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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: ridban on Saturday 10 November 07 15:45 GMT (UK)
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Just acquired this fascinating book - Hampstead Directory 1962-63.
Only 45 years ago, but another world!
Telephone numbers were still evocative sounding exchange names like HAMpstead 1234 or PRImrose Hill 3456
Baths and wash houses were widely available. Adults - 1s 3d, children under 15 - 9d. Bachelor washing facilities every Monday and Thursday from 6pm to 9pm.
Shops still closed early on Thursday afternoons.
There were four cinemas in Kilburn (now only one) and four in Hampstead (now only one) with names like The Classic, Essoldo, Playhouse, Gaumont.
Advertising was restrained and dignified.
Dispensing chemists offered a night emergency service, were often open til 8pm daily, including Sundays
There were "High Class" Fishmongers, poulterers, greengrocers and butchers everywhere. Now there's only the ubiquitous supermarket.
There were still Furriers in Hampstead and West Hampstead.
The Avoca House Hotel (Licensed) in Belsize Park offered 120 rooms (30 with private bath), GPO phone, and could be contacted by telegram at Avocatel, NW3. The Clive Hall Hotel in Fellows Road offered bed and breakfast from 21/-. The Manor Court in Fitzjohns Avenue was more expensive at 25/- with Hot and Cold in all bedrooms, and a tv lounge.
The Hampstead Secretarial College offered "A thorough Training in very pleasant surroundings".The Hampstead School of Speech and Drama offered private tuition in Public speaking, chairmanship and radio & tv technique.
There was Forsters (founded 1790) coffee and tea merchants, groceries and wines at 73 Hampstead High Street, as well as The Coffee & Tea Warehouse at 2 Flask Walk, "who are the only solely Coffee & Tea specialists in Hampstead. Who, therefore, in addition to the normal exotic blends sold by enthusiastic general grocers, have perfected many reasonably priced family teas and coffees that you can live with the whole year round" according to their advertisement.
Even in 1962 there were far too many estate agents - 10 pages of them - some of them names I recognise today, but many gone to the wall or swallowed by bigger fish.
Howards of Hampstead at 173 West End Lane offered free deliveries daily of fresh horsemeat, liver and fish (human consumption quality) Gorta Radiovision Service, agents for Philips, Pye, Pilot etc offered record players and tape recorders. Another advert stated categorically that "In Hampstead one buys records at The Music Shop" at 2 Swiss Terrace. Seymour Vision at 98 Mill Lane offered tv rentals from 8/6 weekly and attractive HP terms on all radio, television and radiograms.
Absolutely fascinating!
Linda
http://thevirtualtourofhampstead.co.uk/
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I think it's a shame this is tucked away on the Middlesex board Linda .. couldn't we have it up on the Common Room board too? :-\
More people will then get the chance to read it! :)
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How Interesting to read how things have changed.
Your message can always go on tour to another board if you like ;D
Sarah
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I don't mind where it goes. ;D
How shall it be done, though??
Linda
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It's not that far in the past - I was alive then even if I was only little and it doesn't sound that alien to me ;D I think that world went for good, some time in the first half of the 1970s.
Carole
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Fantastic Linda
Brings to my mind one of my enduring memories of my favourite grandmother. I can hear her now picking up the old black bakelite telephone in the cold dark hall of their house and speaking into it "Rushlake Green 387"
The funny thing is my brother bought the house after grandad died about 6 years ago and the hall is no long cold or dark, the telephone is now a modern wireless thing. But the telephone number still ends in 387.
dispensing chemists - anyone remember the big coloured glass bottles that used to be Boots??
Kerry :)
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Steady on, it wasn't the dark ages ::)
I was in my teens then, things changed very quickly though after that, modern technology etc..... if people had phones and cars they were our rich relations
;D
Barbara
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Steady on, it wasn't the dark ages ::)
I was in my teens then, things changed very quickly though after that, modern technology etc..... if people had phones and cars they were our rich relations
;D
Barbara
For some reason my family had cars from the 1920s but didn't get around to having a phone until 1976. ..... more nostalgia, my mother always had shoes and a matching handbag and wore white cotton gloves in the summer (1960s) ....
Carole
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Hiya. I was 10 them and the bread was still delivered by horse and cart and so was the milk. That makes me feel really old.
We had car, a Morris Minor, that 5 of us went on holiday in and we children were always travel sick.
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Living in London in the 50's, I remember two old soldiers, both with one leg. One was a window cleaner, and arrived with a push cart on which he had his ladder and buckets, and he climbed up and down that ladder at a fair rate of knots !
The other man sold muffins ... he also had a cart converted from a bike, with two wheels at the front, with the cart bit on, and one wheel at the back. How he cycled with just one leg, I have no idea ... unlike the window cleaner, he didnt have a wooden leg with a rubber on the end ! The muffins were hot and wrapped in clothes in the cart, and he'd deliver to your door, supported on crutches and carrying the basket on his head !
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Wow. I am amazed at the muffin man in the 50s.
Truly as someone said, "Queen Victoria died in 1960" !
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There were four cinemas in Kilburn (now only one) and four in Hampstead (now only one) with names like The Classic, Essoldo, Playhouse, Gaumont.
:-[ :-[ :-[
I went to these - lived in Belsize Park in the mid 1960s.
Now I really feel old :'(
Gadget
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Cheer up Gadget, I must be as old as you, the trick is not to feel that you are (difficult some days I admit!)
;D ;D
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I don't - it was just reading through the list and seeing places and things that I remember and then looking at the subject line of the thread :-\
BUT - it was the place to be in the 1960s ;D
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Of course all this happened in the last century ;D ;D I wonder what people are going to be saying in 2107 about life in this century :(
I always say that I am so glad I grew up in the 1950/60's I would so hate to be a teenager nowadays.
Jean
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I always say that I am so glad I grew up in the 1950/60's I would so hate to be a teenager nowadays.
The other day I was trying to explain what a larder was to my 11-year old daughter. While I think she can grasp that there haven't always been fridges, the idea that her dad lived in a time before fridges were widespread was a bit hard to cope with ::)
I always remember our first phone number too - and practising saying what my dad said when he answered it - in case I got the chance to pick up the phone "Downland 3986, Baker speaking"
JULIAN
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My daughters think I lived in the dark ages, in the early 60's we didn't have a phone, car, television, fridge, freezer, microwave, electric washing machine, computer......... how on earth did we manage to live at all???? But we still survived, and enjoyed life too
:D :D
Barbara
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SNAP , Barbara - i was beginning to think that we were the only family who didn't have a phone, Tv, etc., etc. reading this thread ;D
Gadget
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We didn't even have a bath ... except for the galvanised tin one hanging on a nail outside the back door !
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My grandmother's house was all gas for lighting & cooking, when we visited I used to sleep in the alcove under the stairs on a bed made over their bath, and had to turn the gas off last thing at night at the coin-in-the-slot meter. TV & radio (sound only) was piped in by Rediffusion. When my uncle died in 1989, the house still only had gas.
Barbara
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It just takes children to make you feel old. Things that I think aren't that long ago are moments of great humor for my son (age 9). Here in the States, I remember the milk man and the Charlie Chips man delivering their products. the knife man came house to house to sharpen knives. My husband remembers the seltzer truck deliveries.
But with modern technology, growing up in the 70s, as I did, we always had TV, but not always cable. I still have an old rotary phone that the kids haven't figures out how to dial, but love to talk on.
And I love listening to my mom talk about life in the 40s. She was definitely like your mom Carole, with matching gloves, coat and handbag. Andy they had to dress up for the most mundane errands. It was hard for my mom to break these habits. I wasn't allowed to wear jeans to school until I was in 7th grade.
Kath
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Nothing to do with anything, but why have some of my county interests suddenly got blue underlining? With adverts popping out of them?
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ToT thread, "Content links".
C
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Yeah, Barbara - come and join us kids at play ;D
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I don't - it was just reading through the list and seeing places and things that I remember and then looking at the subject line of the thread :-\
BUT - it was the place to be in the 1960s ;D
Were you one of those hippie people Ive seen on the telly, Gadget :D ;D
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Yes - used to go around bare foot with a flower in my hair :D
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Yes - used to go around bare foot with a flower in my hair :D
Dear me, is that out of style. Someone should tell my 6-year-old. I think she is in the wrong era. :D :-[
Kath
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Naw, she's retro, Kath ;D
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Beinning to realise I was a bit deprived...
While a friend was very daring and went on a package holiday to Rimini, (a novelty in those days), I took her place on a week's fruit-picking 'holiday' in March, Cambridgeshire.
It cost £4 to stay in a converted army camp for the week and you got free breakfast & evening meals and wages for the work. Dreams of a lovey time in the open fields were dashed when I was sent to a Smedley's factory where you checked cut green beans going past on a conveyor belt and it was so noisy you couldn't hear what the girl opposite was saying. I gave up after one day and just stayed at the camp for the rest of the week....... I still can't look a green bean in the eye
Barbara
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I lived in Canonbury (Islington) from 1953 until 1966, and can (honestly) remember someone coming round to light the lovely old gas lamps in the streets.
- lived in Belsize Park in the mid 1960s.
I lived in South Hampstead in the early 70's and Belsize Park was the place we all wanted to live in.
Does anyone remember The Round House (Chalk Farm Road)? In 1971 I went to see Godspell, with David Essex as Jesus and an unknown Jeremy Irons as John the Baptist.
In 1966 there were still spice warehouses in the City, down by the River Thames. I remember going down there and sniffing my way along picking up all the different aromas as I walked.
Jennifer
WHY am I getting lots of unneccessary links showing up on any post I read? When I hover the mouse over them they all show a balloon headed 'contentlink'.
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Its a gremlin that Trystan is trying to sort out ... patience needed !
Going back to the past ... my first holiday job at the age of 14 or so was at Smiths Crisps ... I stood by a conveyor belt and threw the blue screw of salt into the packets as they passed ! If you got a packet in the 50's with more than one salt ... my apologies !
I stuck it for a whole week; then got a job in the local launderette ... much cleaner and more pleasant; I was in charge of putting the wet washed clothes through the driers, so didnt even have to handle the dirty bag wash that people left ... and the families wash was done for free !
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If you got a packet in the 50's with more than one salt ... my apologies !
Accepted, but who was the person who forgot to put them in ::) ::) ::)
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Ummm ....
Apologies for that too !
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My very first job was on the Christmas post in the December snows of 1861/2. We had a sledge thing to put the parcels in and had to do two deliveries a day plus the parcel one! It was very cold but we had fun.
The next one was as an assistant on the children's wards at the local orthopaedic hospital in the summer. They had teachers during normal term time but employed 4 of us in the summer. I was paid £20 for 6 weeks work ::)
Gadget
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I also had a job while I was a student in a TB hospital where I had once been a patient, as a childrens ward player supervisor ... the necessary qualification was that you had to have had TB. I can't remember what I was paid, but it was good money ... enough to keep me in twice weekly theatre tickets for the next term anyway !
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My very first job was on the Christmas post in the December snows of 1861/2. We had a sledge thing to put the parcels in and had to do two deliveries a day plus the parcel one! It was very cold but we had fun.
Gadget
Gadget
You really are that old then!!!!?? ::) ::)
My mum remembers helping grandad deliver milk in the snows of 1961/62, she said they had to be very careful on some of the drives not to break the bottles!
Kerry
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We lived behind my mum's rented shop, but we had a telephone - shared line - washing machine, with hand rollers, big old cream coloured electrolux fridge, indoor bathroom, separate toilet and we got a TV in 1953. We also had a van, my brother and I used to sit in the back on cushions when we went out. Funnily, I didn't think we were rich, my friends all lived in "proper" houses. In 1954 we moved to a newly built detached house, where we had all mod cons and dad bought a pink ??? Citroen car, just because he liked the way the suspension moved when he started it!
I remember wearing white gloves whenever I went out anywhere in the late 1950s and sugar starched underskirts to make the skirts stick out. But during the day we still wore white ankle socks at school even in the 6th form!
Liz
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In the summer vacations when i was a student, I did temping. One was at the BBC - Portland Place and then Television Centre. Now that was fun, especially Television Centre because you could walk along to the gallery above the studios and watch.
:D
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My dad is still keen on reminding everyone that when I came home from the Nursing Home (it wasn't usual to be born in a hospital then) as a baby I came home in his Gay Look Hillman Minx .....
In the future will people look back on the 1980s/90s and think how alien life was then?
Carole
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I was born at home. Dad was out of work sick and they didn't have a crib. They put me in a nicely lined drawer from a chest :)
Gadget
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I was born in a nursing home in N.Manchester. There was an air raid shortly afterwards and I, and all the other babies, was put in the airing cupboard until the raid was over. I'm sure it wouldn't have helped us if a bomb had landed on the nursing home. The mothers were left to fend for themselves.
Liz
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I was born in a nursing home, too. Unfortunately, it was on top of a mountain in South Wales, and it being December when I was born, Dad couldn't get to see me for a couple of days because the snow was so bad!
Does anyone remember the little contraption the ice-cream man had for making wafers? It used to fascinate me.
I remember my grandad being carried home from the pit by workmates after he had an accident that broke both his legs. He always had a limp afterwards.
The 1961/2 winter was really severe wasn't it? There was still snow in some of the mountain gullies in May.
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Hi ozlady :)
Do you remember the blue marks on miners' skin from cuts that had coal dust in them. My dad had them all over.
Gadget
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Ozlady
Your ice cream contraption brought back memories. I had a boyfriend whose father owned a dairy and sold home made ice cream. Boyfriend climbed in through the window one day when dairy was closed to get me some ice cream. My OH always says said boyfriend was my one great love - is he right ???
Funny thing is I don't like ice cream now. I'm sure Freud would have something to say about that.
Liz
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I was born in a nursing home in Acocks Green, Brum....and spent the first 2 years of my life under the stairs .....while Brum and Coventry got bombed.........No..I don't remember it! :P :P But Ma did and would not talk about those awful years.
We got our first tele in 1953 for the Coronation....I remember that.......it was a 9 inch tele in a 300 inch cabinet!.....LOL......but the Coronation was wonderful...and tele was wonderful....we even used to watch the test pattern!
I remember the rag and bone man coming down Bromford Road...with a nasty old cart full of smelly old rags behind an even nastier old horse...!! Ma would give us a few rags to give to him and an apple to give to the horse. I also remember the Davenports man who came to the house...I think it was on Mondays......we were the only people in the street who had a beer man.......I was embarrassed!
The winter of 1961/2 was horrible.....I had 2 babies ...one in nappies... and the pipes froze all the way out to the street. I had to wait for the water man to come round each afternoon...this went on for about 5 days....what a nightmare.
I remember chopping firewood to light a fire which was the only source of heat in the house.....and waking up to frost on the INSIDE of the bedroom windows.....
Ah........the joys of being old!
Hehehe!
Indi
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I remember that awful winter. We lived in the Peak District of Derbyshire and had one baby. I used to suffer with bronchitis and someone told me to take a teaspoon of olive oil every night. That was in the days when you had to buy it from the chemist. To remind me I used to keep it by the side of my bed. Believe it or not, it was so cold the olive oil froze.
No central heating in those days, how we kept the baby warm I don't know. Lots of lanaircell blankets. Fortunately, we lived in a middle terraced house and could feel the warmth from one side's fire in our living room. That was the only warm place in the house. The snow stayed with us until after Easter.
Liz
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and I remember the ice on the inside of the windows as well. Poor Mum used to go around every morning mopping up the frozen condensation and complaining how her nets were rotting with the water.
Net curtains - always hated them - still do - but there were nets and nets - a real status symbol, like that white stuff around the door steps :)
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And coming home from school, when winters were always cold and having to bring in washing that was frozen solid on the line. Once it was brought in, and it thawed it was as wet as when it went out.
Liz
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Plus ca change ...
I remember pegging out clothes on the line in northern NSW in the 1960s - yes, they froze solid.
And before that having the same experience not much earlier in Cambridge England. And I also remember in Cambridge when it actually snowed, that only the very main roads were kept open - by tip trucks which gathered up snow and took it and dumped it in the Cam.
Very different 10 years later in Iowa - snow ploughs, dryers, etc ...
Before that, in Melbourne Australia, I remember days long before all the mod cons we now take for granted ...
Primitive?
But do you ever go camping ...
I suspect that we can still survive - as we did, and as our parents and our grandparents and so on did ...
If we had to, we would ...
JAP
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Indie, I'd forgotten abou the rag and bone man! Our local bloke would give a goldfish for a bundle of rags. I had a fish from him (I called it Sammy) which lived for about 3 years. One night he jumped out of his bowl and we found him frozen solid in a little block of ice. Believe it or not, Mum thawed him out and he was as right as rain!
We had a "range" for several years that Mum used to blacklead every morning until it shone. Good job she can't see my oven!!
Wall's ice cream van came around every Sunday afternoon. There was also the faggots and peas man, the fish and chip man and best of all..... the cockles man with his horse and cart. Cockles were bought by the pint. Mum said that just after she was married, she bought some cockles and try as she might she couldn't open them. Then Nana told her the secret..... boiling water!!!
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Ohhh...Ozlady - you are right...he did give away goldfish...
But we could never have one......in fact we could never have any pets because father was allergic to animals.......even fish evidently!
Walls Ice Cream was wonderful......we used to buy it from Robinson's Sweet Shop on Washwood Heath Rd. But then Walls came out with sausages and I just couldn't fancy the sausages with the ice cream!
Of course now, at my age, I am happy to eat ice cream with anything........including sausages! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Indi......reliving her Brummie yuf
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he faggots and peas man,
We're having faggots tonight, but not from the faggots and peas man. These are freshly made by a local butcher.
Liz
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I think Walls as a company started makng ice cream as a way of using up the surplus pig fat from its sausage factory ! (Or is that one of those urban myths ?)
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I remember trying to buy sweets in the 50s without any ration book. I didn't understand when the sweetshop owner at the Fox and Goose sent me away crying.
Does anyone remember the Co-op deliveries of bread and milk. I think that they were from trailers pulled by horses and we used to go and collect the xxxx!
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Did sweets come off ration for a short time in the late 40's?
I'm sure that I can recall becoming extremely ill from eating too many .
We left England just before Christmas, 1949 for a few years, so there must have been some reason for them being available.
Peter
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I remember they did come off ration but because so many people rushed to buy them, they were put back on ration as they couldn't cope. I think they eventually came back off in the mid 1950s.
Liz
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IPA.........
Wasn't it Miss Robbins Sweetshop on the Coleshill Road or was that another shop? I too was born in a nursing home in Acocks Green, The Ivanhoe I think.
Does anyone remember Tripe being on sale? Not sure if I liked it or not. Were there specialist shops which sold it. Pork butchers or something like that?
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The Co-Op bread and milk were "paid" by using "checks" that were bought at the local Co-OP store. There were different colours and shapes for the different kinds of bread and I think milk as well. The milk bottles had different coloured foil tops. Jersey milk was gold. As kids we used the checks as money when we played shops.
The blue tits always attacked the foil milktops in winter. Mum used to leave cups out for the milkman to put over the tops of the bottles.
I still have my ration book!
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Did you have those Co-op divi stamps and a number - ours was 836.
I still remember my Dad sticking the little slips on a big sticky sheet every quarter. He was pretty fast at adding them up and I think he taught me to add that way when I was about 3 or 4.
I found my 'Infant Welfare Clinic'Card over the weekend - cor what a weight I was :o :o :o
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Yeah, Divi stamps! What about the sixpenny saving stamps we used to buy at school? They had a piccie of a very curly haired Princess Anne? Charles was on the half-a-crown stamps I think.
Coal was delivered by the ton and just dumped on the pavement outside the house. Many times Dad came home from work in the pit dog-tired only to have to shift a load of coal into the coalhouse!
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Snap :D
Sorting the slag from the decent stuff and then the big bits from the little bits!
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Thank goodness for gas fired central heating. ;D
Liz
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OH's mam used to buy tripe at the local butcher. Also udder, brains and the rest of the beast carved up into bits.
I can't imagine even looking at some of those bits :P
Cheers,
C hina
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I did stuffed hearts once. I had a full scale family rebellion on my hands!
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We must be a very odd family. OH and I had faggots tonight. We love stuffed hearts, as did my children when at home. Strangely, my youngest son, when at Uni, rang and asked me for the recipe for Devilled Kidneys, and the same week, my eldest son in US, sent me an e-mail asking for the same recipe.
Liz
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Me Ma came to visit me in about 1987 and we made a pressed tongue....I was dying for a lovely salad with tongue and crusty bread.
The kids were at school while we skinned it and boiled it.....but just as we were stuffing it into a small mixing bowl to be pressed......my (then) 11 year old came bouncing in through the kitchen door!
Yikes....we shoved it into the cupboard so that she wouldn't see the offending offal!
She went away....thank goodness...and we completed the tongue process....with gelatin. It was pressed with a couple of large books and a brick......and when we had it for tea a few days later.....my 11 year old loved the salad with "beef." And never had any idea of the origin of said beef!
I still love tongue.....and all the other yucky bits...... ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
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Ankerdine.....
Oh ....you know what?....we were born in the same maternity hospital....Yes...the Ivanhoe!
Good heavens......what a small world!
I was raised in Ward End........and the sweetshop was opposite the Fox and Goose.....and and and.......yes sweets were on the ration until about 1953ish.......I remember making a pig of myself on chocolate for about a week after it came off the ration.....but my favourite was aniseed balls.
Re the coal man......::::
Me dad was a coal merchant.......but before he owned the business he worked hauling coal to the customers in Aston and Balsall Heath........he used to tell us wonderful stories of customers who had their coal delivered in the bath tub......the living room!.....the stairway.
Funny old times! ;D ;D ;D ;D
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What was the address of the Ivanhoe?
My birth certificate says 19 Sherbourne Road, Acocks Green.
Is it the same place?
Peter
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I've really enjoyed reading all the memories that my original post sparked!
Don't half make you feel old, don't it!
fruit-picking 'holiday' in March, Cambridgeshire.
I used to do that as well, Cambridgeshire being the home of Hartley's jam. Also pea picking and potato picking. Does that still happen, or is it all automated now? At the time, it seemed great to have the money.
My son asked me if they had computers when I was young, and then stopped and thought for a minute.....and then he said did they have electricity when you were young?!
Well, yeah, son, they had electricity, but when I think about it, they didn't really have computers like they do now. I had a Commodore Vic 20 which had a 5k ram, which you could upgrade to 40k with an add on cartridge. Imagine!!
How things have changed!
Linda
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Actually now I come to think about it, it was in Fridaybridge, not March, think we went into March to the pub in the evening although there was a club & "entertainment" at night at the camp - wonder if they still do those 'holidays'
Barbara
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::) ::) ::)
She's rambling again - put it down to our age ;D ;D ;D
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I'm only 18 on the inside though (she dreams......)
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I'm only 18 on the inside though (she dreams......)
I certainly feel around 18 at times, but having a daughter of 36 (groan !) for decency sake I admit to being around 55-ish ... only don't look at my birth certificate !
I did potato picking once as a student, into buckets the hard way ... can feel the back ache now ... and then I did it again about ten years ago, but riding on the back of a machine with 3 other women, throwing off the clods and rotten potatoes ... and got aching legs trying to keep balanced ! Its hard work, whichever way you do it !
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We had to potato pick into wire baskets .. fill them up whilst on our knees and then wait for someone [an Ag Lab!] to pick up the basket and tip it into the trailer! ::)
Very well paid employment too if I remember rightly! ;D ;D
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Very well paid employment too if I remember rightly!
It would have been in your day, young thing ;D
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I went blackcurrant picking in Hereford. The wasps were enough to drive you crazy. My first "real" employment was a Saturday job in Woolworth's. I used to get 15bob!
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75p :o
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I'm sure I got 25 shillings for my spud bashing - real work! 8)
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£1.25
I could get a job doing this ;D
PS - just no one come up with farthings and hapennies and groats ::) ::) ::)
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I'm sure I got 25 shillings for my spud bashing - real work! 8)
I can assure you that a Saturday job in Woolies was real work, I got 15s/9d (work that one out Gadget) for one full day
I was on the grocery counter, had to stand all day, don't remember a teabreak, just 1/2hr for lunch, had to wear a huge white wrap-over overall, shelves were behind us all down one side of the store, so no protection from the public, and I seemed to spend most of my time going up & down to the store-room to replenish stocks, carting heavy tins about.
I'm tired just thinking about it
:)
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75 + 2.5 +1.25 = 78.75p
I think ::)
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I was only eleven! :o It wouldn't be allowed now! ;D ;D ;D
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What wouldn't? ;)
Take your word for it, Gadget, no good at maths!
I started student-teaching but still kept on working in Woolies on a Sat, until one of the children from my school saw me and the mother looked stunned, so I had to give up the shopwork - well it didn't fit with my new status really :D
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Take your word for it, Gadget, no good at maths!
I started student-teaching
Is this an explanation of why the young of today cannot do Maths ::) ::) ::)
;D ;D ;D
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Oh, I could do primary school stuff. (and I won't take responsibility for all the young of today) I also got my GCSE O level in calculus etc, but neither I nor the Maths master knew how that happened :D
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If you're the age you said you are, there weren't GCSE's in those days ::)
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Going daft in my doddery old age, GCE O level, slip of the mind - I find it slips quite a lot lately :-\
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8) 8) 8)
Don't worry, petal. I'll help you along :)
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Can you buy a double-zimmer from roots shop?
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I'm not sure but Trystan might arrange it if you ask nicely.
They didn't have zimmers in our day. People had wheelchairs or sticks :-\
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75 + 2.5 +1.25 = 78.75p
or 79p. Didn't they round everything up on converstion :(
Jean
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It ain't Maths! It's Arithmetic!
Jean, Here in Australia, decimal currency came in in 1963 and (much later) 1c and 2c coins were phased out.
But stated prices are even still not rounded to the nearest 5 e.g. we still have $1.99 (or $999.99 or $1.37 for litre of petrol) etc, etc. What on earth would retailers do without the lovely reassuring $999.99 instead of the terrifying $1000! However, if one pays by cash, the total amount is rounded up. BUT if one pays by credit card (for example) the precise amount is used - so one can save a few cents ::)
JAP
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75 + 2.5 +1.25 = 78.75p
or 79p. Didn't they round everything up on converstion :(
Jean
Ah, Jean but 15/9 was 15/9 ;D
Does anyone remember shoes at 39/11. Clothing always seemed to be priced at <something> and 11, Now it's become <something> 99p
Gadget
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Gadget
Oh for the days when money was real :) although I do agree that counting in £ and P is much easier than £.s.d. ;D
JAP
I've heard that here in the UK they maybe also phasing out the 1p and 2p coins. :(
Slightly changing the subject does anyone know if an American lb (pound weight) is the same as an English lb. Some nuts our Company buys come with Nett weight 20 lbs - but no metric conversion.
Jean
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change over day for $ in oz was 14 feb 1966.I can still remember the song that was sung on tv to gear us up for it.have still got a load of 1c &2c coins.
ps what about rabbits?
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HOW OLD IS GRANDPA ??
How old is Grandpa? Stay with this, the answer is at the end. It'll blow you away.
One evening a grandson was talking to his grandfather about current events. The grandson asked his grandfather what he thought about the shootings at schools, the computer age and just thing in general.
The grandpa replied, Well, let me think a minute, I was born before television, penicillin, polio shots, frozen foods, Xerox, contact lenses, frisbees and the pill.
There were no credit cards, laser beams or ball point pens. Man had not invented pantyhose, air conditioning, dishwashers, clothes driers and clothes were hung out to dry in the fresh air, and man had not yet walked on the moon.
Your grandma and i got married first then lived together. Every family had a father and mother. Until I was 25 I called every man older than I "Sir", and after I turned 25, I still called policemen and every man with a title' "Sir".
We were before gay rights, computer dating services, duel careers, daycare centerrs ang group therapy. Our lives were governed by the ten commandments, good judgment and common sense. We were taught to know the difference between right and wrong and stand up and take responsibility for our actions.
Serving our country was a privilege: living in this country was a bigger privelige . We thought fast food was what people ate during lent. Having a relationship meant getting along with your cousins. Draft dodgers were people who closed their front doors when the evening breeze started, Time- sharing meant tine the family spent together in the evenings and weekends, not purchasing condominiums.
We never heard of FM radio, tape decks, CD's, electric typewriters, yogurt or guys wearing jackets. We listened to Country Bands, Jack Benny and the Presidents speeches on our radios, And don't ever remember any kid blowing his brains out listening to Hank Williams.
If you saw anything with "Made in Japan" on it, it was junk. The term "making out" referred to how you did in your school exam. Pizza Hut, McDonalds and instant coffee were unheadr of. We had 5&10 cent stores where you could actually buy things for 5&10 cents. Ice cream cones, phone calls, rides on busses and a coke were all 5 cents.And if you didn't want to splurge, you could spend your 5 cents on enough stamps to mail one letter and two postcards. You could buy a new car for $600, but who could afford one?. Too bad because petrol was 11 cents a gallon.
In my day "grass was mowed, "coke" was a cold drink, "pot" was something your mother cooked in and "rock music" was your grandma's lullaby. "Aids" were helpers in the Principal's office. "chip" meant a piece of wood, "hardware" was found in a hardware store and "Software" wasn't even a word! And we were the last generation to actually believe that a lady needed a husband to have a baby.
No wonder people call us "old and confused" and say there is a generation gap.So, how old do you think I am? Read on to see........
Pretty scary if you think about it......... Kind of sad at the same time................
I was going to post the answer, but thought i would like to see what you think before i do.!!!!!!!!!!!
I'll post it later this evening.
Lynn,
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"Slightly changing the subject does anyone know if an American lb (pound weight) is the same as an English lb. Some nuts our Company buys come with Nett weight 20 lbs - but no metric conversion. "
The US lb is the same as an Imperial at 16oz (Avoirdupois)) to the pound. Its the pint which is smaller in the US.
Canuc
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Hi, Canuc, yes it's the same.
Lynn.
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Does anyone remember shoes at 39/11.
Wow Gadget, you were well off, mine used to cost 19/11 or 29/11 at most, that's if I could get any to fit. My mother used to whisper to the shop assistant 'do you have anything at all in a size 7' and the answer was usually 'no, nothing, sorry' with a sideways glance at my enormous feet :-\
At least nowadays you can get any shoe style in almost any size, thank goodness, (and I'm size 8 now)
Barbara
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HOW OLD IS GRANDPA ??
70 ???
No, the big clue is before tv, now when did that start?
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Well the advance of penicillin saved a lot of lives in World War 2 .. and I remember having a sugar lump filled with the polio vaccine when I was quite young! :(
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We didn't have sugar lumps - we real oldies had shots in the arm. I remember we had one at 12 and then a booster later on 16 or 17 I think.
Barbara - I took 5 1/2 then but am now 6 1/2 :) My Mum was always fussy about shoes. I remember that some of my friends used to get theirs from Stead and Simpsons. Mum though that they were not good enough so it was the Clarks shop for me most of the time :(
Gadget
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Jean,
But your 1p and 2p coins remain more valuable than our 1c and 2c ditto :( Ours are on a scale of 100c to a $A: yours on a scale of 100p to a Sterling (GB) Pound (note that a Pound is worth more than twice an Aussie dollar)
Lynn H,
Your puzzle about Grandpa seems to be something of a trick and depends on interpretation of the words and of locations ;) But whatever answer you give is surely not to do with TV - introduced in Australia in 1956, and very very much earlier in England (first transmission 1936 by John Logie Baird??). Man walked on the Moon in 1969. Both TV here, and the Man on the Moon, were long after my Grandpa (1855-1949) passed on ... I suspect that my Grandpa would have watched in utter interest and fascination and would greatly have enjoyed all the modern developments; but also that he would have shaken his head about them ...
And you don't need to go as far back as Grandpa - one of my own sons (a computer boffin) expresses amazement about the world his children (daughter 18 and son 10) have grown up in vis-a-vis his childhood! What will my other grandsons - 6, 3, and 1 - see!!
As Grandpa surely would have thought, I doubt that we really need any of the great improvements that are mentioned in the Grandpa puzzle ;D
I know I could happily live without any of them ...
Cheers,
JAP
PS: Hang on - could I really cope without my computer and RootsChat ::)
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Thanks Canuc & Lynn. Solved the problem for me.
I knew that the U.S. Gallon and Imperial Gallon were different but I wasn't too sure about the weights. :-\
Jean
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I can't remember exactly when decimalisation of money started in UK (I was overseas) but my mother insisted until almost the day she died that the new fangaled 'new pence' "wouldn't catch on" and still mentally worked in £ s d ! I've got some of her 'Dairy Diary's' where she has noted the cost of the weeks milk, and put so much, with it recalculated into £sd !! That was in the 1990's !
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I can't remember exactly when decimalisation of money started in UK
15th February 1971
[/i] and still mentally worked in £ s d !
I still do that occasionally - this decimal stuff isn't 'real' money
Jennifer
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I still do that occasionally - this decimal stuff isn't 'real' money
And the sums were harder in those days - do you remember dividing £249.12s. 4 1/4d by 13 (or whatever) ;D
Gadget
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No, the big clue is before tv, now when did that start?
2 November 1936 was the launch of the BBC's regular broadcasting here in the UK.
In South Africa TV did not start until - amazingly - 1975!
meles
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Ah well, Lydart, in honour of your mother how many of us 'older' persons still think in terms of yards, feet and inches instead of metres and centimetres!
When the news refers to a criminal the police are looking for, I still find it hard to translate the cms into my idea of height! 5foot6, 6foot, 6foot6, etc are still really and immediately meaningful to me whereas their metric equivalents don't quickly give me an idea of the height of (say) an escapee.
This comes in useful if one has (rats - I don't!) a convict ancestor who is described thus.
Not to mention, of course, Wills are often in Lsd.
Here in Australia we use kilometres for motoring speed and distance. But many countries don't - so I'm glad I can still think in terms of mph and miles travelled ;D
As for Gadget's example, I'd be really pleased were any of my grandchildren able to exercise the arithmetical agility to do that division. Hang on - perhaps I should try it on my children first. Though no doubt my two computer boffin sons would ask the conversion rate and quickly work out a formula - my daughter (no computer boffin) would do it from scratch and, I think, get it right. But none of them as quickly as we would have done ;D
JAP
PS: meles, I can't believe that South Africa (1975!) was so far behind Australia (1956!).
One thing I do know about TV in the UK is that rells of my closest old school friend went to their rells in London and were quickly greeted and then made to stay silent for some hours while the other rells watched the Coronation in 1953.
This would be relatively unremarkable except for the fact that the two sets of rells had left Nazi Germany (yes, they had Jewish forebears) in early 1939 - one set for the UK and one set for South America - and this was the very first time they had seen each other since Germany!!
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It's because of decimilisation that we "accept" fuel at £1.05 a litre. Imagine being asked to pay just under £4.80 a gallon! I remember when it was 6s.8d (that's old money to the youngsters and worth around 33p a gallon) and free Green Shield Stamps.
Liz
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meles, I can't believe that South Africa (1975!) was so far behind Australia (1956!).
I think the Government was afraid that it would be a bad influence on people's morals. And how right they were - they were able to see other people's attitude to race, and was almost certainly an influence on the downfall of apartheid.
meles
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Green Shield stamps! We were in the UK for a couple of years and I reckon those stamps were what got me my sewing box (me? sewing? you have to be joking!) which I have by me to this day! It wasn't what we wanted from the stamps we'd accumulated over those two years but you'd have to know that such schemes never actually have what you might want! Plus ca change ...
JAP
PS: meles, Of course! What can one say. And even yet there are countries which now censor the Internet ... Fortunatley not mine - yet, anyway!!!
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Have you done that sum yet, JAP ;D
If so, you might just have passed the 11+ (remember that!)
Gadget
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HOW OLD IS GRANDPA ??
Well, Grandpa Is only 58 years old.
The first time i read this i couldn't believe it. As i am 58 now i didn't think this was right then i started thinking about it and guess what!!!!
It is right.
Lynn.
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In South Africa TV did not start until - amazingly - 1975!
meles
Despite starting in Australia in 1956, I had a deprived childhood & rarely saw TV until I was married - Got my first set in 1969 and I think it was more expensive than the most recent one I purchased ( in $ terms not real terms :o :o ) - so I wasn't far ahead of SA
Trish
The first price I remember paying for petrol was 30 cents a gallon - could fill my car for under $3 ;D
A packet of cigarettes cost the same - which is interesting cause a gallon in Oz at the minute is about $5, but a packet of cigarettes costs more! Just as well I gave it away - now to sell the car
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Have you done that sum yet, JAP ;D
If so, you might just have passed the 11+ (remember that!)
Gadget
Gadget, I am Australian from way back and there was no silly 11+ here!!! All my ancestors came to Australia in the 1800s (sadly no convicts found - yet!). The earliest known of my ancestors to come to Oz came in 1841 (from Galway). Family folklore had it that my HACKINGs who came in 1850 (from Liverpool) were connected to Henry HACKING, Quartermaster on the 'Sirius' of the First Fleet (they might not have been so keen to claim such a connexion had they known what a rogue he was) but I can't make the link!
JAP
PS: Lynn, do I understand that you're telling me that Grandpa of the puzzle was born the year after my own Grandpa (1855-1949) died ::)
PPS: Trish, I don't recall many prices. But I was paid 5 shillings for working in a cake shop on Saturday mornings. And I recall milk being 3 1/2d a pint, and the tram to the city was 5d for adults and 2 1/2d for us kids ...
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It's not that far in the past - I was alive then even if I was only little and it doesn't sound that alien to me ;
Carole
Thanks, Carole, I was thinking exactly the same thing!!!
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Well, Grandpa Is only 58 years old.
Surely televisions were around before 1950? Perhaps the article was written a few years ago?
Barbara :)
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Hi, I just googled tv and it was invented in 1927. So sonething is wrong with the riddle.
Lynn.
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Hi, I just googled tv and it was invented in 1927. So sonething is wrong with the riddle.
Lynn.
And what about my penicillin Lynn .. ..
Well the advance of penicillin saved a lot of lives in World War 2 .. ..
Pels ;D
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Penicilin was the early 40s.
It would seem to me that grandpa lied about his age. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Lynn.
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So what IS the answer to £249.12s. 4 1/4d divided by 13 ?
And convert to decimal currency !
(I have to confess I can't remember how to even start such a sum !)
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I've not worked it out but don't you remember, it went something like this:
13)249 12 4 1/4 19
40 4
So it's £19. 4 shillings and less than a farthing ???
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I say, I'm impressed !
No idea if its right, but I'm very impressed !
So in decimal it would be about £19.20 ?
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and a bit - its easier with a calculator ;D
Did you ever do your 13 x tables - we only went up to 12 :)
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We were taught 13 times, but I never learned it !
Arithmetic/maths is my waterloo ... dyslexia caused me to be totally defeated by anything to do with numbers ! Words were bad enough ... but numbers ... no !!
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I sympathize - think I told you before that both my niece and her son have it. There's been some research linking it to the left handed gene but I'm not sure :-\
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My Dad knew up to his 20 x table. It was a source of bewilderment to him that I could not even learn up to my 7x. :-[
meles - who is very grateful for the invention of the pocket calculator. ::)
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Meles ... I discovered just today that my mobile phone (Nokia, 11 yrs old and very retro !) has a calculator on it !
The dyslexia runs in the female side of our family ... my #2 daughter (and her daughter), me, my mother, grandmother and gr. grandmother all were terrible spellers ... so I'd say for the previous generations, that was what caused it ! I'm not left handed, but ambidextrous !! (As were my mother and grandmother !) Odd ....
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Oh! So's mine! Didn't know that! ::)
But... I can't work out how to use it! :-[
I'll have a bit of a practice tomorrow.
meles
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It's something to do with a fuzzy brain as far as I can recall -no aspirtions on your brain, Lydart :) I got a fuzzy one too ;D
I know my sister read up on it and left handed/ambidextrous brains are different in the middle where the two halves join. We need a social psychologist or a neurologist to help us out on this one, I think :-\
Getting back to the past: did anyone else who was left handed have trouble in school in the olden days? there have been some threads on this before. I only had one teacher who gave me problems and she had been left handed but forced to become right handed ::)
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I had no problems at one primary school, but at a second, they still used steel nibs, which were darned near impossible to use if you're left-handed. They simply suggested I should change hands. I learned that you could manage if you twisted the paper 90 degrees...
meles
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Yep - i did that. Now they teach left handers to put the paper that way.
I'm pretty good at writing right to left though :D
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I can mirror-write too - but only in copper plate style....!
meles
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The kids have left-handed scissors at school now, even left-handed rulers and pens.
It's surprising just how many left-handers there are nowadays, there is at least 1 in every class that I do class support in. Maybe it isn't made such an issue nowadays, there probably was as much years ago. I know my OHs grandmother was rapped on the knuckles every time she went to use her left hand by her teacher. She ended up ambidextrous because of it.
My OH is left-handed.
The pupil I support the most at school is left-handed, and I have moved him in all his lessons so that he sits on the left side of the desk, giving him more room to write. There's nothing looks more awkward than a left-hander and a right-hander sitting side by side trying to write ;D
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;D ;D ;D I'm a lefty and dyslexic ;D ;D ;D
Oh! those steel nibs..... arghh!!! blots all over the place but we did overcome didn't we eh?
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I was unfortunate in that I was (probably) a natural leftie writer, but was
encouraged made to write right handed at school. Then I had encephalitus aged 7, and lost everything from before that age, so had to relearn everything ... reading, writing, memories ...
Where's Gadgets neurologist ?? !!
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Hi Lydart
We're still NHS ain't we ??? I don't have one. I was hoping someone might come and help out. Surely there must be a brain surgeon on Roots ;D
Just realised that we were born before the NHS - no wonder my aunty, the midwife, delivered me :)
Gadget :)
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My father (b 1922) used to get rapped on the knuckles for writing left-handed. So he wrote righthanded for the rest of his life, but did everything else (scissors etc) lefthanded.
IIRC, penicillin was discovered in abt 1928 by Alexander Fleming, but wasn't produced in quantity until abt 1944 or 45.
Cheers,
China
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BTW, how the heck can you have a left-handed pen???
C
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Dashed if I know ::) .... didn't know kids used pens these days anyway ;D
Cachanded Kate :D
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How the heck can you have a left-handed pen???
It's a fountain pen, the the nib is slightly twisted to make it easier for us lefties to write. I personally find it makes it harder - but I do ruin every fountain pen I ever buy in a few monthsor less. :-\ Never lend a fountain pen to a lefty - they will damage it. :o
meles
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I discovered about 10 years ago that you can do the 9 x table (up to 10 x 9) using your hands.
Hold both hands in front of you starting with number one with your left thumb, and if you want to know 7 x 9 hold your 7th finger down and you have 5 fingers on your left hand and on your right hand 1 finger up , one held down then three left up and hey presto the answers 63.
Oh why didn't I know that at school because the 9's I couldn't seem to grasp :(
Jean
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My Dad taught me that - then asked me what 12x9 was...
meles
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penicillin was discovered in abt 1928 by Alexander Fleming, but wasn't produced in quantity until abt 1944 or 45.
I remember falling over when I was small and having a very badly infected graze, it was treated with the then new-fangled gauze pads impregnated with penicillin, and it worked wonders
Barbara
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Do you remember M & B? We had it before penicillin was widely used (and I'm talking late 40s/early 50s!). I used to get tonsillitis and was given that. Mum used to crush the tablet on a spoon with jam to make it palatable :-X :-X :-X
Gadget
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No, but when we had sore throats, my mother used to mix butter, sugar and vinegar and we ate that, lovely, she also made us gargle with vinegar & warm water (but I used to drink it) :)
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White wine vinigar with warm water is a "CURE" for arthritis. Hasn't done much for me but a friend swears by it.
Lynn.
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My grandma used Witch Hazel as a cure for all evils .. had to think about the name because it's so long since I've heard it? :D
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I still use it, it's an astringent, antiseptic, always have a bottle in the cupboard, excellent for stings, bruises, cuts etc. They now do it in gel in a tube
Barbara :)
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Star Drops is something else I can remember in her cupboard .. I think you can still buy that today .. isn't it strange how you can always remember certain smells from your past? :)
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Chestnuts roasting on a shovel under the fire grate..........
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Now that brings back some memories for me.
Lynn.
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Do you remember M & B?
My gran took M & B daily for high blood pressure. I presume M & B were the manufacturers of any white pill, so their initials were stamped on them.
Two of my grandchildren write with fountain pens at school, but it is a private school, where "they do things differently".
I've noticed left hand people now seem to write with their left arm bent at right angles from the elbow and then their hand twisted somehow so that they write over the top of the paper, rather from the side, if that makes sense. I'm always fascinated by it.
Liz
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I've noticed left hand people now seem to write with their left arm bent at right angles from the elbow and then their hand twisted somehow so that they write over the top of the paper, rather from the side, if that makes sense. I'm always fascinated by it.
I've noticed this for many years. I keep wanting to tel them how to do it :o Also, there are more and more right handed people doing it as well ::)
I tried to hold a pen like that just to see and it is really uncomfortable. Who on earth taught them to do it like that. Meles and I worked out how to turn the paper around so why can't they :(
Story about pen nibs - when I went to secondary school, I was given a posh pen with a gold left handed nib. It was lovely and I was very proud of it. One day moving between classes I found that I'd left it behind so went back to get it at the end of the next lesson. It was gone. I went to the Secretary's office - nothing. Eventually it was found without the nib. Now what use would a left handed nib be to anyone but a meles, Barbara, etc.
Come on - own up ;D ;D ;D
Gadget
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I don't know about left-handed fountains, but the pens I've seen are biros, with a moulded part that you hold, with the finger moulds especially for left-handers. I bought one for one of the pupils I support, and he loves it.
The left-handed ruler starts from the opposite end, not sure if that really helps.
I have a bottle of witchhazel in my cupboard, and a bottle of stardrops!! But I'm not that old really - well I don't feel old.
Rosemary
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But I'm not that old really - well I don't feel old.
Neither do we, do we Gadget?
:D
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I think I might own to being 23-24 if you twisted my arm. TRouble is when I was very young (ancient times!) people of my current age and younger seemed so very old and dressed in strange clothes and behaved old! Now we just wear jeans and act daft.
When did all this change or do we look old and dreary to the young :-\
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My daughter once asked 'when do mums turn into old ladies' - when I think of my mum at my age, she was (an old lady), and I don't think I am - it must be something to do with the clothes, the perms, the blue rinses .... hers, not mine!
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and the corsets :o
My Mum had two best ones and some 'everyday' ones. Oh my tummy is hurting just to think of them. I dread to think how we would have managed with those Victorian things which they pulled ever so tight to get 17 ins waists ???
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do we look old and dreary to the young
When we went to the States to visit our son and his daughter (aged 10) in the summer, she said I didn't look like a granny and that she didn't think I was old. She even borrowed my trainers because she thought they were cool. ::) ::)
Liz
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Forgot about corsets, even when my mum was quite ill, she wouldn't go without her corset! But they're coming back, after a fashion - been advertised on tv. Let it all go, I say ::)
Cool, Liz, cool 8) 8)
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Gadget
My mum had a corset shop, so obviously when I was aged about 16 I had to wear a girdle. I did so until into my 30s. I reckon this is why I still have a flat stomach, despite having had 7 children. I wish some of todays young girls would wear girdles, their stomachs are disgusting for their young age.
Liz
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Ecnaps - Obviously not cool enough for me to realise I should have used 8)
Liz
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No, Liz, wasn't correcting you, was just agreeing with you, having grandchildren borrow your things is really cool :D :D
8) 8) 8) 8) 8)
Barbara :D
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Ecneps
I was laughing when I typed that, sorry having just read it again, it did sound rather curt.
Liz
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Didn't think you meant it like that :D
my grandson borrows my clothes - but just to dress up in as he's not quite 3
Barbara
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Could 'the young' of today wear girdles with all those lumps of metal embedded in their belly buttons ? (And other unmentionable places, so I've been told ... )
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Did anyone have a "liberty bodice"? My husbands laughs with a wicked grin and says, your mum would never let you out without you were wearing your liberty bodice! I honestly cannot remember that. Isn't it typical?
I remember the buter/sugar treatment for sore throats. My dad was a pharmacist at Boots after the war and he would also rub whisky on my gums when new teeth came in. Luckily, it didn't do me any harm. I HATE THE STUFF. Ugh, the smell! Can't stand it.
Saw a corset c1950s om Swansea Museum yesterday just like the ones my mum wore in that awful skin-coloured pink. I am sure it would put any self-respecting husband off if you wore that today.
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What was that wintergreen stuff ? Wasn't it for rubbing on chilblains ? or was it your chest ?? It stank !
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The boys in our school used to rub it on their strains ::)
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More details please ....
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On their what? :o
We used wintergreen for chilblains, and also for that awful chapped skin you used to get round the calves where your wellies had rubbed after playing in the snow
Barbara
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When they played football and cricket and they injured themselves or whatever - I remember - it stank the place out :o
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Wasn't that some sort of liniment ? (I went to a girls school, so didnt encounter boys playing football !)
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Well, the used wintergreen for something ::)
You missed a treat Lydart. I would have hated an all girls school - not natural really. What was it like?
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Vaguely OK ... there was a boys school up the road (Adam Faith went there !) and a convent school (more girls) next door ... at least there was no distraction from the lessons with no boys !
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That's a myth really - it's the boys that get distracted ;D ;D ;D
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- it's the boys that get distracted ;D ;D ;D
Only because the girls are flirting outrageously ;D :D :) ;) ::)
I was at an all boys school when hormones kicked in the only distraction was Dolly Davis teaching maths, and she could have been our Granny (did know her maths, think she made us do arithmetic too)
Canuc
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I had to wear a liberty bodice in the winter. I hated them and all those little rubber buttons. Chilprufe vests made me itch and I loathed woolly hats!
In the summer, if it was very warm, Mum would fill the old tin bath with water and swish the blue bag (Reckitt's) in it so I could pretend it was the sea. Well, one day I decided the water wasn't blue enough. I pinched the blue bag............. and ended up looking like an Ancient Briton covered in woad!My yellow woollen swim suit had to be thrown out thank the Lord and halleluijah as I hated the rotten thing!
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;D ;D ;D
and on top of the vest and liberty bodice we had to wear an underslip and then a jumper and then a cardigan - how did we move. Not to mention those horrid navy blue knickers which were school uniform :( :( :(
I still hate wool next to my skin :(
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Oh yes ! I remember those swim-suits knitted by Granny ... mine was STRIPED ! I hated it ! They sagged when you went in the sea and got them wet ! And then the dye from the wool ran down your legs, and if it was a yellow suit ... I leave the rest to your imagination !
My school flannel navy knicks had a pocket !
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We had to wear ordinary pants under our navy knicks. How unhygenic was that. We also had communal showers after gym and games. I was so glad I got a couple of verruccas! Swimming lessons in the local pool (outdoor) were a nightmare, it was always freezing cold and/or raining.
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My school flannel navy knicks had a pocket !
I'm glad it's not just me remembers those!
I went to a girls school and it never occurred to me that it might be a good idea to have boys around the place. We were encouraged to do whatever we were good at and I was amazed to hear girls talking at college later on, saying they couldn't show they were good at maths or science because of the boys' reactions.
Monica
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My school flannel navy knicks had a pocket !
I'm glad it's not just me remembers those!
I went to a girls school and it never occurred to me that it might be a good idea to have boys around the place. We were encouraged to do whatever we were good at and I was amazed to hear girls talking at college later on, saying they couldn't show they were good at maths or science because of the boys' reactions.
Monica
Didn't happen like that in our school - as many if not more girls as boys in the Science sixth - maybe Wales was different :D
Gadget
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My school flannel navy knicks had a pocket !
My school gym bloomers were brown and didn't have a pocket but they were fleecy lined ..... ugh! >:(
Mum used to buy them miles too big for me, ("you'll grow into them and it will save coupons").
One time they were so big I pulled them up under my armpits and clowned around. All the other girls laugh. Well..... it was better than just standing there being embarrassed, wasn't it :-[
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lol genie
I had the navy ones in the 1970s when coupons were gone but seemed our school hadn't moved with times! They matched our heavy duty St Trinian style gymslips perfectly.
We weren't allowed black patent shoes because of possible underwear reflection and our head mistress had a unique way of removing eye make up - nail varnish remover! Is a wonder she didn't blind us all!
Happy days!
Ann
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I've noticed left hand people now seem to write with their left arm bent at right angles from the elbow and then their hand twisted somehow so that they write over the top of the paper, rather from the side, if that makes sense. I'm always fascinated by it.
I think it's because as we write from left to right, a leftie would naturally drag the writing hand through what had just been written and smear it. Hooking the arm around like that lets the ink dry a bit before the left hand ruins it.
My theory anyhoo.
Cheers,
China
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I think it's because as we write from left to right, a leftie would naturally drag the writing hand through what had just been written and smear it. Hooking the arm around like that lets the ink dry a bit before the left hand ruins it.
China
I think you're right China. My left-handed son developed that awkward way of writing in secondary school where he was made to use a fountain pen. It was an all-boys' school, and his form teacher was barbaric - making a point of humiliating my son whenever he smudged his work - then keeping him in detention (more times than I could count).
The clumsy way of writing stuck with my son - as did his hatred of his school.
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Going back to the knickers ... I also remember wearing a thin pair of white cotton knicks underneath the baggy navy ones (with the pocket for your hanky !) I think the idea was that the outer knicks would 'do' for a week (or more) and you just changed the inner ones ... though I don't think even those were changed daily ! But I don't remember us smelling ... or perhaps we were just used to everyone smelling ! Baths were once a week ...
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But I don't remember us smelling ... or perhaps we were just used to everyone smelling ! Baths were once a week ...
;D As far as I remember, there was only one deororant available, Odor-Ono. Only some women used it and no men that I knew of.
We must have be quite fragrant but we didn't notice it. A mater of familiarity, I guess ;D ;D ;D
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Didn't happen like that in our school - as many if not more girls as boys in the Science sixth - maybe Wales was different :D
Don't you mean Wales is better! ;D
Monica
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We must have be quite fragrant but we didn't notice it.
Lydart - You are probably right. In the 1970s, we had some Zambian students staying with us and when they arrived, although their clothes were clean, they really smelt of BO. They got paid by their government to study, and with their first monthly pay cheque they all went out and bought new clothes and threw their old stuff away. I guess other students must have told them about their clothes and also they saw my young teens using deodorant and showering every day.
They were lovely boys, but hadn't a clue about western life. They didn't know how to use cutlery and watched us before they started eating, one of them brewed up in the kettle. He knew he had to boil the water, but hadn't realised he should use a teapot for the tea! They soon cottoned on and started buying electrical goods etc. One of them thought 'phone calls were free if they were made at home, because he didn't have to put any money in a slot anywhere. Our first 'phone bill after he arrived was horrendous. He did pay us for half of the cost of his calls though, and we were happy with that.
Lizzie
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Baths in England were once a week, eh! But wasn't that only if the coal wasn't kept in the bathtub?
I have some very much less than pleasant olfactory memories of arriving in England from 'shower daily' Australia back in 1960 ... Yes, OK, things are different here - for instance, it's HOT - especially just now in my part of the world.
Those who didn't notice it must undoubtedly have been used to it :o
Who's for an Elizabethan nosegay (that's Liz II not Liz I)!
Sorry all ::)
Though we were actually quite shocked; and when we spent some time travelling in England & Wales over the next couple of years we truly did stay in places where we couldn't have a bath or a shower because the bath was used as a storage, not a washing, facility. Not to mention that I distinctly remember the shock/horror of the keepers of the Sabbath (that's the Christian Sabbath of Sunday not the biblical Jewish Sabbath of Saturday) in Wales when we attempted to wash the children's clothes on a Sunday ...
Tolerance and understanding are wonderful things.
Re other topics on this thread:
I remember that my daughter had to wear green knickers under her school uniform in Australia many many years later - and that they had knicker inspections!!
My Australian school had inspections of PE uniforms (gym slips in England?). We had to kneel and the hem had to just touch the floor - any longer or any shorter was unacceptable. As the very shyest of shy school girls I remember being absolutely mortified that my home-made uniform was one inch above the floor when I knelt - and, of course, there was no way that I would speak up and explain that my poor mother couldn't possibly afford to buy/make a new uniform ...
That was a girls' school so there was no systemic pressure about which subjects one would do - apart from the fact that teachers wanted to get the good students so that certainly pressured students! And it was an either/or choice - Science or Arts, nothing in-between. Annoyingly for me; because of the subjects I'd been conned into doing, I ended up spending a year doing Arts at Univ before transferring to Science.
My ex-husband's schoolteacher mother apparently rapped his left-handedness out of his knuckles.
How unutterably terrible to punish a little kid for something which came naturally. To this day he now does most things right-handed - but still throws and bowls (insofar as a retiree can) left-handed.
JAP
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Hmmmmm I always recall "early closing" as Wednesday, but then, we were in the relative obscurity of Harrow.
I still miss the cart coming round on Sunday afternoon selling Shrimps, Cockles, Whelks, by the pint, just in time for Supper.
I wonder what the Food Police would've done with that one?
Tony
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I remember the rag and bone man coming around once a week.
(Never could understand why he wanted bones)
Lynn.
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I remember my Saturday job in Timothy Whites, and I worked school hols in there as well. I had half a day on Wednesday, it felt lovely knowing I was finished at dinner-time.
I'm so glad I didn't go to school in the day of baggy gym-knickers. Mine were bottle-green lycra knickers with yellow stripes down the sides.
I remember the lemonade man, the potato man, and the milk man all coming to the door. We only get double-glazing men now >:(
Rosemary
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One of my sons is a milkman so they are still going strong.
Also, many congratulations to our milkman who has won Gary Rhodes UKTV Heroes 2007. He is a young dairy farmer with a wife and 4 children and because he didn't get enough money from the supermarkets, he now rears and milks his own cows, pasteurises the milk - but doesn't homogenise it, so it tastes like milk used to taste, and his cream is almost as thick as clotted cream, then he delivers the milk to his customers before 6.00am. He also delivers free range eggs and fairtrade coffee. All delicious.
Lizzie
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We haven't got a milkman anymore and we miss him .. this will be our first Christmas without cream etc being delivered.
It might be cheaper to buy it in the shops but as long as you are lucky enough to have a delivery - don't ever take him for granted because it must be a thankless task! :(
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Pels
We are lucky that because of the way our farmer/milkman works, his milk is the much the same price as the shops and infinitely better tasting.
Liz
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I'm sure it is Liz and you are so lucky - this is another sign of the
times though isn't it?
Once upon a time we all used to hear about local deliveries by word of mouth .. now newcomers move into the area and the communication seems to have gone?
Everything is purchased all in one go in the supermarkets, therefore the wonderful services we took for granted are no longer there! :-\
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Forgot about corsets, even when my mum was quite ill, she wouldn't go without her corset! But they're coming back, after a fashion - been advertised on tv. Let it all go, I say ::)
Cool, Liz, cool 8) 8)
Corsets have always been a Goth favourite - got 4 myself - love that they actually give me a waist! They seem to be passing into general fashion at the moment along with bodice tops. Glad I can get them easier - just a bit miffed everyone else looks the same!
Have been reading this thread and having a giggle - yes I remember a lot of the things mention
BTW my dad accidently gave my brother witch hazel instead of gripe water when he was little - that was a mad dash up the hospital. My dad didnt drive and they had to take him in a taxi then came back in another one. The hospital had given my brother something to make him sick and he threw up all in the taxi
Willow x
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Our milkman used to come round with his horse and cart and people brought out their jugs to be filled from his churns (food police did you say?), and we children would jump on the cart for a ride up the road.
Then my Dad used to give us tuppence for each bucket of manure we could shovel up after the horse had gone - great for his rhubarb he said. :D
Barbara
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I was shown how to milk cows as a youngster. I loved pouring the milk down the cooler and watch the patterns on the grills.
I don't like milk. Remember in the winter when they put the bottles on the school pipes :-X :-X :-X
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Yes, that's why I don't like milk either. I was a milk monitor, used to put the straws in the bottles, but hated the warm stuff, why did they do that?
:-\
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Yes, that's why I don't like milk either. I was a milk monitor, used to put the straws in the bottles, but hated the warm stuff, why did they do that?
:-\
Because it was always frozen in winter Barbara! :(
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Barbara - That reminds me of the old joke, "I put manure on my rhubarb. Oh I put sugar on mine" (Kindly leave the stage ;D ;D)
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;D ;D ;D
There's no joke like an old joke
back to chestnuts again!
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This has been a great thread with all the memories of 'better times'!? and I'm glad to say that I remember a lot of them - 'Rag & bone men, larders etc etc'
However, I smiled as I was reminded me of an old television sketch that I saw repeated fairly recently, where a group of people sat round desperately trying to outdo each other with increasingly desperate tales of their supposed deprived childhoods.
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Because it was always frozen in winter Barbara! :(
Yes, then it was hanging around all morning in summer too, warm milk whatever time of year.... yuk - it's a wonder we weren't all ill (bred them tough in the North!) :D
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Well, I didn't drink mine - used to swap it for an apple 8)
Sometimes they brought orange juice in those 1/3 pt bottles as well - now that was good :)
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School milk - yuk yuk yuk yuk
Because I was ill as a child I was forced to drink it as they thought it would be good for me. I hated it and even now I still have an aversion to milk and the only time I will drink it is on my breakfast cereal! :-X
Kerry
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Thumps head with clenched hand!
Several times!
In order to remind self never ever, however tempted, to post on topics like this ::)
I've learned that lesson on ToT but obviously not yet on other boards ...
I guess this thread is somewhat genealogical but ...
Oh Trystan, if only you could arrange it so that we could somehow stop a topic repeatedly and repeatedly coming up in 'new replies to your posts'. Or, at least, that we could quickly mark the new posts as read instead of having to open them ...
Ah well, I've learned my lesson ...
Mea culpa!
To the rest of you - have fun! While I open and delete!
JAP
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Well, I didn't drink mine - used to swap it for an apple 8)
Sometimes they brought orange juice in those 1/3 pt bottles as well - now that was good :)
Hi Gadget
I used to prefer the 1/3 pt bottle of milk, used to be my job to collect the milk from the school gate and put it on the milk cart , and delivery to the two class rooms ;D ;D
Hi JAP
best thing if you dont want replies to a posting is to (http://www.websmileys.com/sm/comp/comp26.gif) saves wear and tear on the head ;D ;D ;D
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Oh Trystan, if only you could arrange it so that we could somehow stop a topic repeatedly and repeatedly coming up in 'new replies to your posts'. Or, at least, that we could quickly mark the new posts as read instead of having to open them ...
JAP
I am more than a little confused here.
It must be a joke that is either going over my head or one I am not privy to. Why would you post on a topic you obviously think is redundant?? For that matter why would you even read it in the first place once you realized what it was about.
You don't have to open them....just let them sit in "new replies to your post"....they are titled so easy to avoid the ones you have no interest in.
I have to go lie down....I would appreciate being let in on the joke......it's just so bizarre.
Have you hit your head once to often?
dollylee
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You can stop the notifications if you go into your stats and mark the ones you want to stop.
Lynn.
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Or just by not responding to the email. Delete it without going into Rootschat and it won't come up again.
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Hi ricky1,
Very nice picture but I fear that my computers are more delicate than my head - so I'll spare them and keep on hitting my head if ever I again succumb to temptation ;D
Hi dollylee,
Being an organized sort of soul, I like to clean out my 'new replies to your posts' - too annoying to leave some there and keep thinking I actually have 'new replies' that I don't know about when they're just the same old, same old :) And, as I explained, I yielded to temptation in replying (reminds me of an old hymn from my childhood which started "Yield not to temptation ...").
Hi Lynn H and KathMc,
It's not the email notifications - I have them permanently turned off. Just the appearance in 'new replies' of replies to a post where I have (oh so stupidly) yielded to temptation and responded on an essentially (some may disagree) non-genealogical thread.
Nobody's fault at all but my own!
Cheers,
JAP
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JAP,
I do get it. The genealogy bit takes up so much of my time and then I do get sucked in to the other sometimes. ::)
Kath
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However, I smiled as I was reminded me of an old television sketch that I saw repeated fairly recently, where a group of people sat round desperately trying to outdo each other with increasingly desperate tales of their supposed deprived childhoods.
I think this is it!...it's hilarious!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsWd5QC7K5E&feature=related
Indi ;D
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Well, I didn't drink mine - used to swap it for an apple 8)
Sometimes they brought orange juice in those 1/3 pt bottles as well - now that was good :)
Hi Gadget
I used to prefer the 1/3 pt bottle of milk, used to be my job to collect the milk from the school gate and put it on the milk cart , and delivery to the two class rooms ;D ;D
That reminds me Ricky my grandfather used to own a dairy and delivered milk to the surrouinding villages, when I was a toddler apparently I used to ride on the milk float with him.
Somewhere my parents have a wonderful photo of me on a small milk cart whizzing down a hill. I must get them to dig it out. I was about 2 years old. Apparently I hit the gate at the bottom. A case of dad being so busy taking the photo he didn't think to stop me!!!!
In the dairy my gran had the job daily of washing the milk bottles, I don't suppose they were sterilized in those days. Next to the big sink there was a low down sink, not sure what for but apparently I used to wash milk bottles in there, while granny was washing in the big sink. I hope I didn't cause anyone any sickness!!!!!!! :-X
Kerry
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Kerry
Can remember the old milk float, local co-op used to deliver around the villages where I lived . Used to be horse and cart, then a 3 wheeled milk float. Me grandma lived out in the sticks beside a railway crossing, as me granddad was a crossing keeper. they used to buy that long necked bottle milk, think it was sterilized milk, horrible stuff when mixed with Camp Coffee :P Hope you can find the photo ;D
ricky
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I used to ride around with my dad in his dumper (he was a builder - retired now). I actually sat in the bucket part while it thundered up and down the road on the site. We lived on the building site, and I was always dressed in a pair of wellies and an anorak. I was a real tomboy.
I can just see health and safety letting me do that nowadays (I might be a bit big now like ;D)
Rosemary
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I used to ride around with my dad in his dumper (he was a builder - retired now). I actually sat in the bucket part while it thundered up and down the road on the site. We lived on the building site, and I was always dressed in a pair of wellies and an anorak. I was a real tomboy.
I can just see health and safety letting me do that nowadays (I might be a bit big now like ;D)
Rosemary
Life was fun before Health and Safety, insurance & suing(spell?) folks became all the rage. My grandfather had a flat tray old truck - sides maybe 8 inches high. I remember my Dad driving it to the sunday school picnic (about 10 miles from home) with 20 or more of us on the back! As far as I remember we all survived the trip ;D
Trish
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Trish,
That's how we would all get home from birthday parties. The parents would see how many kids they could squeeze into their station wagons. ;D ;D
Kath
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I used to live in a small town with a railway station. We used to go and stand on the platform to wave to the drivers of the steam trains. One day, I was even lifted on board by the driver and helped his colleague put coal on the fire in the engine! Nobody on the platform thought it was strange at all. I must have been about 6 or 7 at the time.
The other thing I did when older and doing a paper round was to meet the postmen (they always delivered letters early in the morning then) and I would give him the newspapers for one side of the road and he'd give me the letters for the other side of the road. It meant letters and papers delivered in double quick time.
Lizzie
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You couldn't do that now ! Jobsworth and all that !
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I remember summer evening when my uncle cut the grass for silage we used to put a stick in the end of a feed sack with a rope tied round it, fill the sack with hay, tie the sack to the back of the trailer, sit on the sack and get pulled up and down the field by the tractor and trailer.
Bet you couldn't do that now with health and safety rules. Nobody ever fell off, got a bit of a sore bum though because the hay would gradually fall out of the sack!
Kerry
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We used to use a furniture removal lorry to go to Guide camp. All the tents and other baggage went into the back and we made ourselves comfortable on top of it. The flap was put up but the main door was left open so we weren't in the dark. The journey in the lorry was a great start to the week!
Monica
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My cousin married a commercial traveller who in the early days dealt in clothes before moving on to biscuits :)
Anyway, he had a little black van with all the clothes in the back on two rails. We all used to go to Rhyl in it for day trips - that's 5 adults and 3 children, our picnic, our swimsuits, buckets and spades, towels, flask, etc. etc. and the clothes that were still in the van 8)
Gadget
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Does anyone remember the concentrated orange juice? It came in a rather flat bottle and had a blue scew top cap.
Perhaps someone here can remember a Blackcurrant cordial very thick and concentrated (NOT RIBENA) we used to have it as a treat on blancmange. I have been trying to remember the name for years! Sad isn't it?
Also were you taught to tear the sugar and tea packets down the sides to make sure you got every grain, leaf from inside the double wrapping? I was still doing that when I got married in '64.
I also suffered the 'You'll grow into it' syndrome! I was at the Grammar School and the boys from the Secondary Modern would shout out - 'Here comes Polly Long Frock'! And they were right I remember the bottom of my gaberdine mac clipping my heels as I walked. Fortunately I grew quickly but it still lasted at least 3 years. So I suppose my mother was right as those school macs were so expensive in relation to their income.
I never suffered the Corset but remember well the 'Roll on' with rubbery suspenders. And no liberty bodice for me just evil wooly vests and I was almost envious of the girls whose parents could afford to buy them.
I've just watched the 'Four Yorkshire men' sketch - very funny and I wonder are we guilty of doing the same thing? I think not as all these posts are true and well remembered by anyone born in the 40's.
Let's have more,
Regards, Abiam
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I know it's not that long ago, but I couldn't go back to tea-leaves :P
I always forgot about them being in the bottom of the cup, and got a mouthful every time
Rosemary
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Yeah, well, some people haven't forgotten about tea-leaves in the bottom of the cup, even though I haven't used loose tea the entire time we've been together, and he still leaves a quarter-inch of cold tea in the bottom of the cup, which sloshes out all over the wall when I load the cup into the dishwasher, and bellow at him to please not do that, and he tells me his mother made tea with loose tea when he lived at home even though that was like 35 years ago....oh, what's the use.... :P :P :P
Just venting a bit ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Cheers,
China
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I know it's not that long ago, but I couldn't go back to tea-leaves :P
I always forgot about them being in the bottom of the cup, and got a mouthful every time
We still use them, but with a strainer, then you don't get dregs ::)
Barbara :)
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warm the pot first - let tea stand for a short while - no funny floaty tea leaves :)
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You definitely get a better cuppa with leaves (or so OH says!)
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How gross is this :-X :-X :-X :-X My mum said that when i was young i used to eat the tea leaves from the pot with a spoon.She said i loved them and said thet won't harm me.
Lynn.
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And DID they harm you ??
(You do have this odd obsession with genealogy ... )
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Nope, i'm still here, but can't drink tea any more.
Lynn.
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Woollen vests and cold tea leaves, I don't know which are worst! :(
My grandma used to empty the used tea leaves on the soil round the base of her roses! :)
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Nowadays, i just throw the whole tea bag on the flowers. Same with coffee grounds.
Lynn.
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Thats the proper use of old tea leaves Pels ... why are you so surprised ??
(I have to say that a distant member of my family uses a T-bag once; then pegs it up on a little line in his kitchen to dry it; then he uses it again ... and again ...)
Yukky, yuk !
(http://bestsmileys.com/coffee/1.gif)(http://bestsmileys.com/coffee/1.gif)(http://bestsmileys.com/coffee/1.gif)(http://bestsmileys.com/coffee/1.gif)(http://bestsmileys.com/coffee/1.gif)
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Anybody remember that Camp coffee :P :P :P
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Now, now - you'll get this thread sent to the darkest deepest dungeons of ToTs!
Gadget
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Hi Ricky, What do you mean, the old camp coffee? You can still buy it.
Lynn.
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Hi Ricky, What do you mean, the old camp coffee? You can still buy it.
Lynn.
thought that went out donkey's years ago :P :P :P, looked like black tar, and the taste was awfull
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Nope. Still sell it here. And very popular in South Africa.
I agree, Ricky - it was/is vile. :-X
meles
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Camp Coffee actually makes very nice coffee flavour icing for buns and cakes ... and home made cofee ice cream ... (dribble, drool ...)
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Camp Coffee actually makes very nice coffee flavour icing for buns and cakes ... and home made cofee ice cream ... (dribble, drool ...)
Or you can add a bottle of it to a bottle of alcohol and make cheap Aunt Mary Tia Maria ;D
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School milk - yuk yuk yuk yu
Kerry
Dont remind me........ never got any playtime as i never finished the milk, learned how to collapse the straw and none got through. So when you were all out playing i was inside with my warm milk, liberty bodice and teacher with a cane tapping it against thier leg and glaring at me.............. oh happy days :o :D
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Hi
Camp Coffee actually makes very nice coffee flavour icing for buns and cakes ... and home made cofee ice cream ... (dribble, drool ...)
It sure does. Got gran's recipes and they make fab cakes - when I get the time!
Ann
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I have read through the posts and if this has been explained before I am sorry I missed it.
What the heck is a liberty bodice ???
dollylee
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I have read through the posts and if this has been explained before I am sorry I missed it.
What the heck is a liberty bodice ???
dollylee
A Liberty Bodice was an article of girls underwear to which many of us ladies of a certain age were subjected by our caring mother's on the grounds that "it protected the kidneys" ;D
If was intended for girls 9 - 13, invented in 1908 and was in production until 1974.
Mine was fleecy lined cotton with rubber buttons.
Here's an example of an early Liberty Bodice.
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Thank you geniecolgan.
It looks so nice warm I am surprised they weren't worn here in Canada....or perhaps they were and I am just too young to remember ::) ::)
dollylee
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I'm old enough to remember them :( :( but I don't! I don't think we had them in Australia (or else I had a "progressive" Mum 8) )
Trish
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Would it have been a bit warm for them there, Trish. I had them from about 4 or 5 in the depths of Wales/Shropshire :(
Gadget
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Just think of the great thermal underwear that exists these days. But, of course, one doesn't need it in everyday life now because all the buildings (schools, homes, etc) are centrally heated!
Trish, I've heard of liberty bodices and I think that goes back to my childhood in Victoria, Australia but no idea why (perhaps the girls in old-fashioned books that I used to read wore them?). I certainly have never seen one and didn't know about the rubber buttons (rubber buttons!!! wow!!!). I suspect that, if they were ever on sale in Australia, it would have been too far back for even the oldest of us RootsChatters to remember ...
I do remember that we did wear singlets - and I remember my mother sewing a camphor block into the front of my singlet to protect against colds! There was also something worse with the same aim - a ghastly orange proprietary product called (as I recall) Thermogene which was also worn on the chest.
And they call them the good old days!
JAP
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I suspect that, if they were ever on sale in Australia, it would have been too far back for even the oldest of us RootsChatters to remember ...
I know Australia is a young country, but not that young. :D :D
I had to wear a liberty bodice, but never did find out what the spare buttons were for that were attached near our waists.
Lizzie
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For the young ones amongst you, we wore Liberty bodices over our woolly vests, then we put on our Vyella shirts, then woollen jumpers. Oddly, I remember that even so, I was always cold, especially inside and used to pull up my chair right in front of the fire to sit and read Famous Five books. My gran used to call me a "Lancashire Firewarmer", whatever that was. ???
Lizzie
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Lizzie, You misunderstand me :) All I meant was that liberty bodices might have been around in Australia at some stage - perhaps ca 1900? - but that there probably aren't too many current RootsChatters who were around in Australia back then (despite some of the record-breaking ages on profiles!) :D
The rubber(!) buttons (apart from those down the front) were - I gather from Googling - for attaching other undergarments or even stockings! And apparently even little boys wore liberty bodices!
The mind boggles at the whole concept :)
JAP
PS: Famous Five - oh, surely not ;D
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I guess liberty bodices were a peculiarly British thing.
And apparently even little boys wore liberty bodices!
My brother didn't (and he was only 18 months younger than me) it wasn't considered a boy's garment in our house. I don't know what he wore, maybe an extra vest or something.
What's wrong with the Famous Five ??? When I was young (violins playing), that is what I got for birthday and Christmas presents - and my birthday follows shortly after Christmas. At least I could read which is more than can be said for today's children. :D :D
Lizzie
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Thumps head with clenched hand!
In order to remind self never ever, however tempted, to post on topics like this ::)
I've learned that lesson on ToT but obviously not yet on other boards ...
Ah well, I've learned my lesson ...
Mea culpa!
JAP
JAP, you've done it again :D :D
Barbara
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Thumps head with clenched hand!
In order to remind self never ever, however tempted, to post on topics like this ::)
I've learned that lesson on ToT but obviously not yet on other boards ...
Ah well, I've learned my lesson ...
Mea culpa!
JAP
JAP, you've done it again :D :D
Barbara
;D ;D ;D
I was looking for that posting Barbara ;D ;D ;D
(http://smileys.on-my-web.com/repository/Computer/blue-screen-of-death.gif)
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Hi Barbara, I can only say - Will I never ever learn :-[
I'm off to write 100 lines ...
Or to stand in the corner ...
Or to push the proverbial peanut round the room with my nose ...
However, having once posted there's nothing to be lost in posting again (and ever again) as this thread will still come up on "New Replies" regardless ...
Hi Lizzie, If you Google for:
boys + liberty + bodice
or
boys + liberty + bodices
or whatever
you might be amused ;D
Here in Aus, Enid Blyton's books were actually banned from school libraries at one stage! Perhaps they still are? On principle I could never in my wildest dreams support book banning - but I was close to abandoning those principles when it came to Blyton.
As for today's children ... Well, all my grandchildren have been overseas (4 of the 5 in countries where English was not the first language) but the now 18yo and the now 10yo seemed to me to be great readers whenever I caught up with them. There are a couple of overseas tinies who are not yet up to reading age but the other one who (now) lives near me reads beautifully (and with great expression) at the age of 6. I wouldn't say that he reads the sort of turgid books that I did at age 6; but I guess that's because I didn't have all the current distractions - the excitement of wonderful programs on TV or of infinite numbers of toys to build with great imagination and so on ...
Of course, books are yet another matter where the past was a different country. It is difficult to believe the racism and religious bigotry in books that we older RootsChatters read in our childhood (forget about sexism - that comes far behind racism and religious bigotry). Think of Rudyard Kipling. Think of Biggles. Think of John Buchan. I looked at them recently and was utterly appalled.
ricky1, You've lost me - so be it ;)
Cheers,
JAP
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;D ;D ;D
How did you girls get in them, they look like straight jackets, or were they to stop us young lads ;) ;)
JAP
You aint doing it right you need one of these
(http://smileys.on-my-web.com/repository/MSN_Emoticons/MSN-Emoticon-crazy-016.gif)
;)
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I suspect that, if they were ever on sale in Australia, it would have been too far back for even the oldest of us RootsChatters to remember ...
Well, I was at junior school in the late '50's and although I never wore a liberty bodice, I can very clearly remember seeing other girls in my class wearing them.
Jennifer
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Okay, I'll bite...why were Enid Blyton's books banned from school libraries? I used to have a few of them...
Cheers,
China
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I worked in a public library at the time, and they were thought not to have a wide enough vocabulary I believe, as well as being what we'd now call non-pc; they weren't banned, but we were supposed to encourage children to choose other authors and we didn't buy any new Blyton editions
:-\
Barbara
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Enid Blyton's books were written to a formula and in very simple English. In my school they were grouped with comics as an unnecessary distraction from reading the great authors, who just happened to bore us silly and put us off reading.
Fortunately, my parents took the view that reading anything was a good thing for children and they were happy to buy me comics, Enid Blyton and Biggles. I did even try John Buchan once but decided that I preferred Bulldog Drummond!
Gobbo
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How sad that Enid Blyton would be banned.....or even discouraged.
I grew up in a household where my mother and father believed that reading was a waste of time....i.e. If you have time to sit and read then you have time to:
Help your mother
Work in the garden
Clean your shoes
Iron your school blouse
I read in bed with a torch..under the covers....and held my breath if Ma or Dad came up the stairs.
Enid Blyton was one of my escapes from the real world....as was Biggles.
OK...so it isn't great literature.......But it is a wonderful pathway into the world of books.
Indi
(See my Book Club thread)
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Liberty bodices ... they buttoned (and thus unbuttoned) down the front, so they were in effect a tight fluffy weskit worn under the blouse ...
zarakins you're new and new on this thread ! Did anyone welcome you to RootsChat ? I hope so ... and I hope you find RC members useful ... they are a very knowledgeable lot !
Enid Blyton (wasn't she a man ?) wrote what seemed like hundreds of books for 5 - 14 year olds ... and as a child I was only allowed one per week from the library ... the other books had to be something different !
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Liberty bodices ... they buttoned (and thus unbuttoned) down the front, so they were in effect a tight fluffy weskit worn under the blouse ...
Yours had buttons down the front?.....how bizzare! ;D ;D ;D
Mine were pull over the head style......with tabs around the bottom with rubber buttons sewn on the tabs.......Much more stylish than those button down the fron jobs.... :o
And......they looked so good with the navy blue knicks!
::) ::)
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Mine were over the head ones too, Indi - I've never seen button down the front ones - were they very posh ::)
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Enid Blyton (wasn't she a man ?) wrote what seemed like hundreds of books for 5 - 14 year olds ... and as a child I was only allowed one per week from the library ... the other books had to be something different !
No - she was a married woman - albeit unhappy and eventually left her husband and kids.
Loved her books, though.
meles
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Oh thats sad ...
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Oh thats sad ...
What?...Liberty bodices...navy blue knicks?....
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An outline here. I'm sure there's more elsewhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Blyton
meles
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My Liberty Bodices pulled over my head but never quite married up with my drawers.... so there was a nasty draft in the middle >:(
I never read Enid.... her stories allways seemed so twee and not of my world. I love Biggles though.... I named my buick Biggles and we go flying (along the highway, that is) ;)
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Oh thats sad ...
What?...Liberty bodices...navy blue knicks?....
Did Enid Blyton write about them as well ::)
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Has anyone realized that the correct title for this thread should be
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” and that the quote comes from 'The Go-Between' by L.P. Hartley.
It was made into a film in 1970, starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates, who made me go :D
Jennifer
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go where ?
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Meles....
I read the Wiki thing about Enid...she didn't leave the kids....she had a bit of a thing with Waters and when she married him she changed her daughters name to his...had a very happy 2nd marriage.
I had forgotten that she created Noddy......ahhhhhhh....love Noddy.
She was born on Aug 11.......my son's birthday......therefore....a great lady!
Indi
:)
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Oh Yes.
Alan Bates was a nice bit of stuff.......could put his boots under my bed any night!
Indi
:D :D
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go where ?
I meant that Alan Bates made me go like this :D :D :D
Jennifer
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Ahhh ... no, not my type at all !
Gordon Brown looks a bit like Alan Bates ...
Moderator comment: topic continues here
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=271623.msg1551423#msg1551423