The Garden Fence - proper Old Style support and chat!

MrsCD

Ming, your biscuit recipe looks like the Viennese swirls recipe. It makes a very crumbly, buttery biscuit. If you increase your sugar to the same as butter,  and double the flour to butter, it should come out like a regular biscuit,  but not as buttery.

mehefin

Polly my late Mum was from Stockton Heath ( a part of Warrington) and worked in Manchester during the war at the electicity company as a a comptometer operator. She had many stories of travelling during the blackout etc
After marrying during the was she became unemployed ( married women were not allowed!!) Postwar she moved to south wales with my father and settled here. We often went up to see our rellies in Lancashire as it was then. Steam trains via Crewe and little boys taking engine numbers! later by car of course.
Loved going to the swing bridge if some big ship was coming up the canal. On one occasion we were too late getting off and had to stay on as the bridge swung to let the ship through, a scary but exciting experience for a little boy.
Saw the Liver building many times but sadly only from outside and several trips "across the Mersey" to New Brighton on the Daffodil?
Your anecdotes invoke so many memories. Thank you xx
Mehefin

pollyanna_26

MrsCD said:

Ming, your biscuit recipe looks like the Viennese swirls recipe. It makes a very crumbly, buttery biscuit. If you increase your sugar to the same as butter,  and double the flour to butter, it should come out like a regular biscuit,  but not as buttery.

I've just remembered the Viennese recipe I used to use.

There was a bakery in this area with a number of shops. Another of the generations of the same fmily ones.

Slightly dearer than normal but when DS was a baby and I was living near my cousin long before moving house we would treat ourselves to one of the litle pot=rrk pies and a cake. I loved chocolate japs- short for Japonaise I think but also the Varius Viennese cakes. The owner was very helpful when I tolm I;d tried to make the Viennese cake . He winked and said have you ever tried cornflour or maybe icing sugar?

I treid the cornflour and it worked.

It wasn't too c rumbly but your adaptations may be perfect for Mar..

Apologies for Typos. Hands aren't behaving well and the keypad keeps sticking.

Mentioned it to youngest esrlier in an email and yes the  fibro and arthritis don't help. I;ve relied on Autocorrect over the last 2 years foggy brain and pain.

She's been a tech whizz since very young Whereas I was dragged kicking and screming to something I never thought I needed.

She has helped over the years

I've spent the last two years trying to figure some things out myself but she gives me a long list of all the places not to look. I'm not an idiot but it's bit offputting.

She;s going to go through autocorrect wuth me when I see her in a few days.

I have often wondered if other mums have ever woken up to a very large cash deposit in their account. And a phone message from eldest dd .Go out and buy a top of the range laptop but you have to teach yourself how to use it!

Think I read all thr over 40s 50s 60s and other guides. I found a beautiful dell half price. Youngest took pity on me showed me how to turn it on

She began to hlp but I think there's bit of Dell still lurking in the MSE ether for those on the Toughrer Thread. Sorry I haven;t posted messed something up on the Dell.Nuatha tried to help but apart from a few problems it wasn't the Dell. I didn't have backgroung knoeledge and used to get stressed and forget  what I was supposed to do/

It lasted many years and I was sad when it stopped working dds boyfriend fiitted a new hard drive twice and it carried on for a number of years. When it was still on W7 he couldn't do anymore

He found a temporary refurb he installed W7 on . I then got used to other Windows and Laptops. Still miss my shiny black dell thouugh. This one new last Autumn is nice.

I just think eldest dd took the wrong approach with you have to  teach yourself. I had a history of unplugging desktops and laptops when their owners were I out thinking I was saving electricity. I was brought up never to leave things plugged in.

They'/d  come home. Mum it was doing an update . Security check or some other thing.

The books went to our local hospice charity shop and I hoped someone might be helped by them. Oddlythe only really useful info I read was in a book written by someone in America.

Don;t be afrapd of it you can't break it gave me confidence.

I remembered that when I dropped a few months old laptop down the stairs followed by myself clutiching a glass of water. Total write off.

I am treating this new one very carefully having felt the fear already.

Past my bedtime. I finished the last of the 3 day Cocodamol course after not sleeping for ages last night. Did get some sleep and hoping tiredness will send me to sleep now

pollyx

pollyanna_26

mehefin said:

Polly my late Mum was from Stockton Heath ( a part of Warrington) and worked in Manchester during the war at the electicity company as a a comptometer operator. She had many stories of travelling during the blackout etc
After marrying during the was she became unemployed ( married women were not allowed!!) Postwar she moved to south wales with my father and settled here. We often went up to see our rellies in Lancashire as it was then. Steam trains via Crewe and little boys taking engine numbers! later by car of course.
Loved going to the swing bridge if some big ship was coming up the canal. On one occasion we were too late getting off and had to stay on as the bridge swung to let the ship through, a scary but exciting experience for a little boy.
Saw the Liver building many times but sadly only from outside and several trips "across the Mersey" to New Brighton on the Daffodil?
Your anecdotes invoke so many memories. Thank you xx
Mehefin

Thank you Mehefin I love listening to peoples memoties and was always interested in socail  history. I missed your post when I posterd after it.

I always regretted choosing English Literaure rather than Social History for my main subject. I love books but we learn a lot from the past.

I've found over the last two years I've had more headspace than I've ever had since my youngest dd ECV went to shield with her boyfreind . She wouldn't have coped wthout him or the two now adult cats they rescued as tiny underfed frightened kittens about to be abandoned by the uncaring man off abroad to find himself a wife.

He lived a long way away but dd said bring them and we'll give them a home and they're older now no longer afraid and the brother has stopped foraging for food for his smaller sister and himself knowing there always is food,love and cuddles.

I lived near the Leeds Liverpool canal in the 60s it was just a few minutes away.

Somewhere on the threads there is the story of an eccentric friend in my teens who collected old classic cars and motorbikes which he gradually restored to their former condition. Problem was he could never part with them. He had a lovely Ausin Healey Sptite and others in pristine condition and many big british built bikes.

We used to meet up at his large detached home. His father was equally eccentric with lots of wild projects,

His poor mum a lovely little Yorkshire woman very houseproud was driven to despair " How can I clean your room when there's half a Francis Barnett jammed under your bed?

Same with the husband who decided he was going to build a boat. Not a little one but one that would take us all the way to Cheshir  along the canal.

 he decided to build it on the front drive and as it grew bigger and bigger blocked the postman and milkman and attracted onlookers.

When he finished he discovered he was unble to tranfes it to a trailer on the road outside to take it for a test run. He had to pay for heavy lifting to ease it over the garden wall then on to the trailer.

We girls were banned by our mums from going on the first shortish test run. The dad son and boys returned triumphant after a short test run. We girls had to wait until the long hot summer for our first trip. Don;t thnk any of us mentioned Cheshire it was a long way away and we wouldn't have been allowed to go.

He'd built a proper cabin with a roof and we girls sat on the roof waving to other boaters and pasxers by on a hot sunny day. In  cold weather I often remember that perfect day . We made it to Lymm and were so late getting home we were about to be reported missing.

The son asked me to marry him on my 16th birthday but I had an education to finish and plans for a future career which my mum was to disrupt for a while until I left the Inland Revenue and Minerva  and the liver buildings behind.

Memories have come flooding back in the last couple of years. My family believed in knowing your roots and the family history and I learned it all the way from the Two sets of Irish grandparents and the famine which brought them to Merseyside though my mums parents went on steerage to New York. After they clearsd Ellis Island Grandma decided she;d changed her mind and wanted to go back to Liiverpool. When they docked at New York Grandad had to find work to pay for their passage back and they returned steerage in the bowels of the ship again.

I went to look at those conditions in the information in the Picton Library. people jammed in like sardines. no privacy or toiltets etc/ my maternal Grandmother never discussed things like the other granparens aunts and uncles. She was very reserved and qiute prim and proper , She was born a lady who was taught fine embroidery and watercolour painting. granded the educated under a hedge stable groom on her fathers estate,

They eloped and fiound a patch of land to grow fruit veg and keep goats and chickens on until one day the land was taken off them and they took the boat to Liverpool then ew York and back They found a tiny 2 up 2 down slum near the docks where grandad could find work.

I used to look at her when she visited us . She always kept her hat on and held her gloves in her lap. I'd heard from my mum how she raised 8 children in that tiny house feeding them as well as she could and scoured the markets buying used clothing she would turn in to coats and other clothes for all the family I never understood how she did it,

Years later I read a book by Maud Pembber Reeves The Knowledge about a survey carried out in a poor area of London. Incomes were very low and a portion was spent  each week on death insurance for children as infant  mortality rates were high.

One family stood out. They didn't pay the insurance for childrens early deaths, the children were healthy well clothed and fed .

Those running the survey looked cloely at that family. The mother had been in service, learned about nutriton and how to cook healthy food , balance a budget and real life skills . The family didn;t need the Insurance as the children were fit and healthy. The conclusion was she had The Knowledge and that made the difference.

I often wondered if my educated by nuns at home  to embrider, paint and learn the skills of a future wife for a rich man my grandma had watched the staff instead and taught herself to cook, remake old clothes to clothe a future family when she fell in love with the humble stable groom.

I have done a lot of thinking over the last two years where was I after the ambulance men took ny seven year old disabled brother  to  hospital and I knew i would never see him again although I was only about 3 years old . The memories stopped after that day until I found myself on a strange street with tables down the centre with plates of food and jellies. I was outside a house I'Dd never seen before being told this was my new home, Where were my dad and grandads gardens and allotment where they were teaching me about growing things . It took a long time to find the answer where I had been from that last day in the prefab waving goodbye to my bother and finding myself somewhere very different.

The answer finally came with the help of my favourite cousin I;d spent a lot of time with when we were both new mums living near each other, She didn't have the answer but her much older sister had sailed from Liverpool on one of the £10 passages to Australia the day after her wedding many years ago and it turned out she'd logged researched and written down all the details of a large extended family.

She contacted me and confirmed my brother never came home but died that day. My mum was devestated but we were told never to speak of it.

I remember my favourite auntie saying that. There was a little picture in a frame on the mantlepice in the two houses we lived in after the prefab. He was sitting in his wheelchair with the lopsided grin I remembered, Mum never mentioned it but I would whisper hello Tom.

I'd spent the time afterwards sometimes with my favourite auntie mums yungest sister and also her oldest sister her husband and adopted son born the day ufter I was . There were photos of both of us on our first three wheeler tricycles taken in a garden , I could never work out if that was our back garden at our prefab or aunties at their prefab and found it was aunties

I've rambled on again but you hae reminded me I started a thread last year responed to some posts then forgot I'd started it , I will have to go back there.

It's actually called Goin' Back inspired by the memory of Dusty Springfield singing Goin' Back  i started  the thread to be about the things we learred so well in our youth.

Ordered the CD started the thread then was distracted by other events.

I seem to have written a small book but I always enjoy reading your posts.

pollyx

annieb64

We visited Liverpool a couple of years ago and walked down to the Albert Dock. It was still windy but it was interesting to see how much the area had changed.

MrsCD

Polly, I've just spent the astronomical amount of £1.51 for Mrs Pember Reeves' book on kindle. It looks like an interesting read. Thanks for the heads up. 

pollyanna_26

I've been trying to get to sleep waiting to see if this flare will die down. I've just realised I gave the wrong tile for the book. The title is "Round about a pound a week" the subject is the knowledge. i hope you realised that before splashing out with your astronomical amount of £1.51.I bought the book quite a while ago and had to pay more but did find it very interesting I'd read about life in the North but not the South.

Watching Call the Midwife did show poverty and deprivation over the years but the book seemed more detailed.

pollyx

burtha

morning everyone,  
hope you've all had a nice weekend. 
fingers crossed the weather will be warm this coming week. 
x 

MrsCD

Yes, polly, I bought the right one! I looked at the write up and thought it must be the one you mentioned.😊

MrsCD

We had a Tom and Barbara moment last night. We were both sitting half asleep so decided to go to bed a good hour and a half earlier than usual. We woke at 1.30 convinced we'd been asleep for hours!