What our parents did that wouldn't be seen now

My memories of childhood in the fifties and if I`m honest probably before as I`m a 40s baby was me trying to sneak out the back door and hare off to the farm next door for a treacherous day on the farm climbing into haylofts and running amok among pigs and cows (falling into that little trench in the byres which was full of cow clap!) and just as I was closing the door carefully my mother`s voice shouting at me to take my little brother with me. Argggggggggggggggggg. Little did she know when we kids met up on the farm we told the little ones we were going to play cops & robbers or cowboys and indians and they had to close their eyes and count to 100 before trying to find us and of course you all know I`m sure they never did! Does that make me a bad sister - probably.

Not saying that this wouldn't be done now, but may be rare
My parents

I. Ate tripe and onions once a week
2. Went out foraging and we dined royally on jugged hare, rabbit and pheasant
3. Made curry using either a blue or pink tinned curry powder, with apples and dried fruit (still can't replicate it)
4. Didn't own a fridge
5. Toasted pikelets in front of an open fire
6. Had a car with a running board.

Happy days.

Mrs Pickle I know that curry. I still do it and like it. When my girls were small they used to call it Green Dinner. You chop and fry about 3 large cooking apples with 2 onions. Then you sprinkle as much curry as you like over this and later add fine minced beef and a handful of raisins. Put it in the oven to heat through and leave it for a couple of hours just warm.
Serve with rice.
Its not the most advanced curry but I learnt it at a cookery course in the 60s.

Lovely pikelets and the long toasting fork!

It's Sharwoods curry poder. Still available

Still do the piklets, which I make, and toast with a toasting fork

Dripping with butter, Galen, and home made strawberry jam.
Suddenly , I'm 55 years younger....
And I must try that curry.

Curry powder - the words remind me how I hated 'curry' - until I tasted curries made properly! Curried eggs... (shudder)...

I'll tell you one thing our parents didn't do back then [as opposed to what they did do] and that's whine on endlessly about their terrible lives, eating beans on toast every day and warming their hands over a candle. That's how all the socialist posturing over on the politics thread is starting to sound.I really wonder how many Gnetters live awful lives themselves. Not many.
Our parents leaving us alone as children, as opposed to all the mollycoddling done now, perhaps made better people, capable of independent thought and action.There are far too many grown up babies around now, wanting Mum and Dad to live their lives for them.

Rosesarered - very true.
I was a 1930s baby, and during WW2, when the Dads were away and Mums working we did as we liked, had a wonderful time, adventures, trespassed etc.
I tried to bring up my children with the same taste for adventure, and they carry this on, to a lesser extent, with their own children. There are more insidious and destructive influences around now.
On a completely different aspect - dental care.
Many people in my youth couldn't afford dental care. Had all their teeth removed and were fitted with false teeth at an early age.

rosesarered I don't know what "whining" or "socialist posturing" you are referring to, but I think the tone of your post is unnecessarily combative.

Are you saying that those who have comfortable lives should not bother themselves about those who do not?

What a bizarre post from Rosesarered. I've just read the last five threads in politics and totally failed to find any 'whining' or 'socialist posturing'.

Perhaps I'm just a little slow on the uptake, but I'd really welcome some enlightenment on this one.

Actually Eloethan [and this may surprise you] I don't care what you think about the tone of my post.
MiceElf if you have really read those posts then perhaps you are a little slow on the uptake.
There are a few [only a few thankfully] who continually whine on about 'the government' not doing things [i.e. giving out cash] for poorer people. It's our money, who pay the taxes not the government.Would you like the lovely Mr. Brown back? Hmmm? I was making the point that in our parents day, they got on with it and did not continually blame 'the government' for every mortal thing.We had a certain amount of help [we were very poor BTW]like free school meals etc and my mother went to work. Never heard her complain.I am not a Tory, and I am not a Socialist, but the politics thread here is not worth going on any more, as we are hit over the head with reports and statistics and it's getting a right old bore.

That's not an answer, Rosesarered. Let's have some examples from those threads and an analysis of them rather than assertion and tub thumping.

And what has Mr Brown got to do with it all? I really am mystified.

I know what you mean, roses, and I agree that it does get tedious.

However, one of my earliest memories is of my much-loved Granddad pointing a jabbing finger at the little black and white tv they had while watching the BBC news and shouting "I blame the communists!". This was in the mid-50s and I have no idea what he was blaming them for...

Actually I think Rosesarered has a point as I'm pretty fed up with all this whinging too. Don't feel you have to justify yourself Rose and neither do you have to trawl the threads to prove your point nor allow yourself to be caught in a pincer movement

Ana* Ah yes, those pesky Communists!'
I certainly won't be justifying my post Aka by doing quote and counter qoute and adding to the mountains of statistics. I have said what I wanted to say and that's it.

Hmm rosesarered depending on how old members are they might have had parents who were active in trade unions, conscientious objectors in the war, or feminists fighting for women to have the rights that are taken for granted these days. A 1930s baby might have had a mother who was a suffragette.
If I understand history correctly Mountbatten got out of India with unseemly speed (causing chaos in his wake) because he and others in power were convinced that the British soldiers would mutiny if ordered to fight Indian people who were campaigning for Independence. Doesn't sound like they were a bunch of happy chappies singing "we'll met again" around the campfire and doffing their hats to the toffs.
The supposed hero of WW2 - Churchill - suffered a resounding defeat in the first election after the war. Doesn't sound like a contented population that was happy to let the status quo continue does it?

Jess, I expect the contented ones were the working class Tories who 'knew their place'.

Those with a brain were as you described above.

Gosh neither my parents nor grandparents were "content" with things as they were. Both were solid working class and were strong union members who voted for better conditions both in the public and private domain.

In their life time they saw probably most importantly the formation of the NHS and the Welfare State which included a living pension and benefits for those out of work. (I was born in 1946, and was born in a nursing home for which my parents paid) but much else besides.

There has been democratization in many areas of life, opening up many areas of culture and leisure that didn't exist before.
The servility to members of a different class has disappeared.

So much of what our parents did would would not therefore be seen now, but we must guard it jealously as they could all be so easily taken away.

ROSES your post 17.17, Well said .

Many [smiles] S

I can't believe that this thread was started with the cunning plan of starting a political bunfight.
One thing that my father did which you rarely see today, was that he wore a trilby hat (it became his trademark at the rugby matches which he reported for newspapers in Scotland) and he would always raise it when he passed or met a woman in the street.

Another thing he did was to walk home for lunch each day (probably a mile or so) which my dear mamma as befitted a 50's housewife, would have ready for him - a hot meal of course.
I certainly would not be seen doing that for DH!

I recall my extended family having enthusiastic political discussions and disagreements when we all met up each week. Religion was another contentious topic that cropped up pretty frequently too. The only subject that prompted whining was on the ever-popular subject of corns.

^Jess, I expect the contented ones were the working class Tories who 'knew their place'.

Those with a brain were as you described above.^

How patronising is that post?

On a lighter note

Monica the milk lady came around in a black van and my grandmother or mother went out with a jug to buy the milk - un-pasterized of course. This decanted into a saucepan and allowed to stand before scalding then cooled when the cream was skimmed off and we had it on bread and jam for breakfast delicious.

Shopping for the weekend was bought and carried home in 1 basket.

Bread and hot milk with butter and sugar for breakfast - divine.

Remember the time before anti-biotics in general were commonly available. I used to suffer from really bad ear-ache and also remember having injuries to my legs through falling etc and the wounds becoming infected which would not clear for ages - all these are now dealt with in a flash.

Goodness, yes - just remembered that I fell down some steps when I was about 6 and the quite minor graze I suffered 'went septic'! That was despite the swabbings of TCP inflicted on it - can't bear the smell to this day.