The past is a different country. They do things differently there.

[Lydart]

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 ...

[geniecolgan]

   But I don't remember us smelling ... or perhaps we were just used to everyone smelling !  Baths were once a week ...

   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 

[Shropshire Lass]

Didn't happen like that in our school - as many if not more girls as boys in the Science sixth - maybe Wales was different 

Don't you mean Wales is better!

Monica

[LizzieW]

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

[JAP]

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 
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

[kiwipom]

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

[Lynn H]

I remember the rag and bone man coming around once a week.

(Never could understand why he wanted bones)


                                  Lynn.

[Subaru]

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

[LizzieW]

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