Goin' Back

pollyanna_26

Chatting online last night with a fellow OSer who has become a valued friend I was reminded of the Dusty Springfield song from 1979 Goin' Back.

We both have chronic health problems and are also carers for family with seroius health problems.

The pandemic has made things very difficult and my friend also mentioned sharp price increses in food and Utility charges she's noticed this past week.

I was born 1948 af few years after WW2 and a few days before the free NHS so mum and dad had to pay ther Dr and Midwife who attended the home birth.

I was lucky to be taught how to cook from scratch, knit ,sew and budget . My youngest and favourite auntie taught me diy includimg how to plaster a wall which seemed odd as I couldn;t imagine ever needing to know. Decades later I found myself repairing and plastering walls after toxic second husband was finally ordered by the Court to move at least 20 miles away and never come near us again under an enduring power of arrest and the threat of prison.

I'm wondering in these difficult times anyone is interested in Goin' Back to the things that helped get through tough times over the years. I got my first chest freezer in the 70s and batch cooking and freezing kept us well fed on a small budget. Also always had a Combi Microwave since the 80s and batch cooked or rustled up quick soups or jacket potatoes in them.

I value my OS upbringing and with price rises now will be increasing my efforts. We're living in a strange time now but will get through by taking care and looking out for others.

Dusty left the world far too young but I never forgot Goin' Back and now seems the right time to Go Back.

pollyx

Hard_Up_Hester

I was born in 1951 so I'm close to you in age. My grandparents paid for my mum to give birth to me in a private nursing home, possible because of my mother's hospital phobia.

I didn't have an OS upbringing my mother wasn't interested in cooking though she could knit and sew.

What OS skills I have are self taught, I married in 1976 and had four children, we bought our first home in 1975, we had times when our mortgage rate soared to 17%, we also moved from Bristol to Berkshire for work and the cost of living soared.

I've always been an avid reader and belonged to my nearest library. I borrowed books on wartime cooking and make do and mend, my husband took up gardening and grew lots of vegetables, he pretty soon gave up but it helped for a  couple of years.

For many years I didn't have a functioning kitchen, just a cooker but no cupboards or work surfaces. I had a pressure cooker which was a god send especially for cooking pulses and making stews without using too much fuel.

These days I live on a boat with my second husband we have a multifuel stove and I cook on it a couple of times a week.in the winter. Food is brought to the boil on the job and then moved to the stove top  to simmer all day.

pollyanna_26

Hester I've always admired how you rose above tough times in your life however difficult. I was lucky growing up but not everyone is. I bought this house in 1975 after living in council housing sll my life until then. We neeed a new start after my first husband died much too young.

I knew very little about buying a house. These were new builds and the salesman who had an office at the end of the road turned out to be not the nice helpful man he pretended to be. We were all young first time buyers and later discovered he;d convinced everyone of us to take on an endowment mortgage through him to save us a lot of time and effort finding a mortgage. He arranged them all with one building society and we all thought him very helpful.

The soaring interest rates hit us all and big savings needed to be made in all other areas to keep the roof over our heads;

The sales man was supposed to be working on behalf of the builder and selling homes not mortgages. One neighbour did some research and discovered he was also working for one building society in the area, The endowment payments were a real struggle on top of the monthly mortgage payments and that "nice man " walked away scot free,

A month before the new millenium I made my last payment and breathed a sigh of relief,

Never heard of him again and complaints were ignored. Local opinion was may he rot in hell. He'd done something illegal and got off scot free. We used to wonder if he;d moved on to another new site.

You've been through tough times Hester but have got through and I always enjoyed your posts. Quite envious of life on a boat but I'm aware it has it;s ups and downs. Lovely in summer when you can travel away but not so much in winter. I'm glad you have the mulifuel stove now and Beono who seems good company and gets you out and about.

Love to you and yours , I hope they're al ok.

pollyx

pollyanna_26

Reading your post again has me thinking Hester I had a pressure cooker for a couple of decades but didn't get another when the last one failed. I used to bulk cook stews etc and freeze and as you say they're great for pulses and many other things. I'm living alone now. Youngest dd moved in with her boyfriend late Feb last year when Dr rang to tell her to shield as she's ECV.

She would not have coped without her boyfriend and the two cats they rescued  as terriifed half starved little kittens about to be abandoned outdoors by their owner who was off abroad to find himself a wife- I've often thought Gawd help her if he did!

So dd spotted him on FB asking if anyone wanted them.

He lived a long way away so she said if you'll bring them here we'll have them. So he did and two skinny terrified kittens arrived. The man was telling her he often went abroad leaving them outside to wander and find something to eat. They're brother and sister and wouldn't eat the brother used to go out and find food for them both always giving some to his little sister first. It was mayhem for a long time once he managed to pull a live seagul through  the cat flap and another time the remains of somones Sunday roast.

It took two years for them to realise they were safe and loved and they stopped hiding indoors. The first time one of them let me stroke him was lovely and now they rule the house/

pollyx

Hard_Up_Hester

I keep threatening to buy another pressure cooker but never get round to it Polly.

My children still cook some of the meals from their childhood, Hunt the Fish Pie is a particular favourite, so called because there was so little fish in it. A small chicken, roast on Monday, pie with ham/bacon and mushrooms on tuesday, the same pie filling served with pasta on Wednesday. Thursday it was Stoup, halfway between stew and soup, the carcass boiled and stripped leftover veg added along with pulses and pearl barley. I used to make all these on Sunday and store then in the fridge/freezer..

I was always known as the person to turn to if anyone needed a last minute fancy dress costume or  replacement school uniform. Sometimes I miss those days.

Pets are a great solace aren't they. I laughed at the thought of the kitten dragging a seagull through the catflap. One of my cats brought a mouse indoors and upstairs, she dropped it at my feet and it promptly ran up the inside of my nightdress!

I had many friends who had an endowment mortgage they were such a scam.

Now I've given up my car I'm mastering the art of getting to the bus stop in time for the bus, rather than just after, it's a 20 minute walk to the bus stop. I'm trying to catch the bus once a week so I see someone other than Steve. Last week DD1 took me Christmas shopping which was wonderful if exhausting.

pollyanna_26

I'm so glad you got to go Christmas shopping with your eldest Hester . A nice change for you and she must have been happy to have you to herself.

I used to start with a big stew or casserole and in following days it would morph in to a sheperds pie without the mince but with a topping of mash. then a pastry top for a pie.

I used to make and freeze fishcakes we had a good fishmonger in town who would sell bags od fish offcuts and they were good for fishcakes and russian fish pies made with puff pastry and very filling.  The indoor market was really good for good quality cheap veg from local growers. one of them sold very big baking potatoes which were a favourite with the potato scooped out mashed and grated red cheese added.  I used to serve rhem with veg from the freezer. One creation was toast topped with a mixture of grated cheese,chopped tomatoes and onions and grilled. I still eat that it's quick and easy when energy levels are low.

I've only had two dogs in my life Paddy when I was young. He was away with the mixer. Spent all day and night chasing his tail nand barking at some invisible object no one else couls see.  My mum was at screaning pitch and managed to convince the less acute of my two grandads also called Paddy that he'd be good company on the allotment and would deter thieves. So Paddy went to live with grandad and mum aquired a cat she namwd Timothy.We used to get told off for calling him Timmy being told firmly his name is Timothy.We ignored him from then on'

Dog no 2 arrived when DD1 wanted a dog and we ended up with a black lab Ben. I knew nothiing about Labradors but soon  learned  when Ben began to eat the house. I'd get home from work and door frames had been eaten,He then started on other things. The end came was youngest was a toddler just learning to walk. She wasn't born when we got him so not part of his pack.I caught him going towards her growling but a few days later I heard her scream in the kitchen and had her arm in his teeth and was growling. I got him off her and he turned on me so I pushed him into the back garden and phoned the RSPCA for advice.They told me any dog that attacked a child could never be rehomed and needed to PTS.

DD1 was furious and very upset. Ben stayed in the garage and eventually dd1 agreed but insisted she take him to the vet alone.  she came home hours later red eyed and carrying his collar and lead not speaking to me.

She has a red lab and dd2 has a chocolate lab both from breeders and greedy as labs are but no prpblem with children. Ben was a rescue so who knows what he;d been rescued from.

I became a cat lady always rescues as our RSPCA didn;t keep them long if they weren't rehomed quickly. My last cat and cat of my heart was Oliver found in a skip and named Skippy by the staff but renamed as we carried him home. He was a free spirit and loved watching Freddie Mercury on TV. He was hit by a hit and run driver and a neighbour brought  him home in tears everyone loved him and he'd visit them all each day. We haven't had another cat since. youngest made him a little headstone out of some recycled welsh slate we had and when she;d written his name and dates wrote underneath He was a Person . Well he was a character and could never be replaced. We reached a point where  we could imagine him in a sparkly catsuit dancing among the stars with his beloved Freddie.

He loved Christmas the bells on the tree and we'd hear him ringing them during the night. He has his own bell now with his name on it.

I get my cat fix now with the cats at dds. The gardens are huge there and they've been trained never to go near the road although big ginger Stimps visits his ladies in the nursing home next door by climbing over the back fence. The staff leave a door open for him now and he's spoilt rotten with the illegal at home dreamies. little Magrat Garilck aka Mags spends her days looking hopefully at birds in very tall trees and helping herself to shiny pretty things indoors just like her namesake in the Pratchett books. Youngest is always finding little stashes of her missing slides , jewellry etc.

pollyx

monnagran

I'm not going into my history, I've bored you often enough with that.  What I will say, is that you cannot have a better introduction to economic living than living with rationing and severe shortages for the first 15 years of your life.  Making everything stretch until it is screaming for help is second nature and never leaves you.
My inventive use of leftovers is legendary.  I still remember one of my sons in the seventies, poking at his plate and asking plaintively, "What did this use to be?"

Things were still fairly tight when I went to college in the fifties, but looking up.  We had coffee bars!
My friend and I were at college existing on a grant.  £30 pounds a year, I think it was.  I do remember pinching a handful of salt at the breakfast table and taking it back to brush my teeth with because I couldn't afford toothpaste. Another girl saw this and asked what on earth I was doing. My friend explained that we were both living on a grant and it didn't even cover our books and stationery, so luxuries like toothpaste were out of the question.  The girl, who came from a public school and an affluent background asked how much the grant was and when told gasped in horror and said that amount wouldn't keep her in perfume.

Things weren't much better when I started teaching.  I earned £29 a month and by the time I had paid for my freezing cold bed sit, fed my greedy electricity meter and bus fares there was very little left.  If it hadn't been for school dinners I may have starved.

I regret none of it.  However bad things get, I've learned survival skills that see me through.

I'm not telling you about my cats.  Every one took a piece of my heart with it.

thriftwizard

I wrote a great long piece about my upbringing (b. 1958) teens & early 20s, then realised it didn't actually say what I wanted it to. As most of you know, I'm a "vintage" market trader. And some of my regular customers have actually chosen to "live" in the 40s, 50s, 60s or 70s, i.e. their homes are full of authentic items, they wear (and often make for themselves) authentic clothes or scaled-up copies using authentic fabrics, they entertain themselves with books, games & making music, baking, knitting, dancing, gardening & tinkering with vintage cars, bakelite radios, etc. They meet up at vintage events, where they hunt for more vintage treasure, and no jumble sale stall remains unturned. (Lots of them won't even have a TV in the house, though almost all have a fridge and wouldn't remove double-glazing if their house happened to have it.) The interesting thing is, they all seem very happy with their choices, even though friends, family & neighbours all see them as "weird" and poke fun at them. We're not talking about elderly people who just haven't dragged themselves into the twenty-first century, but 20- & 30-somethings who've made a conscious choice to reject most of the trappings of modern life, and are happy with that. It's a bit of a fairy-tale existence; it doesn't include the many downsides, from the big ones like being hopelessly trapped in miserable marriages, or children dying from infections that are now preventable, to small things like chillblains & saggy bathing costumes, but they never seem to get stressed or depressed. 

When I'm running my stall, people - of all ages - often comment on bits of old-fashioned equipment, that it's better than anything you can get hold of now. Obviously it doesn't apply to everything, but old tools were generally made to last & could be repaired, and selling them depended on them actually being good at the job they were made for. Contrast that with any number of modern tools - made to look flashy, make the most noise, in the latest colours, complete with built-in obsolescence. Even the expensive ones!  I know they now have to be recyclable at the end of their 5 years, but I'm using a sewing machine that's 112 years old and still works brilliantly. My 10-year-old computerised machine with 275 stitches, 4 alphabets etc. is at the menders, again. My ancient, grotty-looking hand-cranked mouli-legumes no. 2 can liquidise a litre of soup in the time it takes for me to get the blender attached to the food processor, and it's easier to wash up afterwards.

And some aspects of life today leave me completely baffled. Why do my offspring find it necessary to wash all their clothes, every time they've been worn - even for an hour? And towels after every use? And dry everything in the tumble-dryer, when we have a garden with a washing line and a rotary airer, as well as a ceiling rack in the utility room and an over-stair rack? And don't even mention leaf-blowers - what's wrong with a rake, as long as you're able-bodied? Sigh... They sometimes say, "Mum, you can't turn back the clock or stop progress!" But my question is, just how much of the stuff we've come to take for granted does, actually, take us forward in any way?

maryb

To be honest, I don’t think we could manage without a leaf blower as we have a very tall Robinia which drops thousands of tiny leaves onto a patch of gravel.  I really wouldn’t want to try raking that lot up and still have some gravel left

But in other ways I find myself coming down firmly on the side of older ways of doing things.  I’ve just had to replace my frying pan again because the non stick is failing - and it wasn’t cheap.  So I’ve ordered a carbon steel frying pan which I shall season and use the old fashioned way.  I’ve a carbon steel omelette pan which is now totally non stick and I’m hoping the new pan will be the same in a while.  Then it should see me out

thriftwizard

I'll allow your leaf-blower, @maryb! It's a situation-dependent thing, really. But round here there seems to be a contest for who can make the most noise with theirs on a Sunday morning, "blowing" the leaves away from their tiny paved front gardens (i.e. straight into the street to block the drains) or from their pocket-hanky back lawns - many of which are astro-turf'd anyway, now! Heaven forfend that leaves should get into their hot-tubs...

maryb

There's a private drive that runs beside our house and the homeowners have clubbed together to pay a garden care company to clear the drive once a month.  I don't know what they do but they seem to take all day over it and those commercial leaf blowers are as loud as a jet engine.  They use them in short bursts so it's constant roar, roar roar.  And they blow the leaves uphill - why?