The Garden Fence - help and support in tough times

nursemaggie

Yes I remember having the pretty patterns of the ice on the windows all through the winter. That's one thing you can't describe to modern kids.

I've been looking at wall paper again today lots of new stuff in. Hopefully I can get DS to come with me tomorrow. If I only have a short time left I don't want to leave him with one he hates.

monna You started this talking about the cold. Is that why it has turned cold again today. I have not had to put the heater on this early for a few weeks.

Floss

As a spring '64 baby, i can't remember that winter! However I do remember the winter of 1968/69? with snowdrifts taller than me!

Also remember the early '70s three-day weeks, when I was on part-time school, and our living room coal fire was the cooker & heat in candlelight.

Living_proof

nannywindow wrote: »

Monagran I love your stories. You made me remember '63 ! My mother would take me to school everyday through "corridors" made in the snow drifts, that were almost as tall as me ! ( I had just started juniors) and every day for 6 weeks we were sent back home because the school boiler wouldn't light, so no heating and the outside toilets were frozen. Also the lunch canteen. about 5 mins walk away from school, was cut off completely. The only heating in our house was a coal fire in the living room and you woke every morning with ice on the inside of the bedroom window. Ahhh those were the days:rotfl:. Can't remember anything about how we managed to get any food shopping because there were no buses and we didn't have a car.

The butcher's boy? The bread van? Corona van? God knows why are teeth are so bad these days! I too have thought long and hard as to how we managed, but the only things we actually carried back from the shops ( a couple of miles in each direction) was fish and knitting wool. Packs of Picadilly tipped and once a year, fireworks!

mardatha

Our nearest shop was a 2 mile walk, it was the Co-op, over the road from the Miners Institute. All I can remember buying for my mum was mince and tatties, and carrying them home up that steep hill. They had the cage bird shows in the Institute, my dad was always trying to win rosettes with his budgies.

Living_proof

We had the equivalent of online shopping, only different. We would walk to the shops, order our goods and wait for the corresponding delivery van to turn up at the house with it. There were monthly accounts and everyone was extremely punctual in paying them up. That was before credit cards.

meanmarie

1963.......I can still remember trying not to fall on frozen footpaths on the 1 mile walk from my bus to college....didnt help that I was wearing my black suede boots with 3 inch heels and purple satin lining that I had gone without lunch for 2 weeks to buy! In 1963 I wouldnt be seen dead in flat shoes.......they were for nuns and old ladies!

Marie

THIRZAH

We had most of our shopping delivered in the 50s and 60s. The baker came three times a week and the milkman every day.The butcher also delivered. My mother's weekly grocery order would be delivered on a Friday. It fitted into a fairly small cardboard box. If she'd ordered soap powder it would be wrapped in newspaper.

The Corona van came once a week but we only had two small-probably about 75cl?-bottles a week between three of us. After that it was back to orange squash.

We grew all our own veg and the only fruit we had was home grown except for a tin of fruit for tea on Sundays and tangerines at Christmas..It was lovely in the summer when the soft fruit was in season. Later we had plums then apples and pears. They lasted until about Christmas.Then it was bottled fruit until the rhubarb was ready.

[Deleted User]

I think that teeth today being in such a bad state is mainly because people graze their way through the day, there is always something being chewed and as a result people have their teeth under acid attack for most of the waking hours. When we were small it was set mealtimes and very little snacking between meals, certainly not all the confectionery. crisps, fizzy drinks that are the norm these days the most we got was a home made bun or an apple. The income also didn't leave the slack in the system to buy food for meals as well as all the 'goodies'.

monnagran

In the early fifties I had a Saturday job in an 'Open All hours' shop owned by good friends ours. We sold everything from paraffin to cream buns. Customers all had an order book, a red cash book as I remember. Each week they would hand in their book and I would labour in the back store room to pack everything into cardboard boxes ready for the owner to deliver the orders in his temperamental old van. Well, it was one step up from oojamaflick's (his name escapes me atm) squeaky bicycle.

Unlike online shopping, we knew our customers so well that substituting things was no problem. If we didn't have Digestive biscuits for Mrs Jones it was no good sending Ginger Nuts because they would be for Grandad and he has no teeth, that sort of thing.

If a family had fallen on hard times there was often an unexplained reduction in some of the items or a couple of extra things put in that just 'happened' to have been left over. If some sadness or illness occurred, a bag of sweets, bar of chocolate or a few oranges for the children would find their way into the box.
As a young girl it was a lesson in human relationships for which I have always been grateful.

Perhaps this is what is missing in modern life, the personal touch. A computer can't get its enormous brain round the fact that Mr Brown has lost his job so don't hassle for payment, they are good people and will catch up when they can.

And that is enough philosophical ramblings for this hour of the morning. Apologies.

x

(Granville. That's the name I was scrabbling for. Granville.)

THIRZAH

Monnagran's last post has reminded me of a Saturday job I had in the late 1960s /early 1970s. I worked with the local baker on his van delivering bread. One of my customers was an elderly man in his nineties. The baker's wife told me to always put a couple of cakes in a paper bag and leave them on his table but not to charge him for them.

He lived in a very small cottage -no electricity-he used oil lamps and seemed to do all his cooking over an open fire.