General Chat

Well I've just come back from our jazz band practice and mentioned about the smashing up of pianos...our drummer ,who is a youngster of 68 and hails from the Midlands said they used to have contests of who could smash up the most pianos

...Living in the wilds of Wales and leading a very busy life,running a cafe and guest house looking after my 2 children and playing occasionally in a band I'd never heard of this.
He did say they were old wooden framed ones.I always had a German iron frame overstrung.i have played some terrible pianos in clubs,so maybe that was justified.

Had a mini van in the 60s with extra seats in the back...surprised at how much room there was in it..can still remember the registration no!
I had a Hoover junior vac in the 50's and it was a real hard worker
Will see what they bring up from the 70s

The phone box was a mock up - the design only came in 1970s and was disliked. Only London and a few big cities had dialling from a phone box. At that time everywhere else was button a / b with a chance to get 4d refunded. Captain Crunch got going in the 1960s as you could use a breakfast cereal whistle and get free calls. By 1970 I had learned to make a "blue" box with a handful of cheap electronic parts.

My father's disinterest in d-i-y and lawnmowers did not improve nor did my mother's liking for housework new gadgets or not. The 60s mum on the program was spot on. Mine took advantage of the Empire Windrush to sort out her domestic chores. Floor polishers were a bit ahead of their time by the late 60s fitted carpets were all the rage and some have still not got over them. We had an AGA cooker which was very popular with the cats. No buttons.

Not everybody liked Bingo. Cards remained very popular with the parents of the teenagers - bridge, canasta which went well with Mr Booth and Mr Walker and the ever rising divorce rate and drink drive accidents - something else the program was silent about. No church going though.

I remember seeing my first mini at launch in Cornwall 1959 little did I think that I'd be driving one before the 60s were out. My father hated them preferring a "proper" car. Now when I see one I wonder how on earth I ever got into it. Yesterday I forked out £ 200 to have a part replaced which had not even been invented by 1969! My mother learned to drive after a fashion and was able to cause seizure for miles with her Morris Minor. Once she got it into a gear - 2nd or 3rd - that was it until she arrived when the car was left where it sat for some minion to park it. Kerrunch.

I used to feel like a time traveller too coming home from school where life was stuck in the 1930s. At least from 16 you were allowed a record player. I thought 45s were 7/6 and LPs 32/6. You were not supposed to stack LPs but otherwise you had to flip the record after 15-20mins. The program was entirely silient about this problem (away from school) fixing which initially brought about the K7 and then the CD.

I thought that color TV came out in 1968? I came home from school that Christmas and was absolutely mesmerised by the color TV utterley unexpected. I was an instant addict. Fortunately tv was still OFF most of the time which gave me a chance to play our piano. My parents liked this inc jazz and ragtime. They were a lot less happy about a small Marshall amp and an electric guitar. The amp could spread revolution for half a block if I left the windows open :-)

There were two sorts of upright pianos (a) understrung wooden framed pianos which were always going to have a limited life given the damp and heating extremes of the UK and (b) overstrung pianos with iron frames. The piano smashing was of the former variety. The latter would have put up far more resistance and in any case were still worth money. All the same I picked up a nice Bechstein upright for not much over a hundred pounds.

Ah, Barry Bucknell and the developers. Who did the most damage to our urban fabric ?

I have never ever seen prawn and sausage rings at a buffet. Surely not.

Did 60s fashion and auto diy really unite mums and daughters, fathers and sons? I don't think so. The program did just about catch the vast changes from 1960 to 1970 but they were for the most part disruptive which the program skipped over completely.

So rollon part 3 and the 70s. You can prepare for it here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-hXUehyRlE

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 :-)

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 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?

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

on tonight at 8:00

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I was never bored

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

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

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

ManicMiner on the spectrum!!!

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

just resurrected my BBC Model B...


Repton, here we come!!!