Easier to be OS in the olden days?

Bathory

The best Christmas tree we ever had (around 1977/78) came free from where a lot of holly grew. It was a very large branch around 5ft tall and loaded with berries. There was no need to decorate the thing as it stood in the corner in all its own natural glory. I usually only got one gift growing up - the best been a Basil Brush puppet that said he loved jelly babies when you pulled the cord.

Does anyone remember the Blue Peter Advent Crown? Nice to watch but doubt anyone watching would put 2 wire hangers together with tinsel and light candles at each corner.

candlelight_2013

Bathory, I don't think Health and Safety would allow that now

Candlelightx

[Deleted User]

Oh yes I do remember the post office sets with the stamp and ink pad, such fun and cowboy outfits and cap guns with rolls of caps and if you were really lucky a cowboy hat too. We played cowboys and indians up and down the back alleys between the houses with cap guns and those little bows and arrows with the rubber suckers on the end all those long summers evenings ambushing one another and getting cross when we were called in to tea. I remember getting I think it was a 'Bagatelle' a square board that hung on the wall with hooks set into it and rubber hoops to throw at it to score points. We had simple toys in the main skipping ropes, rubber/sorbo balls, jacks, fivestones, hopscotch drawn with chalk on the paving stones and as has been said those roller skates that strapped on to your feet over your shoes. Best fun was having someones old clothes line and having as many as 10 of us skipping together across the road outside our house, no traffic and perfectly safe and so much fun!!! I suspect we had more fun because we played with real live children rather than sitting in a room playing either the computer or someone else in another room somewhere else and that delicious feeling of being free and out and away from parental control is completely lost these days because it's not safe but also because we ALL carry mobile phones and are contactable wherever and whenever we are.

Talking about Cinderella watches when I was very small, I must have been 5 or 6 ish I got a clockwork Cinderella doll, dressed in a blue dress the same as the one from the Disney film that you wound up and she pirouetted around on the table, Oh how I loved that doll.

kerri_gt

115K wrote: »

I was thinking this exact thing about Christmas today. I bought two packs of Twiglets to go in my store cupboard and it reminded me of my Mum, my Nan and My Gran all having the Christmas goodies stocked up in the weeks before Christmas. I always buy my hubbie Matchmakers at Christmas even though I don't buy them at any other time of year.:rotfl:

Ahhh, matchmakers, after eights and Black Magic . Oddly enough I was just making the christmas food list today - must start getting a few bits and bobs - but not too many, there's only so much one can consume in one day and they'll all be reduced after xmas :money::rotfl:

Bathory wrote: »

The best Christmas tree we ever had (around 1977/78) came free from where a lot of holly grew. It was a very large branch around 5ft tall and loaded with berries. There was no need to decorate the thing as it stood in the corner in all its own natural glory. I usually only got one gift growing up - the best been a Basil Brush puppet that said he loved jelly babies when you pulled the cord.

Does anyone remember the Blue Peter Advent Crown? Nice to watch but doubt anyone watching would put 2 wire hangers together with tinsel and light candles at each corner.

candlelight_2013 wrote: »

Bathory, I don't think Health and Safety would allow that now

Candlelightx

I remember my mum's face of horror every year when that appeared keeping her fingers crossed I wasn't taking notes. Am i imagining it or did it actually catch fire one year?

candlelight_2013

Kerri I think you may be right there

Candlelightx

meritaten

I am going to make you all jealous now!
before my brother was born I was the only grandchild and had loads of uncles and aunts - and was spoilt rotten at Christmas! none of this 'only one present' for me!
Even my mums best friend who had emigrated to Canada and at that time lived in Quebec, used to send me a present! the year I came out of hospital she sent me this amazing gift - it was a little replica oven and the thing ran on batteries and the electric plates glowed red, and the oven did too. We had never seen anything like it! it also came with a cake tin and packets of cake 'mix'. with names like 'chocolate brownies'. (which I thought had something to do with girl guides). real mixes too, I used to mix them up and nan cooked them for me. Sadly, after bro was born she had children of her own and the gifts stopped coming (something else to hate my bro for! just kidding!)

actually I think that was the year that the 'bargain' Christmas tree mum had bought the weekend before, shed ALL its needles by Christmas eve! she chucked it and bought an artificial one in the sales - I don't think we ever had a real tree after that!

PenniesMake£s

I am really enjoying reading all of your stories and memories. I feel very motivated to pare back the excess stuff and make life a bit simpler. Think I will start with the children's clothes, my middle child only likes about 2 of the outfits in her wardrobe and makes a fuss when I tell her she needs to wear something else, maybe I should just let her wear her favourites and put the rest away. My eldest pulls out an entire fresh uniform for school everyday and on closer inspection I did realise that her school dress/pinafore is still clean from Monday. I will be sneaking it back into the wardrobe and the pyjamas back into the drawers from now on;)

I will put a jug of water on the table at dinnertime instead of catering to everyone's drinks orders. We do all eat the same meal, if they don't like what I have made then that's it so the kids are good eaters thankfully.

I am going to stop having so much variety in the cupboards where food is concerned, for example cereals, drinks, snacks, jams, etc. I will buy one type of thing eg. strawberry jam OR lemon curd and when it is finished get something different.

I was born in 1978 and I don't remember being as demanding as my children are about how they want things to be. They are not at all spoiled materially, they never expect things bought for them if we are out at the shops for example but they are quite bossy about what cartoon they want to watch or what snack they want etc. They don't get away with it but the attitude/expectation is there because they know there is so much choice. We have so many children's tv channels/dvd s now, when I was growing up in the 80s the cartoons I watched after school were the same ones available to everyone. So after my homework was done I could watch tv until dinner was ready, maybe an hour. My 3 can't agree on one programme between them or understand why I would even want them to. My husband would happily get rid of the tv altogether but that's another story. I also didn't have as many clothes options as my children do and I'm sure I just wore whatever came to hand so I could get back to playing. Family life is very child centred these days I think and it makes the children feel like the decision makers. Eek!

lostinrates

Caterina wrote: »

I am fascinated by these stories, as I was born in Rome in 1957 to fairly well off parents, we always lived in apartments with every mod con available at the time. But I remember going with my mum to the local laundrette as washing machines were not something people had in their homes, until I was at least 6 or 7.

My gran had a Neapolitan woman called Maria who came in to do the laundry by hand in the sink.

In spite of being rather well off from both sides of the family, I know there was no waste. They had all gone through the war and suffered great hunger. My Aunt tells me how they cried for hunger when they were little and once my gran took so much pity on them that she used up all the weekly ration of "vegetina" (a sort of gruel) at once because they begged her, at least once, to fill their tummies. God knows how they managed afterwards. Even well off people were starving, because Rome was full of the nazis at the time, after the fascists, the terrible actions of Mussolini, who brought so much destruction to my beautiful country. The nazis requisitioned everything, if you did not let it go they'd shoot you, so money did not do you much good, as there just wasn't any food to buy.

My father's family fared much better because they lived in a small town in Sardinia and owned land, so there was a lot more to eat, and the nazis weren't so interested in inland Sardinia and left them relatively in peace.

But I remember when I was little, in my paternal Gran's farm, the farmer and his family lived in a handmade one storey house, they had sheep and the wife would use the sheeps wool to spin and weave and knit, they were almost 100% self sufficient! They had no electricity or gas, but acres and acres of woodland for firewood, and sheep fat for lamps. I remember the older son, once, saying that all they bought was salt and matches, but otherwise they had everything on the land. They were happy in their own way and the farmer and his wife lived to a very ripe old age. Hard work, healthy living and no fripperies I suppose. I regret that my father sold them the farm after my gran died as I wanted to live there myself. But it was not meant to be.

My father was always a stickler for saving water, coming from a place where water was scarce in the summer, so I have inherited this trait from him, I am always mindful of water waste and get irritated inside when I see someone run a tap to waste.

All this makes me realise that even better off people in the olden days were more frugal and conserved their resources in a much wiser way. I am glad I have inherited these traits and picked them up unconsciously in my childhood, because they served me well in older years. I was never, and never will be, as financially well off as my parents were, but I have a wealth of skills and resourcefulness that I have inherited from them and from my grannies and aunties.

One thing that nobody has mentioned in this thread is peak oil! The way we are going, it might be once again necessary to live in a less technologically minded society. So we OSers are one step ahead already.

My mother, who I mentioned earlier, arrived in uk in the sixties, left a hardworking family who had lots staff , several business and farms. The family all believed, as I have been taught, that you don't ask an employee ( they might have used a less politically core to word ) something you are not prepared to do yourself. That employment was a good thing, but was not an opportunity to disrespect people, even if you expected respect and loyalty, or maybe especially so.

Through the war they were lucky, there were losses , human especially, but the family were able to help others and that was appreciated in the community.

Like many families, in the main the wealth has dissipated now..poor investments, the lazy ones of lived buy selling off things .....


Dh's paternal family were well of pre war certainly. In the war there were HUGE losses, in German, Polish, Italian parts of the family particularly. Some had to flee with what they could carry. Some didn't flee in time. In the uk, the branch of the family that we would see as well off but were considered the ' less well off branch' expanded to take in cousins and aunts and so on.

They remained comfortable financially, but socially it was harder than it had been I understand.

In the sixties. Dh's grandfather still ran two cars and chauffeurs, I don't remember what DH told me about domestic staff. In the eighties there were two cars still but only one driver.


From talking to in laws the menus were FAR more modest than average meals today. And my fil and his sibling were state educated. Must have made, just like now, some difference in costs, those choices.


Nowadays my fil and his wife eat at restaurants or friends houses almost every single night of the week. Neither like to cook, but both like to eat well! I sometimes wonder at the modest meals he had as a child and the impact they might have had.

anakat

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

Talking about Cinderella watches when I was very small, I must have been 5 or 6 ish I got a clockwork Cinderella doll, dressed in a blue dress the same as the one from the Disney film that you wound up and she pirouetted around on the table, Oh how I loved that doll.

Nice to see some-else remembered these
I still have mine

[Deleted User]

WOW!!! that's the one ANAKAT fancy you still having it today, thank you so much for the picture straight back in my head to being little, Lyn xxx.