For quite a while girls and young unmarried women weren't encouraged/allowed to ride bicycles for the same reason that they were only supposed to ride sidesaddle on a horse ... it might 'damage' them internally
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
My late Mum used to say, when she won the football pools she would pay for me to have driving lessons, it was the standing joke. Well, her uncle died she was left some money and when I was 30 she paid for me to have driving lessons, bless her. I did learn to ride a bike in my early 20s we lived in a blink and miss it village in surrey, the one and only village store closed down I had to cycle a round trip of 5 miles to get a loaf, the busses stopped mid afternoon, my oldest daughter now 47 and I cycled for miles took picnics out, then I got a seat for my son when he was a toddler, came in very handy and kept me really fit, till I learnt to drive.We had "nitty nora" in the 50s. My parents grew a lot of their own fruit and veg, we had chicken, they couldnt kill them, local butcher did that, then they came back for plucking, guy next door supplied bunnies and pidgeon.
I was similar to you NB, we lived in Sarf Lunnon, but I didn't get a bike till I was big enough to ride my mum's old one. Dad was a keen cyclist and he and mum rode a tandem. When I was very little they used to put me in the sidecar and go off into the country. When my brother came along they tried me on a seat on the back and him in the sidecar but it was too hard for mum, so dad got a car - a 1936 Morris 10.
We all used to pile in, me, my brother and Gran, who lived with us, and the dog, and go out for the day. Loved that car, she was called Blossom and would do 40 downhill with a following wind. The boot was behind the back seat so you had to get out & lift it up if you needed something out, but she took us to places we nould never have seen otherwise.
When I was 13 dad's firm relocated to Brighton and we moved to Sussex. We had a phone then so mum could still talk to her sister - we didn't before as the phone box was just the other side of the road so convenient to use! We didn't have TV till some neighbours gave us their old one, but we didn't get bored, we were always off in the woods climbing trees or playing with our friends' ferret or goimg exploring, walking or on bikes. I don't think you could let children today have the freedom we enjoyed, the volume of traffic alone wuld make it too dangerous.
Nanny B and Buttercupdays, it sounds much like my boyhood days. We had trucks and two cars, the posh one was a Ford 8 and the other an Austin 7 Fliver, two seats and a Dickey seat, dad could get a pig or a crate of ducks in the dickey and we often got a couple of bags of potato's in it for the pigs, Dads Tractor but I loved it. Learned to drive in that though very much under age at the time. Sundays we would get four adults four children and be carrying still warm plate pies on our knees in the Ford 8 as we headed for the beach, we had good beaches both sides of the Tees. We would get the little pressure burner out and tea would be made while we kids were running on the beach or in the sea. I had a Ford 8 as a first car and often wondered how we managed to all get in Dad's car.
We killed our own animals and fowl on our own premisses imagine that now, Chicken was a Christmas treat, well New Year we had Goose for Christmas. Dad would kill the Geese Ducks and Cock birds Mother dressed them and i would help pluck them ready for sale. We killed the pigs on site but got the Butcher in to do the kill and the cutting up, we would then salt the sides and hams, they would hang for months before we ate them, all meat and fowl were hung we had no Fridges.
We as children ran free roaming the woods and countryside, playing and even skinny dipping in the local becks. We never felt afraid to wander although there was very little traffic around our small village. We ate fruit straight off the trees, Hazel pears plums of different kinds, brambles and apples, never remember any bad tummy's after that, often pulled young carrots or radishes, a wipe with the hand and into the mouth. Methinks that the modern trend of caring for food and what we eat do us no favours.
This is starting to sound like Monty Python's "four Yorkshiremen" sketch: "my mother brought up seventeen of us in a shoebox, we used to dream of living in a co
Josusa47, Depends on your age, we tend to get an older element on the discussion side, some are now after all those years asked what was life like when you were kids, my Grandchildren are fascinated they have never lived without all the hand held gadgets so have no idea what we did with our time.
All this is about silly rules brought in by various governments who wish to have a Nanny state, we who lived with different rules know it is all rubbish, maybe we would like the modern generation to think for itself and not jump on every bandwagon pushed out by so called EXPERTS, in what I ask. Then of course there is a reject button we do not have to read anything we do not wish to it is our choice, as is all the advice given by the gardeners on these boards.
Frank, I think there is a sudden clear divide , probably in the late 60's early seventies when people lost touch with their roots. My Ma in law was born 1906 in a village in Derbyshire and her childhood was in many ways not so unlike mine, born in 1950. She ran wild in the woods, got told off for getting her bloomers muddy falling in the stream and the village kids watched the cars (those wonderful vintage ones!) and had bets with each other whether they would make it up the long hill or whether someone would get sixpence for fetching the farmer and his horse to rescue them
My grandmother, born 1890 came from the East End of London, from a poor background, but she knew about cooking from being in service, could deal with a hen just like your dad, and food followed the seasons, so you kept in touch. My mum still got most stuff fresh in the market, but I can remember the first 'supermarkets', poor things by today's standards, but selling frozen foods, and biscuits in packets, not loose from big tins with glass lids!
That was when 'modern' became the thing to be and and the old ways were just old hat. And somehow the baby got mixed in with the bathwater...
I love the way we remember the good and ignore the bad when we talk about the past. I guess it's a self-preservation technique cos if we concentrated on the bad things we'd go nuts. We forget the children dying in infancy, the young adults crippled with polio, the teenagers wasting away from TB, in the "good old days". I asked the district nurse, treating my OH with intravenous antibiotics, what the treatment would have been for severe cellulitis before antibiotics were available. "There wasn't any - you died of sepsis."
My wonderful granny (born 1895, died 2004!) was blind for the last 20 years of her long life. She had a fantastic memory and loved talking about the past - and said to me with a smile, aged a hundred and something, "I've had a lovely life!". She meant it. But she had a sister who died young; she lost her beloved cousin in WW1 and her firstborn son in WW2; her second son had to wear a back brace because of polio; she was widowed fairly early; her youngest son died in a medical accident; and she had to cope with her own blindness. Life is what we make it.
But I totally agree that the "nanny" element of modern life (jar of peanut butter. "Warning - contains nuts") is barmy. "Use by" dates should only be put on food which really needs it - shellfish, for instance - otherwise one of two things happens; either perfectly good food will be thrown away, or people will ignore all "use by" dates and make themselves ill by eating gone-off food. My mum taught me what to look for when choosing fresh meat and fish, and it's not rocket science...
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
Liriodendron, I write all that for the Local Libraries History pages, we never forget, it is people often do not want to know. Poverty is something we all have differing views on. We were definitely a Village with many layers. Doctors Lawyers Managers at ICI, then small holders and business people. we had those in work with something coming in each week and those with nothing and I mean nothing, all this in one small village as it then was. Mother giving me a carrier with a small piece of bacon some vegetables out of the garden and in season maybe a couple of eggs, take that across the green to Mrs H. do not let her see you put it behind her front door. Her husband was in jail for stealing some roots from one of the market gardens that surrounded the village, he tried to get food for his three children and was caught. No slap on the hand, Durham Jail and hard labour, his wife left to beg from the Church fund or starve. My Sister and I had separate bedrooms so it was quite a shock to find some of my friends at school slept four in a bed and two on the floor, a mix of boys and girls. Kids coming to school in sand shoes stuffed with cardboard in mid winter and my first real girlfriend dying of leukaemia, no cure for it, she did not make 17.
One day in school as Teacher took the roll she called a name and a voice called he will not be coming Miss a bomb hit the house last night they were all killed, The Teacher was crying but I think it was for us lads who took it so normally, Death was something that happened, no big deal.
Now we have idiot Government agency's telling us what is good for us, food waste on a massive scale, it could never have happened in our era and should not be happening now, what happened to common sense when millions starve in other parts of the world. Having travelled and seen some of it I get angry when they talk about poverty here. Some sense would cure all of it and possibly help where it is really needed.
I think part of the reason for poor nutrition and poverty is that people don't know how to cook basic foods.
I saw a packet of cheese sauce mix. It said 'just add milk and a knob of butter' !
The packet contained powdered cheese, flour and some chemicals. So apart from grating fresh cheese, the method of cooking would have been exactly the same.
Pizza - flour, water, yeast,tomato and a bit of cheese half price £2.50!
I think most schools don't teach hands-on cookery for elfandsafety reasons. I think food preparation and nutrition should be taught for precisely those reasons.
Posts
For quite a while girls and young unmarried women weren't encouraged/allowed to ride bicycles for the same reason that they were only supposed to ride sidesaddle on a horse ... it might 'damage' them internally
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
My late Mum used to say, when she won the football pools she would pay for me to have driving lessons, it was the standing joke. Well, her uncle died she was left some money and when I was 30 she paid for me to have driving lessons, bless her. I did learn to ride a bike in my early 20s we lived in a blink and miss it village in surrey, the one and only village store closed down I had to cycle a round trip of 5 miles to get a loaf, the busses stopped mid afternoon, my oldest daughter now 47 and I cycled for miles took picnics out, then I got a seat for my son when he was a toddler, came in very handy and kept me really fit, till I learnt to drive.We had "nitty nora" in the 50s. My parents grew a lot of their own fruit and veg, we had chicken, they couldnt kill them, local butcher did that, then they came back for plucking, guy next door supplied bunnies and pidgeon.
I was similar to you NB, we lived in Sarf Lunnon, but I didn't get a bike till I was big enough to ride my mum's old one. Dad was a keen cyclist and he and mum rode a tandem. When I was very little they used to put me in the sidecar and go off into the country. When my brother came along they tried me on a seat on the back and him in the sidecar but it was too hard for mum, so dad got a car - a 1936 Morris 10.
We all used to pile in, me, my brother and Gran, who lived with us, and the dog, and go out for the day. Loved that car, she was called Blossom and would do 40 downhill with a following wind
. The boot was behind the back seat so you had to get out & lift it up if you needed something out, but she took us to places we nould never have seen otherwise.
When I was 13 dad's firm relocated to Brighton and we moved to Sussex. We had a phone then so mum could still talk to her sister - we didn't before as the phone box was just the other side of the road so convenient to use! We didn't have TV till some neighbours gave us their old one, but we didn't get bored, we were always off in the woods climbing trees or playing with our friends' ferret or goimg exploring, walking or on bikes. I don't think you could let children today have the freedom we enjoyed, the volume of traffic alone wuld make it too dangerous.
Last edited: 11 December 2017 23:06:16
Nanny B and Buttercupdays, it sounds much like my boyhood days. We had trucks and two cars, the posh one was a Ford 8 and the other an Austin 7 Fliver, two seats and a Dickey seat, dad could get a pig or a crate of ducks in the dickey and we often got a couple of bags of potato's in it for the pigs, Dads Tractor but I loved it. Learned to drive in that though very much under age at the time. Sundays we would get four adults four children and be carrying still warm plate pies on our knees in the Ford 8 as we headed for the beach, we had good beaches both sides of the Tees. We would get the little pressure burner out and tea would be made while we kids were running on the beach or in the sea. I had a Ford 8 as a first car and often wondered how we managed to all get in Dad's car.
We killed our own animals and fowl on our own premisses imagine that now, Chicken was a Christmas treat, well New Year we had Goose for Christmas. Dad would kill the Geese Ducks and Cock birds Mother dressed them and i would help pluck them ready for sale. We killed the pigs on site but got the Butcher in to do the kill and the cutting up, we would then salt the sides and hams, they would hang for months before we ate them, all meat and fowl were hung we had no Fridges.
We as children ran free roaming the woods and countryside, playing and even skinny dipping in the local becks. We never felt afraid to wander although there was very little traffic around our small village. We ate fruit straight off the trees, Hazel pears plums of different kinds, brambles and apples, never remember any bad tummy's after that, often pulled young carrots or radishes, a wipe with the hand and into the mouth. Methinks that the modern trend of caring for food and what we eat do us no favours.
Frank.
This is starting to sound like Monty Python's "four Yorkshiremen" sketch: "my mother brought up seventeen of us in a shoebox, we used to dream of living in a co
Josusa47, Depends on your age, we tend to get an older element on the discussion side, some are now after all those years asked what was life like when you were kids, my Grandchildren are fascinated they have never lived without all the hand held gadgets so have no idea what we did with our time.
All this is about silly rules brought in by various governments who wish to have a Nanny state, we who lived with different rules know it is all rubbish, maybe we would like the modern generation to think for itself and not jump on every bandwagon pushed out by so called EXPERTS, in what I ask. Then of course there is a reject button we do not have to read anything we do not wish to it is our choice, as is all the advice given by the gardeners on these boards.
Frank.
Frank, I think there is a sudden clear divide , probably in the late 60's early seventies when people lost touch with their roots. My Ma in law was born 1906 in a village in Derbyshire and her childhood was in many ways not so unlike mine, born in 1950. She ran wild in the woods, got told off for getting her bloomers muddy falling in the stream and the village kids watched the cars (those wonderful vintage ones!) and had bets with each other whether they would make it up the long hill or whether someone would get sixpence for fetching the farmer and his horse to rescue them
My grandmother, born 1890 came from the East End of London, from a poor background, but she knew about cooking from being in service, could deal with a hen just like your dad, and food followed the seasons, so you kept in touch. My mum still got most stuff fresh in the market, but I can remember the first 'supermarkets', poor things by today's standards, but selling frozen foods, and biscuits in packets, not loose from big tins with glass lids!
That was when 'modern' became the thing to be and and the old ways were just old hat. And somehow the baby got mixed in with the bathwater...
I love the way we remember the good and ignore the bad when we talk about the past. I guess it's a self-preservation technique cos if we concentrated on the bad things we'd go nuts. We forget the children dying in infancy, the young adults crippled with polio, the teenagers wasting away from TB, in the "good old days". I asked the district nurse, treating my OH with intravenous antibiotics, what the treatment would have been for severe cellulitis before antibiotics were available. "There wasn't any - you died of sepsis."
My wonderful granny (born 1895, died 2004!) was blind for the last 20 years of her long life. She had a fantastic memory and loved talking about the past - and said to me with a smile, aged a hundred and something, "I've had a lovely life!". She meant it. But she had a sister who died young; she lost her beloved cousin in WW1 and her firstborn son in WW2; her second son had to wear a back brace because of polio; she was widowed fairly early; her youngest son died in a medical accident; and she had to cope with her own blindness. Life is what we make it.
But I totally agree that the "nanny" element of modern life (jar of peanut butter. "Warning - contains nuts") is barmy. "Use by" dates should only be put on food which really needs it - shellfish, for instance - otherwise one of two things happens; either perfectly good food will be thrown away, or people will ignore all "use by" dates and make themselves ill by eating gone-off food. My mum taught me what to look for when choosing fresh meat and fish, and it's not rocket science...
Liriodendron, I write all that for the Local Libraries History pages, we never forget, it is people often do not want to know. Poverty is something we all have differing views on. We were definitely a Village with many layers. Doctors Lawyers Managers at ICI, then small holders and business people. we had those in work with something coming in each week and those with nothing and I mean nothing, all this in one small village as it then was. Mother giving me a carrier with a small piece of bacon some vegetables out of the garden and in season maybe a couple of eggs, take that across the green to Mrs H. do not let her see you put it behind her front door. Her husband was in jail for stealing some roots from one of the market gardens that surrounded the village, he tried to get food for his three children and was caught. No slap on the hand, Durham Jail and hard labour, his wife left to beg from the Church fund or starve. My Sister and I had separate bedrooms so it was quite a shock to find some of my friends at school slept four in a bed and two on the floor, a mix of boys and girls. Kids coming to school in sand shoes stuffed with cardboard in mid winter and my first real girlfriend dying of leukaemia, no cure for it, she did not make 17.
One day in school as Teacher took the roll she called a name and a voice called he will not be coming Miss a bomb hit the house last night they were all killed, The Teacher was crying but I think it was for us lads who took it so normally, Death was something that happened, no big deal.
Now we have idiot Government agency's telling us what is good for us, food waste on a massive scale, it could never have happened in our era and should not be happening now, what happened to common sense when millions starve in other parts of the world. Having travelled and seen some of it I get angry when they talk about poverty here. Some sense would cure all of it and possibly help where it is really needed.
Frank.
Last edited: 12 December 2017 15:46:32
I think part of the reason for poor nutrition and poverty is that people don't know how to cook basic foods.
I saw a packet of cheese sauce mix. It said 'just add milk and a knob of butter' !
The packet contained powdered cheese, flour and some chemicals. So apart from grating fresh cheese, the method of cooking would have been exactly the same.
Pizza - flour, water, yeast,tomato and a bit of cheese half price £2.50!
I think most schools don't teach hands-on cookery for elfandsafety reasons. I think food preparation and nutrition should be taught for precisely those reasons.