50s/60s Britain and Now

[F-UnitMad]

7 hours ago, Bishop of Welchester said:

 

Could a related factor be that after the war nobody wanted to go into domestic service, and so the sort of people you describe had to fend for themselves for the first time?

Did anybody ever "want" to go into domestic service?

My impression of it was that it was often the only option for a great many.

Then again programmes like Downton Abbey, which I do like despite the historical inaccuracies, do clearly show that although the lower classes could manage without the aristocracy, the aristocracy couldn't manage without servants!!

[Steamport Southport]

I remember getting told off by an old bloke because I was drinking Newky Brown wrong.

 

By the time I would have poured it into a half pint glass I would be on to my next one....

 

 

 

 

Jason

[Welchester]

4 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

Did anybody ever "want" to go into domestic service?

My impression of it was that it was often the only option for a great many.

Then again programmes like Downton Abbey, which I do like despite the historical inaccuracies, do clearly show that although the lower classes could manage without the aristocracy, the aristocracy couldn't manage without servants!!

 

Perhaps I should have said that people who would have gone into service had the opportunity not to.

[Nearholmer]

My mother was a nanny until marrying, her father Head Gardener to a peer, and his sister a ladies maid and all of them chose and enjoyed their work, the elder two carrying on in it until retirement, so there were at least three happy post WW2 servants. 
 

Neither a nanny nor a ladies maid could be married, and Aunt Cis’ remainder a spinster.

Edited June 13, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Ohmisterporter]

My Auntie May went into service as a kitchen maid when she left school and nearly got fired on the first day. Sent into the larder to bring a pheasant she threw it in the bin because it was crawling with maggots.

 

NB my wife saw me writing this and reminded that I have had a servant for the last fifty two years!

[F-UnitMad]

5 minutes ago, Ohmisterporter said:

NB my wife saw me writing this and reminded that I have had a servant for the last fifty two years!

Well just remember the standard reply when she asks you what your last servant died from?? :-

 

"Disobedience".

[St Enodoc]

9 hours ago, Mark Saunders said:

 

The Ladies darts team would be served their beer in pints glasses but decant it in to a schooner for drinking; unlady like to be seen drinking pints!

Had the opposite experience once. After a cricket match against a rather snooty club we went into their bar and I ordered eleven pints.

 

"I'm terribly sorry, sir, we don't serve pints in the cocktail lounge".

 

"All right. twenty-two halves then".

[Enterprisingwestern]

10 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Had the opposite experience once. After a cricket match against a rather snooty club we went into their bar and I ordered eleven pints.

 

"I'm terribly sorry, sir, we don't serve pints in the cocktail lounge".

 

"All right. twenty-two halves then".

 

Reminds of the Uriah Heap pub in Sheffield, only served beer in half pint glasses. As it was but one stop on our pub crawl, the delivery of up to twenty halves and their consumption as delivered by one barmaid was the extent of our stay in there!

 

Mike.

[jcm@gwr]

Only really came across the half-pint rule at The Wicked Lady, Wheathampstead Common.

And then only when they had a barrel of Theakstons Old Peculiar on the bar!

[St Enodoc]

19 minutes ago, jcm@gwr said:

Only really came across the half-pint rule at The Wicked Lady, Wheathampstead Common.

And then only when they had a barrel of Theakstons Old Peculiar on the bar!

Wow, that takes me back nearly 50 years! One of our favourite haunts when we had just discovered proper beer.

[Reorte]

On 13/06/2020 at 10:23, Nearholmer said:

My good lady’s family sometimes make me chuckle, because in one breath they tell a convincing tale of how shockingly tough life was in rural Ireland until the 1970s, and how harsh and callous it could make people, and in the next get all dewy-eyed over the cosy family atmosphere of it all.

 

What's funny about that? Just suggests both good and bad from the time, a relief that some things are gone and a regret that others have gone with them. It's not always clear that it was necessary to get rid of the good as well as the bad either.

 

[Nearholmer]

I’m not saying it’s wrong; slightly funny, yes, but not wrong. Really, I was just making an observation about human nature, which seemed to me very relevant to how people seem to have been simultaneously determined never to repeat the ‘30s, yet nostalgic for a number of things that more or less departed with that decade.

[Reorte]

14 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I’m not saying it’s wrong; slightly funny, yes, but not wrong. Really, I was just making an observation about human nature, which seemed to me very relevant to how people seem to have been simultaneously determined never to repeat the ‘30s, yet nostalgic for a number of things that more or less departed with that decade.

 

Maybe I'm just a bit grouchy then It seems understandable enough to be to both lament things that were lost from a time and be glad to see the back of others and hope they never return, an entirely natural and understandable sentiment. You (generic, not personal you) can look forward with the same view too. How much connection there was between the positives and negatives is always up for debate.

 

The economic situation in the 30s was pretty dire so it's entirely understandable how many people were keen to move on, even if you can somehow not count the decade ending in the Second World War in that. But such economic factors are overlaid and largely (not entirely) independent of the general way of life and how things are around you, which has its own sets of positives and negatives.

[Natalie]

On 06/04/2020 at 09:33, Hroth said:

 

 

My own particular memory, icicles hanging off the eaves of the school toilet block and going to school with deep snow up to the top of our wellies. 

 

Hmm probably says more about me but I never read the last word as 'wellies'...

 

Interesting thread. I often wonder if I would have preferred to have lived then (well I did for the last 3 years of the 1960s) but then again I don't think I would have. Now if I could pick and choose which elements that would be another thing...

Edited June 14, 2020 by Natalie

[The Johnster]

It was just as true the way you first read it, at least it was in 1963...

 

[Hroth]

20 hours ago, Natalie said:

Hmm probably says more about me but I never read the last word as 'wellies'...

 

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

It was just as true the way you first read it, at least it was in 1963...

 

Oi!  Behave!!

 

There would always be at least a six inch gap between the top of the WELLY and the hem of your short trousers, even in 1963. 

 

 

[brianusa]

The 'brain drain' was my impetus to go and seek my fortune elsewhere. Not that I was brainy, but I reached the limits of what I could achieve back home both work related and financially.   My cousin had made the leap a few years earlier to the US and was doing well, so I thought, what the heck; he sponsored me and off I went as I was a bit of an Amerophile(?) anyway.  60's America when I arrived was a far different place then until the late 60's, when it all changed for ever, but for a few years, I experienced the US as it always was.

     Brian.

[pH]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

There would always be at least a six inch gap between the top of the WELLY and the hem of your short trousers, even in 1963. 

Leading to the ring of scurf round the calf at the top of the wellies.

[Hroth]

4 hours ago, pH said:

Leading to the ring of scurf round the calf at the top of the wellies.

Just toughened, well weathered skin!

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Have chilblains been mentioned? Just that all this talk of wellies and snow is bringing back uncomfortable memories.

 

Remember being told to pee on them to cure them?

[Enterprisingwestern]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Have chilblains been mentioned? Just that all this talk of wellies and snow is bringing back uncomfortable memories.

 

Remember being told to pee on them to cure them?

 

Your own or somebody else's?

 

Mike.

[Caley739]

I remember the chilblains, but don't remember peeing on them!!

[Nearholmer]

45 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

Your own or somebody else's?

 

Well, my bothers and I all used to get them, so options were open. My middle bro actually dunked his foot in the loo on the strength of this advice, then put his sock back on and paddled damply down the hall, which somewhat vexed our mother.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Well, my bothers and I all used to get them, so options were open. My middle bro actually dunked his foot in the loo on the strength of this advice, then put his sock back on and paddled damply down the hall, which somewhat vexed our mother.

 

I know this might be controversial, but perhaps that image can be categorised as TMI? 

 

Anyway, that made me think of this...

 

https://youtu.be/SK3UKCPEDHg

 

 

 

[Fat Controller]

6 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Have chilblains been mentioned? Just that all this talk of wellies and snow is bringing back uncomfortable memories.

 

Remember being told to pee on them to cure them?

When my uncle joined the Welsh Guards in 1940, someone told him that peeing in his boots would soften the leather. Unfortunately, the same fount of wisdom omitted to tell him to empty them in the morning....