A Pot of Tea - and a Stamp!

nursemaggie · 9 July 2018 at 2:46PM

Too right Mrs LW even some older people would not know how go about making soup. I don't even remember my mum making soup. They just do not realise how cheap it is to make and how much better it tastes.

spadoosh · 9 July 2018 at 3:27PM

Thread like this do my tits in.

When i was 22 i took the mick out of an 18 year old girl who asked me how to make a coffee (i obviously showed her how). That 18 year old girl now performs life saving surgery on people. I dont think she'll make many coffees.

Then there was another guy i worked with. 'Slow Tom' he was called, generally considered to have a lack of common sense. Currently living in a multi million pound apartment in dubai, some kind of economic forecaster or something earning silly money.

Then theres me, the ultimate (im that arrogant) in the 21st century man. Can do diy, gardening, cooking and cleaning, i can do most things. Jack of all as they say. It used to frustrate me that they didnt seem bothered about learning these most basic skills. Well, i got shown, im certain i make more coffee than them. Whose the simpleton?

maman · 9 July 2018 at 4:03PM

I suppose it's interesting to reminisce on things that used to be essential skills that have fallen out of fashion.

Personally I feel frustrated by the opposite attitudes that I sometimes see in older people.

My BIL, for example, loves to boast that he doesn't 'do technology'.:mad: Then he expects the younger members of his family to book him flights and hotels online.

LameWolf · 9 July 2018 at 4:10PM

JessyRM wrote: »

Last week I was inviting candidates for an interview and one of them asked me how to get to the office, I gave him the postcode and he proceeded to tell me he knew where it was but needed to know the bus route. Seriously???

Hmm - I have to confess to being a little unsure how a postcode on it's own helps? Though presumably he also knows the road name, yes?

maman · 9 July 2018 at 4:57PM

LameWolf wrote: »

Hmm - I have to confess to being a little unsure how a postcode on it's own helps? Though presumably he also knows the road name, yes?

I'm guessing that most people use post codes to put into sat nav although you'd need more specific information to find an exact address. There are websites too where you can put in postcodes to plan journeys.

I think w could argue forever about which life skills are needed, most important etc. The world is changing and we need to be able to adapt. Skills that are essential now won't be in a few years time. To be able to adapt we need to embrace change and willing to learn. Although I think we do need to guard against throwing babies out with bath water.

Hopeless_Case · 9 July 2018 at 5:22PM

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

It's a cross generational thing not being bothered or able to do what our parents and grandparents did as a matter of course, I picked up some YS veg in the local shop early in the year and when I got to the check out the lady serving me (who must have been in her 50s) said 'what are you going to do with all that lot?' so I said make soup, we eat soup for our lunch most days in the colder weather and I make it in big batches. She looked at me like a specimen on a slide under a microscope, frowned and said 'Why? I just open a tin!'. So it's not just the under 40s who haven't got the skills or drive to do things is it?

This is true for me, I was brought up on tinned soup even though my mum was a very good cook who made nearly everything else herself from scratch, but for some reason she didn't 'do' soup.

Then when my daughter went to uni and had no money, she started making vegetable soup as it's cheap and filling, and I got the habit. To be fair, she had my old blender and my mum didn't have one at all so it would have been harder, although she could have done chopped chunky soups

I don't think people are stupid nowadays, but the level of wastage and packaging alarms me - the idea of throwing clothes away because you can't sew on a button is terrible, and I went down the jelly aisle for the first time in years recently - the overwhelming majority of the jelly on sale was pre-made in plastic pots, and the thought of all of those pots being thrown away every week distressed me. I do realise that my grandmother probably had to boil gelatine and puree fruit to make jelly though, so the idea of pouring boiling water on cubes would have seemed odd and maybe lazy to her!

Someone on a local Facebook group genuinely said they were scared of hanging their washing out (I'm not sure what they thought would happen) during a discussion in which the majority relied totally on their tumble drier, and the dependence on appliances and non renewable energy scares me for the future

Lydia42 · 9 July 2018 at 5:39PM

My DS kindly did me poached eggs on toast for my birthday (he's 11). He loves to cook and is actually very good at it. Having seen me use the egg poacher a number of times he hadn't actually seen me put water into the bottom of it.......boy what a smell and job it was to get the egg out of the holders.

THIRZAH · 9 July 2018 at 5:39PM

I was born in 1955 and the only jelly available was the cube sort. My mother cooked most things from scratch but I doubt if she could have bought gelatine in our local shops. On the rare occasions we had soup it came from a tin and later from a packet. I don't remember any of my friends mothers making soup from scratch

GreyQueen · 9 July 2018 at 6:34PM

LameWolf wrote: »

The cynic in me would wonder if this was maybe a ploy so that they never got asked to do it again.

Their 'rents weren't even in the room, just me working at the sink opposite.

fuddle wrote: »

I considered myself a young 'un until not so long ago but i' m aware the gap is very much there.

It dawned on my then that our world is moving extremely fast. I'm 38 and of the technological age but very much being left behind.

I'm not quite old enough to be fuddle's mother (well, biologically I'm old enough but I would have had to lead a different teenaged life to the one I did have) but I've been finding this for some time.

It's the little things like a casual remark from the hipster toyboy (a platonic male pal in his mid-twenties) that I and one other person are the only people he texts with, everyone else is snapchatting........ little things like that are those moments when you feel old f*rtdom beckoning.:rotfl:

What to do? It isn't possible to be up on every single thing in a fast-changing world and you run the real risk of being that tragic figure who doesn't know that, like, they're actually too old, y'know? Like a geezer I met once at a bus stop, who was a white cockney pensioner but was dressed and throwing poses, guestures and slang like a teen black lad from an inner London borough. And yes, it did come across just as ridiculous as it sounds.

One can have as much fun giggling at yoof as they can giggling at the wrinkies, but we can all learn from each other in different ways.

It sometimes serves my interest to pretend not to know how to do something or what something is. I probably do know, or could find out in under five minutes, but a pretense of gullibility is sometimes useful when pulling a fast one on the youngsters. My brain isn't compromised by my white hairs - yet!

Face it, young people, I'm more than twice your age and far more devious than you'd ever credit.......... :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Woodsider55 · 9 July 2018 at 7:52PM

I was watching a young girl trying to use the Search option on a duke box. She knew the band name but couldn't seem to find the letters.

Then I realised that the letters were in alphabetical order, she obviously could use a qwerty keyboard and was totally puzzled when as she said , the letters are wrong!

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A Pot of Tea - and a Stamp!

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