like a hotel restaurant overlooking the bridge - nice meal too. I think the place at the Watford Gap was good too - I remember my parents telling me about it.
The other thing is - the clothes - they were wearing 'going out' type gear all the time! Can you imagine cleaning the bath in a frilly petticoat that scratched your legs!! The husband going to work in those tight trousers was just SOO wrong! They were mainly 'grey slacks type, suits or cavalry twill. The young woman historian and Giles are both far too young and their research is quite possibly from guessing rather than asking for memories and they have the attitude of how could they possibly be wrong!

Yes, I was a teenager in the late 1950s - 1960s and it was a great time!

Perhaps my parents shielded the problems of rationing from me in the early 1950s but I certainly never remember having Dad's cold leftovers for my evening meal!
I do remember the excitement when the old range (which needed black-leading) was pulled out of the kitchen and a new gas cooker was fitted. Marley tiles were laid on the floor over the old red tiles which had to be polished with 'Cardinal Red' polish.

However, I do remember that DM worked part-time - it must have been from the late 1940s - because she took me to work with her in the nursery and school holidays.
In the 1960s (I think) she joined something called The Women's Gas Federation which was a women's group and they used to go out on day trips. She was also an avid whist player and used to go out to whist drives.
MIL belonged to TWG and RBL and regularly went on lots of trips before she started working full-time in the 1960s.

I don't think real life as it was can possibly be shown in a programme which whizzes through the years like that - a day for each year.
However, I am finding it quite amusing!

I was a teenager in the sixties and life was a blast! A little money went a long way. People went out to meet friends and socialize with them. You could go to the pub, the pictures or a restaurant with very little money - try that today! People went dancing, joined clubs and supported the community much more than they do now.

Jobs were plentiful and children undemanding compared to now. When I passed my driving test at 17, the world opened up even more.

They were great times.

*Caz, not Can! This I pad has a mind of its own! Spooky because the sentence still reads ok! x

falconbird Your Mum!

Can, I agree the set was not totally accurate. Towards the beginning there was a tray with blue flowers on it, supposedly early 60s. I had the matching rolling pin, but that was new and trendy in the early 70s.

Our 60s fridge was a Tricity, as per the brochure they had, but I don't think the actual fridge was a Tricity it looked older.

Just nit picking, im enjoying the programme. x

I thought the last episode dealing with the sixties was far more accurate than the first one dealing with the fifties.

I was a child in the fifties and a teenager in the sixties.

I thought it was very accurate when they discussed how the sixties were for the older women and I think it was true that our mums began to feel sidelined during this era.

My own mother had a resurgence in the 1980s when she got it into her head that she looked like Maggie Thatcher, little suits and a handbag! and neatly coiffured hair. (It was a nightmare.)

The wife in the programme last night was very bored and discontented with life. She said she felt sort of redundant and that life was for young people. However, I wonder if that was more due to the artificial situation she was in in that programme? I certainly don't remember bored discontented women in the 60s (although I'm sure they existed just as some do today). Women seemed to do all sorts of things with their time as I remember it: work, various womens' groups (WI, TG etc) gardening, involvement with various charities or organisations eg Girl Guides etc. It was up to each individual to occupy their time.

We did have curry - made from leftover beef or lamb from the Sunday roast, with curry powder mixed into the gravy, with sultanas.

I remember always having to go on 'errands' to the shops, help wash up etc.
The mother in the programme seemed to struggle by herself until this week.

We had corned beef hash. In my mum's version you just mashed the corned beef in with the potatoes and added a bit of butter and pepper. We usually ate it with baked beans and tomato ketchup. I remember the first Chinese restaurant I went to with one of my early boyfriends. It must have been 1967 or 68. I don't recall what I had as a main course but we had lychees for dessert, very oriental. I had never tasted them before. I also remember the first time my mum made spaghetti bolognese, there was silence at the table as everyone was concentrating on eating it properly!

On Sundays DM always cooked a roast with fresh veg and tea was home-cooked ham or luncheon meat with salad (from the garden and greenhouse in the summer) followed by tinned peaches and tinned cream or evaporated milk and a home-made cake.
Where did we put it and how did I stay skinny?

I remember a neighbour popping in one Saturday lunchtime and being astonished because mum was cooking a joint of ham, boiled potatoes with fresh green beans and parsley sauce. 'A proper dinner on a Saturday?' the neighbour exclaimed!

We didn't have chicken often either - and no wine.

I seem to recall we had quite a lot of mince, mashed potatoes and processed peas. We also had omelette and chips, roast meals (mostly lamb and beef - I think chicken was quite a luxury in the 50's), home made fish and chips, lamb chops, sausage and mash.

We were also very excited when the Vesta meals were introduced and thought we were being very adventurous eating them.

We had a lot of tinned fruit cocktail or pears for puddings. I can't bear them now.

I'd never been to a motorway service station either. We didn't have a car until Mum bought a Bond 3-wheeler when I was about 13. (Dad couldn't drive).

I think the programme was very inaccurate of the 60's and the programme makers are making it far worse than it was. I was married in '62 and had a Fridgidaire fridge, a Rolls washing machine and a smart electric cooker We both worked full time, I was not doing housework 7-9 hours a day, I made lots of casseroles which cooked while I was at work, and we had a very healthy diet. I do remember as a newly married, making apple pie and using a red plastic egg cup to keep the pastry raised in the middle!! Just when in-laws came to dinner!!
At weekends Vesta Chow Mein was a special treat, and if we dined out, it was the Little Chef.
Did any one notice the Dansette? My first purchase from my Saturday job, but that was back in the 50's!

I learned to drive in a Hillman Imp. It was blue.

Oh, yes, Pittcity. Fruit juice as a starter. Weird. Easy, though!

My first car was a bright red Hillman Imp, grumppa - nice wee car with a few idiosyncracies. I soon learned what a solenoid was and what to do with it!
The Berni Inn in King's Lynn was a family treat at one time. Yes - good old prawn cocktail, steak (or chicken) and chips followed by BFG. So popular was BFG with my DSs that they requested it as birthday cake and I had to adapt a recipe which went down very well.

I have never forgotten the chop (it claimed to be lamb) I ate at Watford Gap service station on the M1 in the summer of 1966. I was driving down in my Hillman Imp from the Isle of Bute to my home in North East London in a day. Modern motorway service station food couldn't be worse - mind you, I'm not sure it's a great deal better!