Biggest 'Modern Day' Friend

Nice to find someone else up in the night! "I really value being warm so I'd have to say central heating! My own childhood home, never mind my grandmother's, had icy rooms apart from the kitchen /living room. Otherwise, a washing machine (how hard it must have been to do the family wash by hand), and a prolific hot shower. I think a lot of our possessions and conveniences have made our life more complicated so I would like to think I could do without them.

I know we are lucky to have all these things but I m not so sure my Nan missed out that much She ran a guest house very successfully without any of those items She didn’t miss what she’d never heard of and everything was home cooked bought every other day so the kitchen was always warm and a real fire in the living room (I live in my Nans big house now and still have no central heating (far too expensive to have put in or to use)
Washing was done regularly and wrung out using the wringer in the garden and hung on the line in the sun and wind carpets and rugs were regularly hung over the line and beaten We walked or bused everywhere
No phones, we used the corner shop if there was an emergency my Nan was too frightened to use a phone even in her old age when we had one
Yes I m happy with all our modern appliances but I don’t think life was miserable without them I think we would take a while to adapt if we were flung back into that era but I don’t think our grans were miserable people or had miserable lives without them I think they can be a curse too
The one thing I d miss most would be my daily hot shower

Well even back to when we were first married we had no car, no telephone, no heating, no tv, no washing machine or electric hoover and had to share an ancient bathroom with a tenant in the flat above.

My paternal grandparents lived in a two up - two down terraced house with no bathroom - they had brought up 6 children in there and another who died aged 3. The only heat was in the living room with an open range fire, washing was done in the big pot sink and all food was stored in the large pantry. They did have a gas cooker but all fresh food was bought on the day and cooked from scratch. Life was hard but family were close by (apart from during the war) and they just got on with things and had great fun together.

When I look at life today with all it's technology, AI, convenience foods where everything has to be done or responded to instantly and worldwide travel so easy to achieve I wonder whether how we would cope without any of it. The one thing I would miss most would be an indoor bathroom with hot water on tap and a toilet you didn't have to go outside in the middle of the night to use!

What evocative memories of the past.

I would miss my IPad dreadfully as it answers all my questions, keeps me in touch with friends and family and entertains me.

Starting on BBC2 this week is a new series of Going Back in Time. I think the family are running a Sweet Shop.

My nan and I used to talk about the changes over her lifetime. She was born in 1892 so cars were amazing when she was small and living in a northern mill town but, by the time she died in 1982, men had flown to the moon.

I think a warm house and hot water in an indoor bathroom are the things I would hate to do without!

Would be lost without my washing machine and as I have terrible childhood memories of living in a freezing house and getting dressed under the bed clothes as it was so cold in my bedroom, I would hate to have no central heating. Would miss my car, but there's always the bus and having a dog that moults for England, I would be lost without my hoover. Oh, and of course, my ipad and access to the internet..... oh dear, I could go on and on.....

Having been brought up in a 2 up, 2 down slum even now I still appreciate hot running water with, of course, an indoor toilet and a bathroom. Central heating is such a treat I still appreciate too.

All the above! And modern cars.

Many years ago I was driving my DM along a bit of road which runs between two lines of large electricity pylons, and remarked that I think them quite attractive, not the eye-sore some people find them. She said she loved them too as they represent women’s freedom. That electricity had done more for women’s liberation than all the marches and acts of parliament. Without it, especially in modern homes which lack fireplaces, we’d be completely lost.

I remember ice on the inside of my bedroom window.

Ahh but they wouldn’t build houses without fireplaces if there was no electricity Norfolk ???

Oh, Liz don’t! I remember that too! Taking my clothes into the bed to try to warm them up before getting dressed.

Liz46 oh yes, me too! You could see your breath in my bedroom it was so cold; the bathroom was no better. The thought of stripping off for a wash (we only had a bath on Sunday nights!) filled me with dread, so used to try and have a wash with my dressing gown on; not easy to wash your 'bits' whilst still dressed???

It’s a B****r around here when the power goes off Bluebelle. The people on the new estates are in a right pickle and panic! Last week our friends (who luckily have a wood burner) were off for five hours. It doesn’t take long for a house to cool down.

It has to be Electricity, then anything is possible.

As a reader of a lot of dystopian fiction, I have a good imagined idea about what would happen in an apocalypse. We'd be f***ed. No water purification. Most of our food unavailable. No light or heat. Perhaps I shouldn't read as much!

Electricity definitely for me. And a bathroom.

I can do without phones/internet/central heating, I have managed without them for prolonged periods within the last ten years. Not essential for me.

Definitely the shower and washing machine for me. Don't have central heating and don't want it.
In the early 70s my ex and I opened a residential home, we had 25 people resident after the first three months and only a twin tub washer. The bed linen went to a laundry but everything else was done in the twin tub. Happy days.

Newquay - I too was brought up in a slum area though didnt realise it was until I started secondary school, kids can be cruel. Not bothered about CH, TV, internet etc but as I spent a lot of time either ringing washing in the mangle or going to laundry for my mum, it would be a washing machine for me.

How about adding reliable contraception to the list? And antibiotics? Haing a large family, whether you wanted to or not added to a woman's burden, but then having to nurse at least one of them through a bad infection with only the simple remedies available - and probably losing them - was worse than any of the hard work.

The indoor loo and automatic washing machine, even though the old twin tubs washed better I think.
I stayed with my paternal grandparents every day of the school holidays and also when my parents/bro went on holiday (I still hate travelling) in a small village. Only the living room heated by coal fire (can still taste that toast done over it!). Washing done in single tub machine but put through the mangle, no freezer until the 80's. All veg/fruit home grown, and tasted all the better for it. Kept chickens so fresh eggs too.
At home no heating other than electric fire in sitting room. Ice on the bedroom metal framed windows was usual in the winter.

I don't have central heating now, like my bedroom cold and fresh air (window nearly always open a bit). Rarely have colds etc and haven't seen a doctor for 30 years.

My husbands late grandmother (very late) was born in 1885 and often when our children were small she would visit us. She would have been in her mid 80s then. I once asked her what would she have like to have had when her children were babies, that I took for granted ? Thinking she was going to say electricity, running water, television or refrigeration, I was very surprised when she said ‘plastic pants for the babies’
They had nappies made from old towels or sheets and when they were wet evertything was wet. Clothes and bedding ! What would she have thought of disposable nappies!!

Blimey, how old were your grans that they didnt have these things? My grandparents were hardly wealthy but I can always remember them having electricity, a washing machine
(although it was an old single top loader with electric mangle), a cooker ( 1920's General Electric as I recall) and most items of " luxury " a few years behind them coming out. My dad worked on the railways. Gran didnt work.They lived in a council house ( built after WW1 ). Grandad grew veg and they would eat meat regularly. I think they went without like all others dut=ring the war and that was it.

My other grandparents were much older and lived in a Victorian two up two down style of house with a brewhouse just outside the back door ( and yes the house did have a well and a tap in the back communal yard) They too have most of the luxuries suggested .- The water was brought into the brewhouse so the outside tap was no longer necessary. They had a cooker ( electric again..... a lot of that generation I recall had a dislike of gas, including my husbands family. I dont use gas either but thats because we are off grid here and only have overhead cable electric available).

I cannot recall anything they didnt have exceept maybe inside toilets. My grans toilet was behind the house but you had to go out to get to it.

Of the things I would need I think indoor toilet and bathroom would be high on the list and water into the house and dranage.

Beware what you talk of those, there are many who do not realise that some kinds of lifestyle we are walking towards would mean stepping back to this and I am not kidding - if you look at it logically, it is the only way possible to be environmentally friendly.

I dont have many mod cons anyway. The internet here is poor so I wouldnt miss that. I still have a septic tank. Electricity we do have and can have open fires if necessary. I can also grow my own food if needs be. So I am well set up for the coming Extinction Rebellion future.

Like others I can well remember frost on the inside of windows, getting dressed in bed, under the covers. We lived in four attic rooms (Ceilings so sloping my Dad and older brother could only use half of each room) , shared bathroom down three flights of stairs, No fridge, meat safe on first landing down, apart from that running down the walls, the only water was a tiny corner sink (cold tap) on the landing.
My parents never had central heating or a car, but by the end of their days they did have a fridge and television. My grandparents finished their days in a lovely Council flat in Hackney, no central heating those days, but it was cosy and easy to heat.
When I first married we lived in a house with an outside toiler, no CH, still had that outside loo when No. 2 child was born in that house. Did not worry us then,. But, these days, think the thing I would miss most is a nice bathroom/shower room etc.

Like so many others, I remember the cold, we lived in a newly built council house, we only had Lino on the floor, and the wind used to whistle under the doors, we had a coal fire and a paraffin heater, and it was freezing. The first house we ever bought had storage heaters, but we couldn’t afford to run them, so yes, for me, definitely central heating and hot running water.

How old are you, Aprilrose? and when were your grandparents born?

My four grandparents were born between 1884 and 1891. In my late teens I stayed with one pair for several months one summer in 1958. They lived in a rented flat with the bathroom on the floor below - just a bath and toilet, no basin. To have a bath you had to put money in the gas meter, light the geyser over the bath, and wait for the water to heat up. Granny asked me to keep the bathwater, so she could use it after me. I didn't have many baths. Normal washing was at the kitchen sink, with a kettleful of hot water. They had electricity, but mostly for lighting, only one powerpoint in the kitchen.

The other grandparents had started off in worse conditions, but had been moved in the 1920s from a slum clearance area into - heaven! - a newly built council house with inside toilet, separate bathroom, again with no basin just a bath and a copper, their own kitchen, and no less than three bedrooms. Before that they shared a house with relatives, having their set times to use the kitchen, one (cold) tap at the kitchen sink, no electricity, no bathroom at all, a shared toilet at the end of the yard, reached by going through the kitchen and out the back door. The other husband was a sweep and stored piles of soot in the cellar to sell to gardeners after it had matured. That was also where the baby's pram was stored, unsurprisingly it was always black, and so was the baby. Over the wall at the end of the yard were the Co-op stables. For my mother as a child, visiting the toilet after dark meant meeting a few rats, after negotiating round the sweep dead drunk at the kitchen table.

I'd put council housing well at the top of the list of essentials.