General Chat

anyone watch the programme - family of four transported back to the fifties? very interesting - next episode on BBC2 on Tuesday - 8:00 pm I think

Ann
I watched it too in the week. As you say quite interesting.
I think Giles Corin who has organised the series should have done some more in depth research though. ;-)

just resurrected my BBC Model B...


Repton, here we come!!!

ManicMiner on the spectrum!!!

Tetris, even.........

we had a tv for the coronation - our house was packed to the rafters :-D

It bought some very happy memories back to us. :-D :-D

Yes...memories.cant ever remember being bored.
The boy enjoyed the experience.
Will see what the sixties brings!

I was never bored

I was born in 1950 but can remember quite a lot of the 50s I really enjoyed the programme looking forward to the 60s

We watched half of it.
There was a 'telling' comment towards the end. Most of those who remember them as Golden Years were children at the time. They weren't the ones coping with the daily chores or gender expectations.

exactly - I don't suppose my mother would have remembered it as I did

Nobody smoked apparently. Neither was the air permanently full of soot from the coal heating and steam trains which ensured that everything and anything got covered in a thin grey layer of grime.

The average family def. did not live in a semi-detached nor did they go to church ensemble every week! Semi-detached to rent were scarcer thean hen's teeth. No mention that half the country's housing stock had been destroyed/damaged during ww2.

Pianos were well on the way out. We had one though which caused endless hassles with the neighbours.

The English knew how to cook !!!!! They still can't unless you are in to boiled beef and carrots, takeaway pizza or microwaved nosh etc..

Heating was not apparently a problem logistical or financial.

Young people's only out-of-the house options were girl guides/scouts or church !!!!! Husbands did diy or grew veggies rather thsan going down to the Lord Raglan. Heh heh I think not.
78rpm records, guitars, saxaphones and coffee bars were unknown. Rubbish.

Women stayed at home and did chores all day. Well mine didn't she was a full time sister SRN in a London hospital. She avoided housework and employed a lady-that-does. When she got home she first of all had a chat with Mr Booth not the Ovaltineys.

Adults respected "those in authority" even if their children didn't. Utter rubbish.

Janet and John austerity-is-good-for-the-lower-orders propaganda not remotely connected to reality. This series is about a far away counttry as imagined by the Daily Mail. Next I suppose will be Lady Worsley explaining how wonderful it was to live in a Peabody flat.

For what its worth, and from what I can remember.

Father didn't smoke, nor go down the pub and he did help in the garden. By 1956/7 (probably earliest confident memories) Mum did have a washing machine and mangle. For that matter, she also had a vacuum cleaner as well as a push along carpet cleaner.
No idea what they did as Leisure activites. May be watch the television or listen to the radio? We had a TV by then.They also had a company car and used to go on picnincs or visits to relatives.

Food was only just coming off ration - people had to make the most of what they had. British people can and did cook, but had to tailor their repetoire to what was available or could be grown, and their budgets. Young women would have matured during the war years and learnt ration-cooking from their own relatives. Britain has always had some wonderful regional dishes. Tasty, economical and filling.

The Go Back in Time programme is trying to present an 'average' view. Of course it won't apply to eveyone's experiences. A neighbour didn't have a vacuum cleaner until the late 1950's. Very few people in the street owned or had access to a car.

I didn't go to church, Sunday school or belong to any groups - we lived in a little cottage on a mountain side - I had fun in the fields and the woods, playing in the brook, collecting primroses, mushrooms, nuts and blackberries

My Dad grew all out veg and my mother was a fantastic cook - she cooked what my father shot - pheasants, rabbits, hare, pigeons

I had a record player and lots of 78's, still have the 78's

It brought back memories for me too. When I was born in 1948 we lived in a terraced two up two down which was bought not rented - and we were not rich. My parents had rented the house since the mid 1930's and when the owner decided she wanted to sell several properties that she owned she gave my parents first refusal on their home. My mother had laughed and said they had no chance but she was convinced by her younger brother who was in the navy that it was a good idea and he lent them the deposit (£12).

In 1952 we moved to a small cul-de-sac of 20 two bedroom houses which were still terraced houses but with bay windows (very posh) and they also had small pallisadens at the front and small gardens at the back. In 1953 we got our first television (for the coronation). As with AnnCardiff, we had lots of neighbours in to watch.

In 1957 we moved again, this time to a Victorian terrace without a garden but the house was much bigger - three bedrooms and two rooms and a kitchen downstairs. Still had no bathroom and the toilet was outside but we loved the space. It cost my parents a whole £850. We only sold it in 2006 (a few years after my mother died).

The programme brought back lovely memories of the sort of kitchen we had and the furniture. We were sent off to Sunday school each week (although our parents didn't go as adults), then my dad would take the me and my younger brother for a walk after Sunday school just to window shop while my mother made lunch (or dinner as we called it). We read lots of books (from the library as we couldn't afford to buy books) and like the boys were told in the programme - we spent lots of time on a Saturday going to the picture house at the end of the street and then roaming around fields quite a long way from home with jam and bread and a bottle of water with a stick of licorice in it only arriving home in time for tea. We had no watches, your stomach told you when it was time to go home.

These were happy days for me until 1960 when my parents divorced. Not sure whether the programme in the 1960's will be what I remember as it was quite hard for my mother. We shall have to see!

Kath. x

on tonight at 8:00

Well I didn't play bingo but that was pretty much the first decade of married life. I enjoyed that.

I don't remember people smashing pianos....that really upset me as I've played piano for over 70 years and even though I have a keyboard electric stage piano,I still have an acoustic one and they are still the best.
It may just have been in London that they went to such lengths!
I also think that it was 4d for a 3 min phone call..they said 6d.
A few things were not quite as I remembered them,but still it would be an eye opener for a lot of the younger generation.
What do others think?

I have a vague recollection of piano smashing but I I think they were only ones that were 'past it', not good ones. I thought a phone call was cheaper than 6 pence but we had a phone in the 60s so wouldn't have used the box so not sure. Otherwise it was pretty accurate.

I can remember my Dad saying that he couldn't give his parents upright piano away for love nor money when they died in the mid 60s...he tried the local girl guides, scouts, schools etc nobody wanted it and sadly it was smashed up...with it went so many happy memories too :-(

Edit this was in Staffordshire :-)