Interesting site

Dora_the_Explorer_5

I'm sure no-one was offended and I for one had a good hee-haw looking at the sites you posted. Sometimes threads go all over the place before the return to the original topic which makes them very intersting.
I see you're a youngster, too young to be a Ted so you must have been a mod or a rocker. Are you going to tell us which ?

home_alone

I was a Ted dora, but I am slightly older than MrT being nearly 63 (birthday in a couple of days (28th). I look at the fifties as the most exciting time of my life, maybe it was the just growing up but the music, films and of course the early days of TV, all put together and it was fun to say the least, to me the sixties never really made it that high although I got married and my son was born during that period, ahh the good old days.

gary

MrT_5

Dora_the_Explorer wrote:

I'm sure no-one was offended and I for one had a good hee-haw looking at the sites you posted. Sometimes threads go all over the place before the return to the original topic which makes them very intersting.
I see you're a youngster, too young to be a Ted so you must have been a mod or a rocker. Are you going to tell us which ?

I remember the teds and being quite frightened of them. Silly really as they would never have harmed a kid. At least I hope not. Sad to say I was neither a Mod or a Rocker although I probably erred on the side of the Mods. I just never had the cash to be a fashion icon of any description. Most of my earnings went to mother to keep the family going. £3.10s with 9 bob deducted for a stamp I think. I remember as a young kid finding a ten bob note, going home and bragging about it. Needless to say mother took charge of it and gave me a tanner I think. Looking back I wouldn't have had it any other way as she needed it more than me. How many people saw that recent survey that said people were happier in 1957 than today? Doesn't surprise me as most of my contemporaries had nothing and at least you knew the price of most things. "What, they put a halfpenny on a loaf?" Disgraceful!

I was at the local shopping centre with my wife yesterday and we both commented on the mess outside of shops these days. When I were a lad, (cue music) every shop cleaned up outside and disinfected the pavements. Did it myself as an order boy at the Maypole and put fresh sawdust down. There is a memory in itself. Massive big cheeses sliding down the chute to be cut up. Sides of bacon to be sliced. Blue bags for sugar. Butter pats. How can anyone say nostalgia is wrong?

Thanks for saying I am a youngster by the way. Only thinking tonight that in 14 years I will be 70 if I live that long. Boy, you think too much, as a teacher once said to me! :rotfl:

[Deleted User]

With respect Mr T, you sound like an old man. I am older than you but then I have a young outlook and a zest for life. I wouldn`t live in the past for all the tea in China. We have one life only.

I exercise my brain and I recently started cycling. I did an OU degree in geology and oceanography. When I was 50 I did a four year course in homeopathy. I l have taken over the whole of my DHs pension management. I trade shares. I do the usual crafting and baking. I am a mentor to my adult children and to some young local adults. Goodness me, I have no time to look back at the past. Waste of time, it is done and dusted. If something is wriong then use your experience and change it.

Dora_the_Explorer_5

Can't remember who said this - "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it" although whether that's relavent to this thread I'll leave you all to decide.

Fran

alikat has posted archive.org on this thread. I haven't looked at it but it could be interesting.

[Deleted User]

The past forms the future. It provides the twists and turns for the choices we make on our journey through life. Those who live in the past tend to be `stuck` and cannot move on through the different levels towards enlightenment

margaretclare

kittie wrote:

With respect Mr T, you sound like an old man. I am older than you but then I have a young outlook and a zest for life. I wouldn`t live in the past for all the tea in China. We have one life only.

I exercise my brain and I recently started cycling. I did an OU degree in geology and oceanography. When I was 50 I did a four year course in homeopathy. I l have taken over the whole of my DHs pension management. I trade shares. I do the usual crafting and baking. I am a mentor to my adult children and to some young local adults. Goodness me, I have no time to look back at the past. Waste of time, it is done and dusted. If something is wriong then use your experience and change it.

Me too, kittie. I don't forget the past but I don't live in it, don't revel in it. Couldn't agree with you more.

Life changed radically for me in the autumn of 1997. Suddenly the world changed, tilted on its axis, the moon changed from dark side to bright side...all poetic metaphorical rubbish of course, but however, that's what it seemed like.

Life does sometimes, just sometimes, give you a second chance. But it's essential to have the determination and the courage to reach out and grasp the chance that you're given, grasp it with both hands.

I've had women say to me 'Oh, I wouldn't want another man in my home, in my bed, why couldn't you be content to go on being a widow, you have your memories to live on......' and similar stuff. Well, there was a man the same age as me, 62 at the time, who had the courage and determination to walk out on an impossible situation. He stood on my doorstep one November night in the rain, and all he'd brought away from a full working life and 2 marriages was a rusty old car with a few bags of clothes, his obsolete computer and little else.

I can't believe that I'd actually said to him 'If it gets too unbearable you could always move in with me'. I thought: that's what the youngsters say nowadays, not me, not a respectable widow! But it happened, we both gained a new lease of life and we're happy. Happy, contented and solvent, instead of miserable and poor. We pool our resources and we talk, discuss, argue, plan - I've learned from him, he's learned from me. Our only real regret is that we didn't meet decades ago, back in the 1950s when he was a young apprentice engineer and I was a junior Civil Servant. What a team we'd have made - he needn't have had 2 expensive divorces for a start.

'The past is another country, they do things differently there'. Quote from the opening paragraph of a novel 'The Go-Between'.

Margaret Clare

[Deleted User]

MC it`s about time you wrote a book. I love reading about what has formed your life

margaretclare

kittie wrote:

MC it`s about time you wrote a book. I love reading about what has formed your life

I did write one book, it was called 'All My Father's Children'. No copies left, I'm afraid.

The other one was going to be a love story called 'Late-Blooming Rose'. However, I lost a lot of motivation when my younger daughter died at the end of December 2002.

Thanks for your kind words. No matter what happens, it's important to stay positive and to look forwards with hope, instead of always looking back with longing. We thought that this morning when we listened to 'Desert Island Discs' - it was the CBI Chairman, Sir Digby Jones. At one point he talked about his first wife leaving him for another man, and he described how important it was to 'pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again'. My DH nodded vigorously - yes, he's been there, done that, bless him. And in a sense, that's what I had to do when redundancy coincided with widowhood. You hit rock-bottom, but if you have strength, self-belief and a kind of cussed determination not to be defeated, you can climb back up again.

Who'd have thought it was possible to fall wildly in love all over again at age 62, just like a daft teenager? But it happened.

Margaret Clare