Old Finances (back in the day)

jackieb

Chickenopolis wrote: »

Yes I do Justamum. Does anyone remember Magpie and the Lightening Tree?

I remember an advert such as "Chefs square shaped soup shows how a good soup should be" or something like that. Drove me round the twist. Also my Mum was always on a diet and at one point there was an advert for some sort of fudge like meal replacement. This came in the form of a little square of, well fudge. I remember that my Aunt bought some and ate the lot in one go as it tasted nice. I also remember the Nimble and Slimcia (sp) bread for those on a diet, again Mum ate this.

I ate the contents of my brothers Chemistry set which he kept under his bed. My Mum said that I was ill and that it was bright blue, so she knew it was me!! Probably tasted better than Nimble:rotfl:.I also, to my intense shame ate chewing gum off of the pavement , there was loads of it around in the 70's, particularly underneath the shelves in my sisters bedroom!!

I remember that on the Queens Silver Jubilee , we all got a coin at school to commemorate the event . My Mum and older sisters strung up red, white and blue skimpy knickers on the front of our house much to the disgust of the neighbours:rotfl:

Wasn't the fudge stuff called Ayds? It seemed to disappear around 1984. Strange that.

Ida_Notion

Justamum wrote: »

Does anyone else remember "why don't you . .?" on tv?

"Waaaahhhh donchew... go switch off your television set n go do sumthin' less borin' instead...?"

Yes. Despite the laidback grammar of the theme tune, these kids always seemed terribly, awfully posh to me, and not of my world at all.

I used to prefer spending my time crafting Blue Peter 'makes' from household junk. Our house had far too many polystyrene eggbox Pippa doll chairs and tables lying around the place for it ever to be considered 'posh' by anyone.

Poor Pippa. Another blast from the past consigned to the dustbin of history

Ida_Notion

Chickenopolis wrote: »

My Mum and older sisters strung up red, white and blue skimpy knickers on the front of our house much to the disgust of the neighbours:rotfl:

ROFL. This is all I know about your mum and older sisters, but I think I already love them

I used to live on the first floor of a house (two rooms and a kitchen) that belonged to the shop next door. We three kids shared the back room and my mum and dad had their bed in the front room with all the rest of the living room furniture (sofa, telly etc). We had access to the bathroom on the ground floor too, but the rest was used for the shop's stock and blocked off to us, which meant we didn't have access to the back garden.

For the first few weeks of the three years we were there, my mum used a little rotary clothes line out in the front yard to dry the washing, but all the neighbours in the street turned out to complain about it so she had to take it down and get the Flatley mentioned a few pages back to use instead. You'd honestly have thought we were permanently lowering the tone of Mayfair rather than blighting the sight of a row of inner-city terraced houses with laundry for a few hours a week. I'd love to have seen how they'd have reacted to knicker bunting

culpepper

The lightening Tree? was that Follyfoot?
Magpie was a magazine style show like Blue peter. I still clean my teeth without using the tap just like Mick Robertson showed us in the drought .
Pippa the pocket money doll..she cost 50 pence,far more than most peoples pocket money where I lived.
Does anyone go window shopping anymore,we used to as kids, there was a toy shop just across the road and you could stand for ages just looking outside without needing to go in.
During the sugar shortage it was easier to get sugar lumps than it was to get granulated. I saved up all my 'lumps' that mum gave me with my cups of tea and presented her with them when she said if only she had sugar she would make cake. She was astonished but smashed them all up with the rolling pin and we had cake after all.

Justamum

Chickenopolis wrote: »

I also, to my intense shame ate chewing gum off of the pavement , there was loads of it around in the 70's, particularly underneath the shelves in my sisters bedroom!!

I remember those Ayds fudge squares - I think my mum tried them!

My sister used to pick up fag ends off the pavement and pretend to smoke them :eek::rotfl:. She did become a smoker for quite a few years. From the age of 10!

Other programmes I've just remembered

The Singing Ringing Tree
Robinson Crusoe
Belle and Sebastian
On White Horses.

Justamum

culpepper wrote: »

During the sugar shortage it was easier to get sugar lumps than it was to get granulated.

My mum decided that we all had to have saccharin in our tea during the sugar shortage. It gave me chronic tummy trouble, but nobody seemed to realise what caused it. It tasted awful too, but it didn't seem to occur to those making my tea (I was too young to do it) that I would rather have no 'sweetener' (which was a bitterer anyway) at all.

Nargleblast

Ah, Vesta meals! Loved the beef risotto and the chow mein one with the crispy noodles. Sometimes we watch old episodes of Minder (1970s and 1980s) and life seemed so much simpler then. And even now people still play the Seventies music - wonder how many of today's songs will last 30-odd years?

Ida_Notion

I can remember the Ayds fudge squares too. There was a chemist on the opposite corner to us that had them in a display of slimming products in the window, together with PLJ (overpriced lemon juice, basically, which was supposed to cut the fat or something) and Energen rolls. These were sort of hard, airy 'bread' rolls of the type you sometimes find on the Yellow Sticker trolley at Asda at the time of night when ordinary bread rolls have been reduced down to 1p a pack and are only suitable for a spot of lightweight shot-putting rather than eating. I know this about the Energen rolls because my mum tried them once.

She'd also regularly send me over to the chemist with some money and a note to give to the assistant in exchange for an item so mysterious that I wasn't even supposed to say it out loud - a packet of Dr White's Number Two. I expect there are quite a few who don't remember these horrors since they were being phased out in favour of stick-ons by the time I'd needed them myself for a year or two. They were sanitary towels with a loop at either end which you kept in place with a sanitary belt round your waist. A big improvement on the arrangements Victorian women had to put up with no doubt, but still not the kind of thing that would send a girl rushing eagerly into womanhood

Chickenopolis

jackieb wrote: »

Wasn't the fudge stuff called Ayds? It seemed to disappear around 1984. Strange that.

Hi Jackieb- My Aunt probably ate it all !

luxor4t

Did anybody else have:

• sides-to-middle sheets?
• flannels made from worn towels?
• trousers cut down into shorts?
• clothes made from 'old aunty' dresses?
• new-to-you clothes from the kids up the road, that got passed to smaller siblings then handed on again?
• tins of odd nails, screws, hooks etc that 'might come in useful'?
• crocheted blankets /cushions made from oddments of wool?
• hooked rugs made from odds & ends with no design
• 'round the house' clothes? (adults & children)
• aprons to wear over 'good' clothes?
• furniture/rugs/wallpaper/curtains etc that clashed horribly but were 'too good' to change?