Tag Archives: childhood

Family holidays

I have talked about holidays and day trips before but a reader suggested it would be worth revisiting – thanks Tom!

We were lucky as our dad had an annual holiday entitlement so we took a two week summer holiday every year. Most of the children in my school lived on farms – and farms can’t be left for two weeks! In addition, our mum and dad both came from different parts of Wales so we often had weekends away visiting relatives.

First, the summer holiday. What an adventure! Weeks of preparation by my mum – I remember having to wear only our older, scruffier clothes so that all our decent stuff could be taken away clean. Remember that family laundry was not a simple matter of pressing buttons on washers and driers.

In the 50’s, there were no motorways, by-passes, ring-roads or dual carriageways. Town centres had major routes running right through them and congestion was normal. With hardly any traffic lights, it was common to see a policeman standing at a major junction on what was called ‘point duty’. Because of the nightmare traffic jams we often set off in the evening and travelled through the night. How exciting!!!!

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We holidayed in Devon and Cornwall several times when I was very young. There was no Severn Bridge then and we had to catch a little car ferry to cross over the river. One year, when I was about twelve, we went to Scotland. We stayed in a boarding house and in those days you left the house after breakfast and had no access back into the premises until late afternoon. That would have been alright if it hadn’t rained the whole fortnight! The nearby beach had a black flag flying every day to keep people away in the bad weather. There was a swimming pool in the town – a luxury! Our nearest indoor pool at home was over an hour’s drive away. We went to that pool every day and Mum and Dad taught us to swim.

Visiting my dad’s parents further north in Wales was always great fun. We loved the cottage they lived in with its thick stone walls, tiny staircase with a door at the bottom and the toilet at the bottom of the garden. The bed I always shared with my sister had a feather mattress and I can still remember the feeling of sinking into it on the first night when it was freshly plumped up.

One thing which has probably changed little over the years is how children play on a beach. Away from the X-boxes, TVs and mobile phones, children still love nothing more than digging in sand and playing ball or chasing games. Our buckets and spades were metal not plastic but the play was just the same.

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Yes, we did at one time have knitted swimsuits, much like the one in the photo, except ours were stripey.

I’ll finish with one of the joys of summer holidays – ice-cream! Our village shop had no freezer when I was little so ice-cream was a treat on high days and holidays. You only had the choice of a wafer, cornet, orange iced lolly or choc-ice and from the vans you could get soft ice-cream in a cone with a Cadbury’s chocolate flake. 99s are still a favourite of mine.

Wall's 1950s UK ice-cream

1950s UK Wall's Ice Cream Magazine Advert

1950s UK Wall’s Ice Cream Magazine Advert

 

Keeping Warm

Back in the 1950’s I knew nobody who had central heating in their home. In fact, I don’t think I ever heard the expression. We all had open fires which burned coal and logs. Even in school, the classroom was heated by a large coal fire. There was an enormous fire guard around the school fire and on a very wet or snowy day there would be loads of hats and gloves drying out on it. There were less than thirty children in the village school so the guard was big enough to dry all our things out before we went out again.

In our house we had two fires, one in the dining room and one in the lounge. In the evening the whole family would be in the lounge together listening to the radio, later in my childhood watching television. We could get really warm and cosy in front of the fire, especially our fronts! Leaving the circle of heat to use the bathroom, get a drink or go to bed was something to be put off as long as possible. . . . and then done as quickly as possible.

In the very coldest weather we children had a paraffin stove in our bedroom. We were so glad of the warmth we didn’t notice the smell of paraffin.

imageOurs was just like this one.

In the morning there was always ice on the inside of the bedroom windows. The patterns formed were beautiful like this example.

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Later on, in the 60s, when the family lived in a bigger house, we children had a bedroom each and each bedroom had an electric fire. We were allowed to use them when we were getting up and going to bed. We would not have even tried to spend leisure time in our bedrooms in winter as the electrics fires were known to be expensive to run. We had heaters like each one of these.

 

Bedding consisted of

. a top and bottom sheet – all cotton, brushed ‘flannelette’ in winter.

. two or three blankets – these were not soft and cuddly, they were hard and scratchy. As they were purely for warmth and sandwiched between sheet and cover the textures didn’t matter.  They weren’t pretty colours either. Some were beige, others were grey or brown.

. a candlewick bedspread.

. a feather-filled eiderdown.

 

 

Books, Comics and Magazines.

As children my brother, sister and I loved books. There was a lot less choice than there is now and we were a long way from any shops so the books we had were read again and again. Enid Blyton featured largely in our lives; from the Noddy books when we were very young through to the adventures of the Secret Seven and the Famous Five. We even had a record of Noddy tales and songs read and played by Enid Blyton herself. When I was devouring Blyton adventure stories my sister, who was younger, adored Tales of Green Hedges. The books now referred to as ‘classics’ were also read and loved. Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, The Water Babies, Black Beauty and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are some I remember with great affection. My absolute favourites were the Heidi books. I had all of them and I believe I actually wanted to be Heidi!

My Princess cookbook and some of my        A few of my childhood books.               many recipes from Princess.

Once a week our comics were picked up from the local town when my mum went shopping on a Friday. The arrival of the weekly comic was so exciting! We had one each. My brother’s comic of choice was Hotspur. I took Princess magazine and my sister liked Bunty. We read every word. I can remember a family called the Days who were a cartoon strip in Princess. I still have a lot of my recipe cuttings and my Princess cookbook.

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In later years, in the mid-sixties, I was in my early teens and took Jackie magazine. After a few years of enjoying Jackie, Honey magazine came out. I immediately switched from Jackie to Honey. When I left to go to university I had a complete set from Number 1.  My mum and dad threw them out in a house move. I was mortified!

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I love books to this day – and I still cut recipes out of magazines and save them!

 

 

 

 

 

Sweets, Chocolates and Biscuits.

All children love sweet things. The fact that we didn’t have them all the time (mum was fussy about our teeth, money wasn’t plentiful, we didn’t live near any shops) made them even more of an attraction. When Nana came to live with us, she started giving us 6d each on a Saturday morning. We would either walk the mile to the village shop to buy sweets or, if Dad was working on Saturday morning, we would go in the car with him to the town and spend it there.

As well as the packets and bars, some of which are shown here, there were the large glass jars with loose sweets in which were weighed out in 4oz portions into a paper bag. If you bought 2oz, the paper bag was triangular. Some loose sweets I remember
– aniseed balls, barley sugar, Everton Mints and pineapple chunks.


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I remember there often being a sugar mouse poking out of the top of my Christmas stocking.

The biscuits I remember being offered most often when out for tea are – Nice biscuits, those horrid pink wafer ones, custard creams, Bourbon and ginger nuts. Cadbury’s chocolate fingers were strictly for birthday parties!

In Sickness and in Health. 

People have always caught colds, measles, flu, have broken bones, grown old and had babies. So how were the 50s and 60s different?

When I was a child, you stayed in bed when you were unwell. Whether it was a cold, bronchitis, chicken pox or a stomach upset, being poorly meant staying home from school and staying in bed. The doctor was informed and visited regularly. We were five miles away from the surgery; nevertheless the highlight of a day confined to bed with spots or a temperature was the sight of old Dr Price (who probably wasn’t even old!) walking towards the house from his car. I can still remember how weak and wobbly the legs felt on the day you were first allowed to get up – just for a short while on the first day, of course!
At home mum put Germolene on cuts and grazes. I can still remember the thick, pink cream in the tin and that distinctive smell. However, if you hurt yourself at school they dabbed neat iodine directly onto the wound which was agony!!


We were given cod liver oil or cod liver oil and malt all winter which was supposed to keep colds away. There was kaolin and morphine for stomach upsets, boric acid for eye infections and camomile lotion for all skin complaints from sunburn to measles. A cough was treated with thick, brown cough mixture which always tasted vile. Our favoured brand was Hactos.

Other things I remember being talked about and used by older people such as grandparents are; gentian violet, kaolin poultices, syrup of figs and Epsom salts.

The  one great thing about being in bed poorly in the 1950s was – you were ‘allowed’ to drink Lucozade. In fact, it was practically compulsory! The thing which made it special was you weren’t ‘allowed’ to drink it at any other time. As soon as you were confined to bed with mumps or ‘flu, Lucozade would appear as if by magic. We were a mile walk from the village shop and five miles from the town but Lucozade was purchased for the poorly one – and only the poorly one! The siblings could just look and drool.

What we wore – some more thoughts and images.

First, a disclaimer.  All images used are freely available on the Internet. If, however, I have infringed copyright please inform me and the offending picture will be removed.

  

As can be seen in this photo, girls’ dresses were more or less smaller versions of what their mums wore. 



 

Notice the boy’s inevitable short back and sides with side parting.

  

A girl in my primary school had a rabbit cardigan just like this knitted in red and white.  When it became too small for her, her mum cut the sleeves above the elbow to make it bolero style. 



 

Yes, I had outfits just like this!

Puff sleeves, gingham, seersucker, Broderie Anglaise trim with ribbon threaded through, sashes tied at the back, pockets – some of the things I remember from summer dresses of the day.   



 

A pattern which could be adapted to make a day dress, a party dress, a skirt and top, all with a choice of collar styles. Notice the trousers. They weren’t common and were known as ‘slacks’. They were definitely not worn for school.

What we wore – the 1950s

The reason this post is not called ‘Fashion’ or ‘Clothes’ is because I am covering the other side of the story. When we think of clothing and fashion in the 1950s and 60s we picture Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, Marlon Brando, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Mary Quant and pop icons such as The Beatles. All this is well documented and easy to research. Being a child in the 50s and a teenager in the 60s, in an area a long way from the large stores, the clothes I wore tell a very different tale.

In my Primary School days I, and all my friends, wore jumpers and cardigans knitted by our mums and dresses, skirts and pinafore dresses sewn on the home sewing machine – hand operated, of course, electric sewing machines were yet to arrive in our homes.

Because most garments were hand made and washing clothes was a once a week event, usually Monday (there were no washing machines), the same jumper and skirt (in winter) or dress and cardigan(summer) would be worn for several days, if not all week, so we didn’t have a huge selection of clothes.

Boys wore grey flannel shorts winter and summer with wool socks up to the knees. A blazer, v-necked jumper or tank top was worn over a shirt and a tie.

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Boys’ hair was cut ‘short back and sides’ with a side parting – no exceptions!

We wore knee-high grey or brown socks in winter, short white socks in summer – no tights or trousers, bare knees all year round!

My hair was exactly like that of the girl in blue. I longed for straight hair with a side parting and a bow, like the girl in pink, or long plaits like my friend Valerie. I was stuck with what was known as a ‘bubble cut’

I will be coming back to this topic as there is plenty to say. I will also be moving on into the 1960s and the clothes of my teenage years.

 

 

Technology

When we hear the word technology now we think of computers, mobile phones and tablets amongst other things. In the fifties, and then the sixties, new technology was emerging but at a very different level and a slower pace than today. 

In the early 1950’s, in the countryside where I grew up, electricity was established in homes but appliances were limited to lights, a cooker, a radiogram (a large wooden item of furniture housing a record player on one side and a radio on the other) and a vacuum cleaner. Our vacuum cleaner was this model and it was old in the 1950’s!

  
There was big excitement in the family upon the arrival of our first fridge. Milk could be kept fresh for longer in warm weather. Previously, my mum used to hang bottles of milk in the stream in a string bag. Best of all, there was an ice-box. Mum used to pour orange squash into the ice cube tray with a cocktail stick in each cube. Result – our first home-made iced lollies! 

The phone came next. First the lines had to be extended out as far as our house. How exciting it was to watch the workmen putting in the wires and telegraph poles! There is more about telephones in the village in my earlier post Shops and Brands Part 1. 

We didn’t have television until I was 10 in 1961.  I have covered TV in more detail in an earlier post. We had seen televisions previously a few times when staying with relatives who lived in towns but to have one of our own at last was hugely exciting. 

       

Later, in the 1960’s, we acquired a hair dryer, a hand whisk, our first portable ‘transistor’ radio,  a washing machine (a very early model with a single tub which had a heating element and was filled using a hose connected to the kitchen tap and with a mangle on the top) and a few electric fires to take the edge off cold bedrooms in winter – no central heating! 

   

 

Shops and Brands Part 2

Following on from my last post, this entry is looking at the shops I remember for our trips to the cities – Swansea an hour and a half away, Cardiff two hours. My memories of being in the cities in the fifties is totally centred on Woolworth’s. As kids we loved that store! The pick and mix, the affordable kids’ jewellery, the stationery.

As I moved into my teens, clothes shopping became more important. My mum had always shopped in C and A, British Home Stores (later named BHS), Littlewoods, the clothes branch of the Co-Op and, of course, Marks and Spencer. There were also department stores which always seemed to have those amazing pneumatic change machines which went whizzing through the various floors of the store. As fashion-conscious teenagers who read Honey magazine, my sister and I discovered Lewis Separates, Richard Shops, Dorothy Perkins and Etam which were a bit less mumsy than the other chain stores. Lewis Separates was later re-branded as Chelsea Girl which in turn became River Island. Richard Shops no longer exist. Unless they still operate online or in other countries. I once saw a branch of C and A in Prague many years after they had disappeared from UK shopping centres. Woolworth’s have reappeared online as has Etam.  I also remember a chain called Home and Colonial which I think was a grocery store so not of much interest to me at that time!


The ‘big’ shopping trips were whole day affairs as the towns were a reasonable drive away. We used to lunch in a cafe – what a treat! Sometimes this would be in a store cafeteria; Woolworth’s, Littlewoods, and British Home Stores all had great cafeterias. Or so they seemed to us as children. We even loved the sugar dispensers which gave exactly a teaspoon and the tomato sauce container in the shape of a tomato. The other option was the Wimpy Bar or the Golden Egg.  Whilst looking up Golden Egg cafes on the Internet looking for photos for this post, I stumbled across the fact that the chain was started by the Kray twins!The mid-morning drink was often taken at a Kardomah cafe. That wonderful smell of roasting coffee as you walked in! The dark, exotic-looking interiors. The last Kardomah I ever went in was in Nottingham where I was a student from 1969 to 1972.

Shops and Brands Part 1

When I was very young, from four to thirteen, we lived in a village. There was a village shop and Post Office which was also the village telephone exchange. Ours was not a nucleated village, it was a scattered one. The centre, not a centre as most would know it, was on the main road passing through the village. There was the shop, a chapel next door, a church 50 yards away and a pub 100 yards away. The school was half a mile away in the other direction. Every other house or farm was dotted around a one-mile or so radius.

 
The shop was a 15 minute walk from our house but we loved it! Being a child at the time, my main memory is of the sweets. Sherbet Fountains, Flying Saucers, Spangles, Love Hearts, Refreshers, aniseed balls and pear drops. I could go on! The shop was small and stocked with a limited range of tinned goods, packets and toiletries – as well as sweets. There was a small Post Office counter at right angles to the shop counter. The switchboard was in their sitting room which was next to the shop.

  
For things which couldn’t be grown in the garden or bought in the village shop there was the town, five miles away, and regular vans which drove around the countryside selling their goods. The fish man came on Tuesdays and Fridays, the butcher came mid-week and also on Saturday. Our Sunday joint was always bought from ‘Arthur the butcher’. There was also a bread van, a pop van and a general grocery van. 

The town, although a small market town (two thousand people), it had a few banks, loads of pubs, two chemists’ shops, two newsagents, a shoe shop, two butchers, two bakers, two drapers, two grocers, a greengrocer and an ironmonger. it loads of pubs, two chip shops and a cafe. The drapers and the shoe shop provided most of our regular needs – underwear, school uniform, school shoes. The brands I remember are Clarks, Start-Rite, Ladybird, Cherub, Banner and Trutex.

   
For ‘big’ shopping such as Christmas shopping, new summer clothes, new winter clothes, we went to Swansea (an hour and half drive) or Cardiff (a two hour drive). In between there was catalogue shopping – Marshall Ward, Littlewoods, Kays – essential in that sort of area and in those times.