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Bygone days ....

My dear much-loved mum, now deceased, used to give me when I was small, half an orange covered in white granulated sugar as a snack.

Sugar featured in other ways too. It was a pretty standard part of life, as was white Mother's Pride sliced loaves. A sandwich of buttered white bread and granulated sugar filling was an occasional snack.

If I was poorly with a sore throat, Mum would give me Butter Balls - this was butter rolled into balls and then rolled in white granulated sugar.

This was not long after the end of rationing and I think this is a sort of excuse for the food culture of the time. Salad was not a bowl of green leaves, but a set meal of tomatoes, lettuce, hard-boiled eggs, ham-and-egg pie, pickled beetroot, maybe radishes, cucumber, grated cheese and topped with - wait for it: salad cream and a sprinkling of white granulated sugar!!!!

I hesitate to criticise the 'youth of today' and their sugar consumption. I only have to look back! The history of sugar is an interesting story.

Penny sweets were another 'habit' of us children, on our way home from school. I can see the magical sweet gunk laid out in square sections at eye level, uncovered, unwrapped, ready to be chosen, four-a-penny or two-a-penny: fruit salads, black jacks, jelly watches, sherbet dips, pineapple chunks, pink shrimps, sherbet flying saucers, sherbet straws, lollipops .... , I wouldn't buy bubble gum or gobstoppers. How restrained of me!


RosieLKH said:
Cream soda mixed with milk - now that takes me back, along with sugar on white buttered bread - and I wonder how I became diabetic!
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The things I remember most clearly, the ice patterns on the inside of the windows, cold linoleum and a paraffin lamp in the middle of the bedroom on really cold nights. I used to live in a village near Bury and once a week an ironmongers van used to come around with all your household needs and paraffin for your lamps. We used to call him the lamp oil man. Yes and gas lights, and having to wash in cold water, at my great aunts house in Sandbach where I spent some of my school holidays. I was a sickly child and she used to whip up egg, milk and sugar for me to drink to build me up.
 
My maternal grandfather lived in Heywood, Lancs and until my teens we had every Christmas there. The only warm rooms in the house were the sitting room and kitchen with coal fires (I remember doing toast on a fork next to the kitchen fire). The remaining rooms, even the front parlour, were bitterly cold, yes with ice on the insides of the windows in the winter. The winter of 62/63 the outside pipes froze and burst, that was fun for my Dad and grandfather to sort out!

Down the road towards the town centre was a traditional grocer's shop (Baines) which had a rack full of tea packet cards which you could use for swaps with spares that you had - brilliant idea, I've never seen it anywhere else. And the chippie (the Polecat) which did potato cakes.

Happy days for a child when your only worry was getting that Christmas present you wanted.

At home I was taught very early how to safely light the paraffin heater and how to relight the pilot on the Ascot water boiler.
 
I, too, remember those ice patterns on the inside of my bedroom windows. I couldn't understand why they were so beautiful, I still don't. Yes, cold lino too, mine had a grey pebble pattern. I had a paraffin heater in my room in the winter so that I could do my homework. It smelled really bad and the heat from it was soon stifling. I usually retreated downstairs, knelt forward on the rug in front of the coal fire and did my homework there, with the cat curled up on my back.
One winter, I think it was '63, was incredible for the 'mountains' of rock-hard snow covering the gutter and pavement-edge on each side of the roads. It was a brilliant game climbing along these mountains on the way to school each morning, and even better on the way home late afternoon when we had more time. We developed special 'routes' for each mountain.
Auntie Florrie came to us for Christmas, and we couldn't take her home for 11 weeks because of the snow. Our Ford Popular stayed under huge drifts of snow all that time.
 
The younger folk on here might find this one a little difficult to grasp.
Whenever a hole was dug in the road they'd place a little canvas hut by it where some ancient old guy who never washed would sit guarding it.
They even supplied him with a roaring fire that was burning coke .... yes coke!!!!!!
The guy would sit there all through the night sipping his brew and burning coke whilst guarding the hole.
 
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If I was ill my mum would cook me white fish steamed in milk and mashed potato made with the milk the fish was steamed in. Can't eat steamed fish without thinking of mum. She was also a great music fan and would take me to Portsmouth Guildhall to see the bands of the day - Them, The searchers, Hermans Hermits. Even saw the Beatles and if I remember right, Tommy Roe was top of the bill
 
Yorkshire pudding done properly in a great big tray in the oven with the fat off the joint and eaten before the meal as god intended.
Chips done in proper dripping, mam had an old pan in the fridge full of dripping she would melt it and use it to do the Sunday roast then back in the pan for another week when we were kids we would make dripping sarnies straight from the pan.
Grandmas homemade bread .
 
Grandmas home bread my bottom!
Every Sunday to hers for Sunday dinner ... smell the home made bread wafting up the street.
Beautiful got the juices going.
I don't find out till adulthood it wasn't home made at all.
She would buy a couple of large tin un sliced white loaves and cover them with a piece of cloth and leave for days to go stale.
Not bad or moldy just all the moisture gone ... stale.
She would then on a Sunday stand the loaves in an inch of water for a couple of hours and then bung in the oven and viola .... the entire street could smell her home made bread baking ....
 
That's a good one made me laugh.
Granny taught me to make bread I used to make it quite often I suppose there's not much point if I can't eat it anymore
 

Pastimes , Whip and Top making patterns on the top with coloured chalks. Skipping, Jacks, Hide and Seek, Kick stone, Tig your it, To offset the technology in our lives I buy my Grandson olds fashioned games, Ludo ,Snakes and Ladders, Pick a Sticks, Dominoes, Quoits etc. Then hopefully he will remember playing games with Nanna instead of just playing on his tablet.
 
What about three old pennies in the phone box before you dial number? Press button A. If no answer press button B for your money back. It was amazing the amount of people who forgot to press button B, so it was a source of income for me on my way to and from school. Much less hazardous than having to try to nick someone's lunch money after they modernised the phone kiosks.
 
JACKTHELAD said:
Remember smoking in the cinema ... all that smoke lit up in the flickering projector beam.
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The National Anthem played at the end of the film and everyone respectfully stood up.
 
sanguine said:
Free milk in schools (third-pint bottles delivered in time for morning break);

The milk would freeze in winter, and the cream would expand and lift the foil top off the bottle. In summer it would just be starting to go sour and taste disgusting.
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JACKTHELAD said:
When you could only have a salad in summer ....
The electric light did away with night and refrigerated transport did away with the seasons.
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Salad was soggy lettuce, tomato and spring onion.
 
Vesta beef curry? They also did chow mein with crispy noodles. All dehydrated food but we thought it was sooooo cooool!
 
sanguine said:
I only really liked the Cream Soda!



I daren't ask by which route Mo

Party 4s and Party 7s still de rigueur at uni in the 70s.

Hirondelle wine? Blue Nun ? Mateus Rose?

SPAM
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Hahaha, Party 7. You needed to have a soda syphon bulb contraption to get the beer to be like draught beer. The soda syphon bulbs cost more than the cans of beer, and invariably took several goes to fit on the can correctly, as the beer spurted all over the place and left enough for half a pint to draw into a glass.
 
The bubble gum machines had a handle with a marker, every 4th turn gave two packs for the price of one.
 
Yup, the cocky watchman!
 
i can remember one of the engineers at work who, every single day would have bread and dripping sandwiches
 
Are we in danger here of turning into Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch?
 
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