The good/bad old days

callie

Well-Known Member
We've had an early hard winter this year that looks like it will run well into the new year and at the present everything is more or less shut down.

In general in the 50's/60's, as us old ones can testify, Stag'33 in particular, winters like the ones we've had for the last 3 years were the norm, the difference being very few folk had cars, maybe 1 or 2 in the whole street, in some streets there were none but nearly eveyone had a push bike and you'd be surprised how well you can travel in the snow on one.

90% of the folk worked within a mile of where they lived, so no need for cars really, most went on shanks' pony, if it was any further there was always the bus,quite often 'works busses laid on by the employers and normally subsidised.

Farm work was manually intensive with farm workers/labourers living in 'tied' cottages usually within the confines of the farm so no need for transport, nowadays a couple of farm workers are 'shared' between several farms, every thing being heavily automated, today, literally today, there are winter crops, ie. sprouts, cabbage and leeks that cannot be harvested because the ground is frozen and the 'machines' can't cope so watch the price of fresh british produce rise. In the good/bad old days all this harvesting was done by hand regardless of the weather, quite often by housewives earning an 'extra few bob'.

The majority of married women/mothers never worked , there was no such words as "house husbands", that is a figment of the 70's/80's

Trains were good transport in those days, stations in even the small towns and some larger villages, most goods came mainly by rail and each station had it's fleet of 3 wheel wagons for local deliveries, none of these big artics, the only lorries you came across with regularity were coal wagons, then Mr Beaching decided in his wisdom to cut the railways to the bone, thousands of miles of track and hundreds of stations, all gone in the name of progress.

Yes, we're all victims of progress, hundreds of cars, lorries and aircraft all snowed in, some progress, I can remember as a child of 6 walking to school with everyone walking in single file in a rut of snow 8" high on each side, no chelsea tractors in those days, nowadays, a few inches of snow and everything comes to a grinding halt, yep, that's progress for you !!!....callie
 
Callie, you struck a chord there mate, three wheeler Scammell artics, (Iron Horse) pulling a twelve ton box car, O.K. if your coupling was good!:D. Doctor Beeching was a right numptie, all those branch lines would be of good use today,:rolleyes:.
 
Was it really that good not much choice of food clothes that were worn by your bothers and dare i say it sisters , short trousers to school even when the hial was driving side ways and stinging your pour legs. Apple for the teacher while you got the cane down south or the leather belt up here and beleive me i had both. You didnt dare go to the toilet christ the paper was call izel and would remove enough layers of skin to leave scabs on your ass. Dads car didnt start most mornings you had to go out with a handle and crank it up , it took what felt like hours. Most of your friends you were not allowed to play with because they had been given majic porshion from nitty nora the buggs explorer. I could go on but its sunday and used to be a day of rest but i need to go to work. Which is some what prefareable to sitting on some long darkwooded puew in some dismally lit church waiting for a chance to dip your empty hand in the velvet money bag and come out with some money to spend after some hypocrit had place it there to cool there guilt for beating there kids up .You could then go to the corner shop that believe it or not was own by a local white person and was CLOSED on sundays :rofl:
 
6pointer, The tawse, I remember and felt it often, and the old army great coat on the bed when it got colder, all good fun
 
Actually as I recall it was illegal to open a shop except for papers and a few other items on Sundays and then only for a limited time. The Romans had it right and built straight roads so nowhere for the asian corner shops :lol:. ( now that's an old joke if ever I saw one)

Dad worked several miles from home so some sort of motor transport was useful. After the war he got a motor cycle althoguh it was 1949 he had a 1928 AJS that is A.J. Stevens Big port sports model which he still had in 1952. They didn't get a old Model Y Ford until 1959/60. There were no real employers in the small village so one had to travel. Before the war it was by push bike and if you got a punture and were a minute late for work you lost a 1/2 Hr but if you came by train//bus and it was lete you didn;t get docked. Where dad lived there was not bus route so push bike it had to be. His dad was a gamekeeper on an estate so they lived outside the village.

You forgot no fridge. Dad brought our first one in 1957/58 and were were the first in the street with one. The bungalow where I was born was wood and asbestos and darned cold in winter. I can also recall summer hailstones the size of golf balls. The poor chap cutting the hay on the common was taken to hospital after getting caught out in that fall.

As for clearing roads as I said ours does not get cleared normally but then we are rural and our nearest neighbour is about 300 yards away. We do our bit but just take it slow and make do same as always ;).
 
Well I do just remember some of the above. But sharing clothes was a definate, and army suplus clothes as well.

Mind you it was no joke going to school dressed as a Japanese admiral :D Ehh JAYB :lol::lol:
 
Yep I remember the good old days
what was good about them :confused:
considering I was brought up in the seventies

A few things that spring to mind were hand me down clothes ,
footwear was 3 holed steel toecapped boots which the old man got us free from his work
god had not invented monkey boots by then, well not in part of the country
working from the age of 11 just to help put food on the table and boy 11 hours a day stone picking was not fun, that was after you did your other other chores in the morning to start with
walking every where, as we did not hav a car and the bus was every 24 hours, trains were not much better more cancellations than actuall service
old man for ever on strike because of some union **** called for it , as it was supposed to bring a better working enviroment with better pay,
I suppose free school meals were a bonus if you weren't to embarrased , I was just to hungry to care, but being a milk monitor payed divedends;)
no one could afford to buy anything as no one had any money no matter how hard you worked
great days wern't they
but the funny part like mentioned was the snow issuse
we used to get 10-15 feet snow drifts , It was the norm to open the front door to hav to dig a path through to the main street and as kids on the block it was deemed our responsibility to keep the paths open no matter,
but in those days I do remember we had proper snow ;)
 
EE lads youll remember Exarmy greatcotes and fur flying jackets then that was before everyone aquired donkey jackets.milk on the doorstep frozen and tops an inch above the top on the cream.
 
Good new days

What is strange is that these will be the good old days for our kids and grand kids.
I was a 63 baby and my Mum and Dad told me about the severe winter into which I was born.

Saturday we saw about a foot of snow down here in Denham in South Bucks, and I spent most of the afternoon pulling the log jam of cars up the hill close to where I live. The often forgotten British-ness, of people surprised me. There were about a dozen of us working, volunteers to a man and woman.
Nobody organised the effort, nobody squabbled about the best way to deal with the situation. I drove countless times the wrong way down a dual carriageway and nobody drove into me (perhaps because they were mostly stuck). One guy got people to screw the towing eyes into the front of their cars so they would be ready to snap the rope onto when I arrived. Several were pushed and once moving managed to climb without further help.
My point is that time has changed much in our lives, but our British-ness is the same in any kind of adversity. People are generally decent and get pleasure from helping each other. It truly will be remembered as one of the good old days by many who were there.
 
hi stone no disrespect meant but what year were you born because i left schooll aged 14. three weeks before my 15teenth birthday in 1972 so how could you be working eleven hours a day if you were brought up in the seventies and me in the sixtys . the highlander
 
well i was born in the very early sixtys and got expelled from school at 15 so that means if i was a good lad i could have left normally at 16 but i still worked on a farn scewing betroot at 12 years old to get cash . BAYBOTS FARM IN LEYLAND CHEAP BAR STEWARDS THEY WERE BUT THEY DID HAVE AN AUTOMATED TOTTIE PICKER:lol:
 
Going to school wearing short trousers and wellies with the snow coming in over the top!!
(Born in the very early sixties!!):old:
 
hi stone no disrespect meant but what year were you born because i left schooll aged 14. three weeks before my 15teenth birthday in 1972 so how could you be working eleven hours a day if you were brought up in the seventies and me in the sixtys . the highlander

Sorry Highlander
Re-reading my post is not as clear as it read last night
I was born 1970 by the time of my 11th in 1981 birthday I was out every week end or near darn it from the end of harvest stone picking till the crops were sown this went on for consecutive 4 harvests
It was the only way to clear them by hand
and every morning/evening before and after school , I used to bottle feed lambs , feed the chickens and goats
+ collect the chicken eggs
on the evening also helped milk the few cows for a pint of the white stuff to take home along with some of the eggs
so no before you ask I did not live or was brought up on and around a farm
I lived and was brought up on a council estate , the farm I used to work on was 3 miles away and the school even further as it was a sort of tri-angle
I then added to this with a paper round at the age of 14 aswell as hunt & fish to also help put food on the table
I suppose life was tough as a boy growing up in a poor surrounding but it certainly gave me a better outlook on life because it gave me the determination to succeed in what I did , as to fail mean't we went with out
ATB
 
:lol: Fur lined flying jackets... Ahem I happen to have a black one reputedly Canadian hanging up still. Am too rotound for it to fit now :oops:.

Now I thought we did without a lot but readign this shows I was actually better off than a lot. Dad was a highly skilled machinist and worked on such projects as the wing hinges for the RB211 swing wing fighter that Wilson scrapped. The garden gate at the bottom of the garden it's latch was made of titanium and was made out a bit of Folland Gnat braking system he worked on them too as well as Brabham Formula One racing cars. The firm he worked for was owned by Jack Fairman a Le Mans racer who eventually went broke through his racing so they made a lot of stuff out of exotic alloies for the areo and racing industry. Oh and yes they made bits for Sirhkorski for their helicopters and even for ones of the Queens flight. Later they worked on bits for the Atomic Energy commision.

He earnt good money and although we never went abroad we never went hungry or without clothing so I should eb grateful.

I can recall the chapped legs from walking to school in the freezing rain in shorts. Not nice. Do you recall those clear plastic fold up rain hoods/hats that Mums forced on us?

In 68 we moved near Gatwick and the kids at school often went abroad. Their dads worked at Gatwick and so got concession flights. My best mate who now works in agunshop well his dad joined Calidonian Airlines at the introduction od the VC10.

We had a large Oak tree at the bottom of the garden and it has a red squirrels drey in it. If thye had been greys they woudl have been dead as grandad was an ex keeper. Funny but I don't recall the winter of 63 at all how strange. Must have blanked it out for some reason :confused: perhaps it's because Nan was knocked down adn killed on her way home from the shops. We all shared one house then, a two bedroomed bungalow with six of us living in it.
 
Yes indeed callie. Walking to school with the snow powdering over the top of the wellies. No long trousers and red weals around the legs where the frozen wellie tops and short trouser bottoms flapped. The whisper of a very occasional car and clanking of wheel chains. Five miles to school and five back, firewood to saw and barrow every morning and evening - and water to carry from the well down in the glen.

AND, a letter of parental excuse if you were likely to be late or absent because of it.

The lads with tackety boots were envied and it was quite the thing to compare footprints of various footwear in the snow, but the ones with smoother soles won out on the ice slides which we developed, foot-by-foot at playtimes.

Food was simple for the most part. Times were NOT all so good, but we got on with what we had and that was the reality. No pushing from TV adverts that we should spend hundreds of pounds on each other in order to try and gain happiness. We had no TV's anyway. No fridges, in some cases no running water, and my childhood years were firstly with paraffin wick lamps - then tilley lamps. The stove was a paraffin primus stove.

Of course we kids longed for things, but accepted that they were outwith our reach. We were thrown back on our own resources for entertainent, and we were lean and FIT ! The fat boy in school was an oddity. Poor sod - he probably had some glandular problem which we didn't know about.

The ice crust on top of deep snow on which the frost flakes grew night-by night until they were like large butterfly wings. The snow hanging on the conifers until the branches bowed down to the ground, looking as though they were coated in pristine lard with small black caves near the base of the trunks.

Breaking the top inches of ice off the rain barel at the end of the house so I could dip my head in and towel off in the mornings. I was the one who carried the water so I valued and grudged every drop in the household buckets.
Then the lean time when everyone was out of work. The shoes and boots wore out and my mother sneaked my father's best brogues out of the wardrobe and padded them with old newspapers. Size ten shoes on a thirteen-year-old lad ! The paper was soaked by the time I reached school as the wheel ruts in the snow were not very wide to walk in. Dad was away tramping the roads in search of work, sleeping rough in his old army greatcoat.

Yes callie - good and bad times, but we were much closer to nature in those days.
 
It's always the the rotten bits that we seem to look back on almost fondly, how mad is that! The really good bits we just took for granted, we were, like Ken said, all fit and lean the TV set lived in someone else's house and we spent out time outdoors. We all knew the different birds, where they were nesting and raised young we found every year. We could all snare and paunch rabbits, plucking and drawing a bird was not a mystery, but nothing was treated cruelly or killed for no reason. We could spend all day in the woods and hills and the only danger we were likely to be in was of our own making. I shudder now when I think of one particular rope swing we had made, at the end of the arc of the swing it must have been a 75 foot drop, straight down, that would have been your lot, brown bread for sure. But we loved it, swinging on it for hours sometimes two or three of you at a time hanging off it, rope break, branch break? nah never happen, and thank God it didn't.

I still think the prettiest sight of all though, was the patterns made by the frost on the INSIDE of the bedroom window at night:eek: Oh yes, happy days.

John
 
In about 86 in Elgin i got up to put my school clothes on and my trousers were frozen over the radiator. Nowadays my other half just keeps the central heating on near enough full wack and at 72p a litre for heating oil when she opens the window because it's a little warm it's a little upsetting. :evil:
 
Back
Top