Ask yer Granny!

meritaten

now come on sproggi! you know that 'flitted' meant doing a 'moonlight flit'!!!!!!!!!
that meant vanishing overnight leaving rent owing!!! lmao still a popular activity today!

sproggi

meritaten wrote: »

now come on sproggi! you know that 'flitted' meant doing a 'moonlight flit'!!!!!!!!!
that meant vanishing overnight leaving rent owing!!! lmao still a popular activity today!

:rotfl::T

Yep, heard it many a time, usually when my great aunt's name was mentioned.
Moonlight flit = GA has moved again:D
Although 'flitted around' was the term often used when the adults were talking about the woman 'of loose morals) down the road

Sproggi

prepareathome

WeegieWumman wrote: »

I remember my mother taking me to the Co-op grocers for the 'weekend messages' and we had the food ration books with us. The only jams they seemed to sell were Mixed Fruit and Apple Jelly. I loved syrup on my bread. Tea was delivered to the shop in tea chests, and like sugar, lentils, barley etc. the staff weighed and packed it into strong paper bags for the customers. A huge block of cheese sat on a marble counter and was cut and weighed as required.

.

Oh gosh that brings back such memories - we had a shop called Cochranes and it had two big counters, down two sides with the cold things like meats, cheese, butter served on one and the dry goods at the other - you would go to each counter in turn and watch them take the butter from its barrel on the marble counter, pat it into shape with wooden paddles then wrap it up in greeceproof paper, then tea was carefully measured out and laid on paper which was twisted into a poke ( a poke of tea was a quarter pound of loose tea, a poke of sugar the same) I used to watch in amazement how they twisted the paper into the poke yet never once dropped any of the tea or sugar. You could buy oil by the bottle, but the canny wives always took along their own bottles and carefully watched the oil poured into it, making sure it went up to the mark they knew was a pint or whatever.

We lived in a tenement on the first landing, and above us was an elderly lady with her servant, even older than her. She lived in genteel poverty with her drawing room ( our living room) and her dinning room - it had been her companions bedroom but she died before I was born and by then I found out later she did not have the money to employ both a companion and servant and servant was more important as she could not cook etc ( our bedroom - a tiny room in which 5 of us slept) and her servant slept in the sleeping area in the kitchen ( where we had our dining table). These tenements had been built in early 1800's for the well to do young men and ladies of a certain age who could live without with inside bathrooms ( I remember the old roll top bath with its claw feet and one cold water tap and the sink was awash with lacy ironwork, and the cistern over the toilet used to scare the life out of me as a youngster it made so much noise - if I got up to go at night I never ever pulled the chain it scared me so much that noise.

So there was us 7 in one flat and Miss Smillie ( a lovely lady, I used to go errands for her and she would give me a book, many of which I still have and will never part with) us the modern family and she one of the last of the Edwardian age, she still worn the long dresses that were popular in her youth. She had a photo of a young man in old fashioned uniform, cannot remember which branch of the forces now, I can only presume he died in WW1. It was like stepping into another world going into her flat - she had a radio but no tv, gosh have not thought about her for many years. When I moved out for work, I kept in touch and visited when home and when she moved into an old people home, where she was not happy as they were not her type of people but she lived on till early 80's and she must have been over 100 as she showed me her photo of being presented to Queen Victoria. I wonder what happened to all her photos as I know she had no family left, as she told me all her family had died by the early 1920's ( spanish flu I wonder, got me thinking now what else she told me and I have forgotten). I did not appreciate then what she could have taught me about the past then.

Memories............:)

sproggi

I can remember my granddad knocking nails into a wooden cotten reel so that I could do some french knitting.
He was the one that taught us 'constantinople', the making squares from dots game and dominos and whenever I smell tomato leaves or see cabbage white eggs on cabbage leaves, I am reminded of him and the times I spent with him in his veg patch at the bottom of the garden.
Nana taught me to sew and to appriciate the simple things in life.
Between them one christmas, they made my brother a wooden fort with removable turrets, my little sister a dolls house and a fur womble and for me it was a wooden sewing box with pink padding, my name painted on top and compartments full of needles,pins,cottons etc. and a pink ballet tutu, we all felt so spoilt.

My other nan taught me to knit, how to savour a few squares of chocolate so that it would last rather than rush it down and how to make little hanging tree decorations by folding pieces of the purple chocolate foil.

Sproggi

suzybloo

Ha Weegie, do you remember the divi number when you went to the co-op, you were always shouted at to mind the divi! I have got to admit our divi number is a number I use to this day for i.d. numbers. My granny always used the Co-opy van that came round and like Mardatha says went out wi her tiger eye tartan baffies and wrapround pinnie on carrying her tartan message bag! She used the divi to buy winter clothing and shoes or new linen.

WeegieWumman

When I was a child there were few fridges, therefore a Saturday morning visit to the butchers, dairy and bakers was mandatory. In the afternoon the cinemas would be full of children attending the 'matinee'. At the end of a cowboy film, the boys poured out onto the street shouting "Bang! You're dead!" and pretending their index fingers were guns.
I lived on a main street which was crammed with small shops where each shopkeeper knew every member of your family. We lived in a flat the top floor of a tenement in the 'good' end of the street in a working class area. Apart from when she got out of bed in the morning, I never once saw my mother without her make-up. I always loved the smell of her M*x F*ctor. Other than smart summer sandals she never went outside without very high heels. Appearance was everything and I think she invented the word 'houseproud.'

hollydays

I remember how people never threw away old clothes,but cut out the zips,etc.
Grandmas button box kept me absorbed for many hours,it was like a treasure chest to me.

WeegieWumman

Suzybloo,
Of course I remember the co-op divi number and still use it for i.d. purposes. It's imprinted on my brain. To forget it would have resulted in an early death at the hands of an irate mother. We had a large Co-op department store right beside us. The Co-op also had free convalescent homes for their members.
In the 80's I also discovered that they rented out residential properties. They weren't great landlords.

mardatha

Well we said "flit" for a move. But a few folk did moonlight ones as well
My mum was always in hospital or the convalescent home Weegie. She grew up in Twechar and her wee brother, aged 7, was killed by a tram in Shettleston.
Does anybody else remember Finnan Haddies?
Which brings to mind one of my mums daft sayings. If you were showing off then you were "posing like a haddie". I used to always wonder how a fish managed to pose.. Another one was "get that face aff yer face"
And the perennial favourite - "stop that greetin or I'll gie yer something tae greet FUR" :rotfl:

ginnyknit

Finnan haddies - they were huge pieces of fish. legend has it that OH's elderley aunt had a dog fed totally on Finnan haddie liquor - considering he was an old English sheepdog Im guessing he had a bit more food than that.

I remember the corner shop we lived in had huge blocks of cheese and bacon you had to cut - those were the days eh? My Auntie Hilda Bailey next door was in her 80's and spent all day sewing knickers out of 'fents' of fabric, huge silky knickers with the elastic in a channel. I used to spend hours playing with her bobbins of cotton.

this thread has brought back a lot of happy memories before my parents went bankrupt and all my toys got taken. i didnt really know anything about it and lived in ignorant bliss BUT really appreciated what I had after that. One Christmas all I got was a doll- but what a doll - 36'' tall off my Auntie who was a manageress of Woolworths. I still have that doll and a few years ago a matching one came in the CS I was working at. Randomly it came in on my day off and OH was going past on the bus, saw it in the window, phoned my manager and went back later and picked the doll up. The door bell rang and when I went out stood on the step was the doll- at one point the 2 dolls were worth £300 each but now are not worth much at all to anyone but me and my daughter.