Ornaments

Throughout history, people have decorated their homes with non-functional artefacts. Even prehistoric people carved and painted decorative objects which were often used as symbols or to tell stories.

Sculpted from mammoth ivory and found in a a cave in Germany this 40,000-year-old image is 31 centimetres tall. It has the head of a cave lion with a partly human body.

But tastes change, as do the available materials and techniques. This is a very brief run-through of some of the ornamental items I recall from my childhood.

In the 1950s, when I was very young, many of the houses of older relatives were very old-fashioned compared to fifties styles. Many of the things in my grandmother’s home would have looked quite in keeping in Victorian times.

I remember seeing these domes in houses. They sometimes had small stuffed animals or dried butterflies in them as well as the dried flowers.

It wasn’t uncommon then to see a stuffed animal or bird on the sideboard of an elderly relative.

Many older people in my childhood had these pairs of china dogs on their mantlepieces or in the hearth.

When I was a child I remember these china flower ornaments being very popular with our mums. They were the kind of thing you bought her for her birthday or Christmas.

My mum had one very like this. The tutu was real net stiffened with something like starch or glue. I washed it once when I was helping Mum with the spring-cleaning – and her tutu went soft and fell off!

My mum had one exactly like this one!

Wade ornaments were also popular here in the fifties. In the Spring we used to pick primroses and float them in the water in the ‘log’.

In the sixties I remember Wedgewood items being an item you would buy a mum, grandmother or an aunt.

I then remember crystal or cut glass becoming a ‘thing’ in the 60’s. There were glasses and decanters but also ornamental dishes, trays and even bells.

Credit to Google, Google Images and Wikipedia.

As always I make every effort not to infringe copyright. However, if anyone objects to my use of any image, please contact me and it will be removed.

Pets

I was talking with some friends the other day and the subject of budgies came up. We all remembered so many households where there was a pet budgie. It always fascinated me that if you wanted the budgie to be quiet you put the cover over the cage and it immediately thought it was night and went to sleep. Most of the ones I knew seemed to be called Joey. I don’t know anyone with a budgie now. This got me thinking about how the change in pet-keeping since the 1950s and 60s.

Budgies – or Budgerigars, to give them their full name

I haven’t seen a budgie for many years now but when I was a child they were very popular pets. I often used to see them in the homes of elderly relatives we used to visit. I’m sure there were other names but I used to know a lot of budgies called Joey. They were either blue or green. People used to train them to say a few words. I wondered whether I don’t see them now because it’s illegal to keep them so I looked this up and found that it’s not against the law to keep a budgie as a pet. The decline in numbers is simply changing fashions in pets.

Tortoises

I never had a tortoise but they were very popular pets in the 50s. Children in storybooks and comics often had pet tortoises. I remember reading about owners painting their initials on the shell in case the tortoise ever escaped.

Goldfish

It was very common to see goldfish in bowls when I was a child. One common practice, which is still legal here and shouldn’t be, was the winning of goldfish at fairs. This was still happening when my children were small in the 1980s but is far less common now. The ‘lucky’ child was given a small plastic water-filled bag with a goldfish swimming in it. If it was going back to a household which didn’t already have fish there would have been no tank or bowl and no fish food so the chances are the poor fish would be dead by the next day.

Whilst researching for this post I learned that just last year my nearby town, Wakefield, banned fairs from giving goldfish as prizes to children.

Cats and Dogs

I lived in a farming village so most of the families we knew were farmers and they all had cats and dogs. These were working animals. The dogs were sheepdogs and were trained to work with flocks of sheep. Most of the ones I knew on our local farms were called Fly, Moss or Belle. Cats were there largely to keep the mouse population down in the hay barns. These weren’t indoor pampered pets. They lived outside and in the barns and outhouses.

When I was 13 we moved five miles from our village into the small town nearby. Here there were more people with pet dogs who were taken out for regular walks on leads. We acquired a pet dog, a Golden Labrador, when I was 15 and we all absolutely adored her.

Perhaps the range of pets available in the 50s and 60s was greater than I’m remembering. It could be that my experience was different from others from that time because we didn’t have a pet shop anywhere nearby. However, this is how I remember things and I am only speaking from personal experience.

Credit to Wikipedia and Google Images. I endeavor to ensure I am not infringing copyright when using photographs obtained from the Internet. If anyone objects to my use of a photograph, let me know and I will remove it.

Facial Hair Through Time

I was thinking recently about the way beards have made a massive comeback in the past few years. That got me musing on men’s facial hair trends in my lifetime.

My memory of men in the 1950s is that I rarely saw anyone with either a beard or a moustache. As we can do so easily these days, I decided to research this. It’s fascinating the way facial hair, in various combinations, and designs, has gone in and out of fashion for hundreds of years.

The beard has been falling in and out of favour for many years. Going back just a few generations, we can see a huge variety of trends which have come and gone and sometimes come back.

So first, a quick run through from the 1800’s up to the Fifties.

In the early 1800s bushy side whiskers were very fashionable.

History of Beards: The Victorians | Victorian Beard History — 1800’s side whiskers.

Full beards were everywhere for most of the mid to late Victorian era.

Charles Darwin - Theory, Book & Quotes - Biography — Charles Darwin.

In Europe, during World War 1, men started shaving off their beards and just having moustaches because it was difficult to put a gas mask on over a full beard. The 1920s and 1930s saw the beard become almost exclusive to more elderly gentlemen, unlike the trendy young beardies of today.

Toothbrush moustaches were fashionable for a while in the 1930s and 40s but disappeared after World War One when they became associated with Adolf Hitler.

Pencil moustaches were sported by some 1940s film stars – Errol Flynn, David Niven, Clark Gable and Leslie Phillips come to mind.

Ding dong! Leslie Phillips turns 90 | Norton of Morton — Leslie Philips.

Clark Gable and his pencil moustache | Clark gable, Actors, Classic hollywood — Clark Gable.

Onwards to my era now and in the 1950s most men were clean-shaven. I can’t remember any men I knew – family or otherwise, having either a beard or a moustache. The film stars were all clean-shaven too and so were the popular bands and singers of the time – Lonnie Donnegan, Elvis, Buddy Holly,

I do, however, remember that the teddy boys of the late 50s/ early 60s grew long sideboards/ sideburns. Here, they are more commonly called sideboards which always puzzled me as a child as a sideboard is also an item of furniture.

John Lennon, ever-changing & always inspiring Personal Style | — John Lennon in his teddy boy years.

In the 60s the beatnik cult arrived and, although we didn’t see any in the rural area I lived in, I was aware of the trend and the accompanying facial hair.

By the late 60s – especially after Woodstock – the long hair and beards of the hippies were becoming more popular and by the early 70s there was a trend for the droopy moustache.

Burt Reynolds with a 70s droopy moustache.

A John Lennon Memoir — 1969. Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George… | by Dr. Patricia Farrell | Medium — John Lennon again with the 70s hippie look.

Finally, some words associated with facial hair. Some of these I have only learned from doing this research.

Mutton chops, side whiskers, sideboards, sideburns, goatee, designer stubble, handlebar, horseshoe, toothbrush, pencil, chinstrap, chin curtain.

If anyone wants to look into the history of beards in more detail, I recommend Dr Alun Withey’s excellent blog which I have been following for a while https://dralun.wordpress.com/

Credit to Wikipedia, Google Images, historic-uk.com, bbc.co.uk. I make every effort not to infringe copyright but if anyone objects the the use of any image in this post please contact me and I will remove it. Also, any inaccuracies spotted will be rectified once drawn to my attention.

New Foods

A few weeks ago I was doing some clearing out/ de-cluttering. I realised that quite a few of my recipe books were now looking extremely tatty. On flicking through them before throwing them out I started thinking about the food items which didn’t appear in them and definitely wouldn’t have been around in the 1950s! I will just say next that most of the foods I’m going to list here already existed somewhere in the world. They are not new, just new to us in Britain.

Reading about the history of food trends in Britain, the first wave of ‘foreign food’ cuisine was French which arrived in the late 1950s and continued to be popular through the 1960s and to the present. These trends are ones I’ve read about but I was unaware of them as a child. Fashions didn’t spread as quickly back then and the average person in Britain didn’t come across fancy restaurants or try out recipes from cookbooks like Elizabeth David’s 1950 publication A Book of Mediterranean Food.

A Book of Mediterranean Food: Elizabeth David A Book of Mediterranean Food (Penguin Cookery L... by David, Elizabeth Paperback

An early copy. Still in print.

This famous book came at a time when many foods were still rationed and very few people went abroad on holiday. With the rise of Italian, Chinese and Indian eating places in the large cities in the 1950s and through to smaller towns over the next few decades, new foods began to filter down into normal households.

Food trends continue to ebb and flow, almost without us noticing. Here are some of the things I hadn’t even heard of even ten or fifteen years ago.

Halloumi

This is a traditional cheese from Cyprus but I can still remember the first time I came across it, not much more than ten years ago. I loved it then and still do!

Image result for halloumi cheese

Jackfruit

I haven’t seen this here in my part of Yorkshire yet but I keep reading about it in magazines and online. It’s being particularly hailed as a meat substitute for vegetarians and vegans. I’ll report back when I eventually get to try it!

Image result for jackfruit Image result for jackfruit recipes

The raw jackfruit Cooked jackfruit

Prosecco

Suddenly this drink is everywhere! Ten years ago I had never heard of it now there isn’t a party, wedding, dinner party or hen do without it.

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Panini

Another first taste memory. We were in France on holiday when I had my first panini (and I loved it) and now nearly every cafe has them on the menu. They’re a version of what we here call a toasted sandwich but with different bread and more adventurous fillings.

Related image Image result for toasted sandwich

Panini Basic British toasted sandwich

Couscous, quinoa, freekeh

Where once we had rice, now we have a whole load of alternative grains and seeds to choose from. To date I have tried quinoa and couscous but not freekeh.

Image result for freekeh Image result for couscous

Pesto, balsamic vinegar, coconut oil, coconut milk,

Image result for pesto

Image result for coconut milk tin

This is an assortment of items which now feature in many of our kitchen cupboards and which were unheard of here until recent years.

Green tea and herbal teas

Image result for green tea Image result for herbal teas

Tea used to mean a hot drink made from the leaves of the tea bush. Green tea has become very popular now and is also from the tea bush but it seems you can now call any hot infusion a tea. We see every sort of leaf, fruit, herb and spice presented as a tea, often in combinations of more than one.

Labels

Wholemeal, wholegrain, gluten free, decaffeinated, ‘Free From’, vegan, vegetarian, meat free, additive free, sugar free, low fat, fat free. These labels are everywhere now and SO helpful when you have specific requirements in your food shopping, whether from preference or for medical and dietary reasons. Back in the 1950s, with rationing just coming to an end, food was food. Be grateful, like it or lump it was the attitude. How things change!

Image result for free from foods asda

Planks of Wood and Lumps of Slate.

I was out for lunch with some friends yesterday and out of the five of us only two had meals served on china plates. This prompted a lively discussion and my friend Janet suggested that the topic would be a good one to cover in my blog. So here it is!

I don’t know if this has happened in other parts of the world, and I look forward to hearing from readers on this, but in the last decade or so there has been a bit of a trend in certain eating places to serve food on other things besides plates. This will not normally happen in higher end restaurants but more in the slightly up-market cafes and bistros. The sort of place you would go to do what I did yesterday and meet friends for lunch. At least, that’s my impression – others might think differently.

The commonest one is food served on a lump of wood or what I would use as a chopping board or bread board. This doesn’t feel particularly odd for a sandwich/ ploughman’s sort of meal, but some of the others are definitely peculiar!

Meal served on a wooden board.

Pieces of slate are also spotted in these sort of places.

slate A piece of slate serves as a plate.

Yesterday one of us had food presented in a basket. This reminded us all that the very first cases of this sort of food presentation happened in the late 60s/ early 70s when pubs (it was only pubs doing this) started serving bar snacks in a basket. The three usual choices were steak, chicken or scampi with chips. This was the first time steak and chicken had been served in small bite-sized pieces which you could spear with just a fork. Basket meals were SO new and SO trendy! My first one ever was when I was a student in a pub in the centre of Nottingham called the Blue Bell.

basket 2 basket

Other things which turn up on tables are:

Chips or side dishes served in small metal buckets.

buckets bucket and barrow

Three buckets in a wooden crate. Side dishes in a bucket and a wheelbarrow.

Milk for tea and coffee in a mini milk churn.

churn A wooden board and a milk churn.

Meals served on a flat cap – yes, I have really heard of this one although it hasn’t happened to me yet! I assume there is always a plate or a washable layer inside the cap – and that the cap is unworn.

cap

Food presented on a fireman’s shovel – another one I have heard about but not experienced.

shovel

I have had a meal served in a frying pan before and it was obvious that it wasn’t even one used for cooking the meal but a decorative one used as a plate.

pan

Here are a few others I have yet to experience. Some I’m not in a hurry to try.

fryer hubcap

trowel

bat shoe

Pictures all sourced from Google Images. If anyone sees one which they object to me using for any reason, please contact me through the blog and I will happily remove it.

Buzz Words, Lingo and Slang.

Apologies for the long silence! I have had a houseful of family staying for several weeks and everything else was shelved.

This is an idea I’ve been mulling over for a while. Several times a day I hear someone use a word or phrase and I think ‘That’s one to save. It didn’t exist in the 1950s/ 60s.’

I’m going to start with some words which were very new and trendy (I think trendy is one of the new ones?) in the 1950s. I was only a kid but I heard these word – mainly in song lyrics.

THE 1950s

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I have added ‘translations’ for those who weren’t alive at the time and might be puzzled!

Gas – when something was really good or great fun it was described as being ‘a gas’ . It was still around in the 1960s – check out the lyrics of Jumpin’ Jack Flash by The Rolling Stones.

Daddy-O – a term of address from one person to another. Credited to beatnik slang.

Beatnik – definition courtesy of Wiktionary

A person who dresses in a manner that is not socially acceptable and therewith is supposed to reject conventional norms of thought and behavior; nonconformist in dress and behavior
A person associated with the Beat Generation of the 1950s and 1960s or its style.

Cat – a cool/ groovy person

Cool – this is still around and now usually means good (more or less) but then it was only used for anything very special.

Greaser – a word used to describe youths with loads of Brylcreem on their hair.

No sweat – nowadays I more often hear ‘no problem’ or ‘no worries’ but this was the expression at the time.

Groovy – cool, trendy, etc

THE 1960s

1960s-Hippies-Fashion

Dig it – I dig it meant you really liked it.

Far out – superb

Outta sight – amazing, even better than far out.

Zonked – done in, tired

Sock it to me – as in ‘Yes! I love it! Give me some more.’

NOW

I have deliberately kept away from technology so words like web, internet, digital, cyber etc etc don’t show here. That is a post by itself!

350-sq-selfie-mountain-shutterstock_207527209_0 S Stick

Selfie

24/ 7

Brill – when I was young, the word brilliant described

a. something shining very brightly

b. somebody who was extremely intelligent.

Now it is just used in place of good, lovely, fine etc and brill is as commonly used as brilliant.

Gross – when I was in school a gross was a mathematical term. It stood for 144! We now commonly describe something disgusting as gross.

Cool – arrived in the 50s and then meant something which was absolutely on trend and totally sought after. This word has hung around and now gets used as freely as OK.

Mega

Downsize

Leggings – The word existed when I was a child and usually referred to baby garments, mostly knitted, which covered the legs but not the feet. Now they’re one of the most widespread items of female clothing.

Vintage-1950s-childrens-clothes-pram-set-Kamella-Riteward

Sleepover

Playdate

Grass roots

Hijack

Backpack

Gap year

Butch

Gay – the word gay was always around but it used to mean happy, jolly.

Sexism/ ageism/ racism

Recycling

Environmental

Remember These?

A friend of mine mentioned recently that her favourite tinned soup is Mulligatawny but that she never sees it in the shops any more. I remember it too and her comment made me think of some other food items which have disappeared or almost disappeared in the past few decades. Some of these have been mentioned before in posts about foods I remember eating and ones I remember arriving on the scene when I was young.

I am not saying that these things don’t exist any more (although some of them definitely don’t) just that I don’t hear of or see them any more.

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I used to love Kraft Dairylea triangles and for a while there was a box of flavoured ones being sold. I loved them! The picture is the nearest I could find to what I’m remembering but the flavours are not exactly the same.

Turnips and swedes were once as common as carrots and parsnips when I was a child but are now they are like the poor relation of the root vegetable world. I certainly never see them on a menu when eating out! And does anyone still eat tripe? Or mutton?

I was watching a programme on TV the other night called Back in Time for Tea (recommended to me by the same friend) in which a family’s home is transported back to earlier decades. In the one where they were living as if in the 1960s – complete with 60s furniture, decor, clothes and food – there was a food item in their pantry which was Heinz tinned Vegetable Salad. I remember that there was also a Potato Salad one. There are many, many varieties of salad dishes available on deli counters now – coleslaw, rice salads, cous cous salads and tons more – in plastic pots. I had completely forgotten that their precursors came in tins!

download (1) heinz-potato-salad

My grandmother absolutely loved butterscotch gums and I often took her a packet – weighed out from a large glass jar into a paper bag – when I went to see her. Spangles were a popular sweet when I was a child and for a while they had a packet called Old English Spangles with flavours like mint and liquorice. They were brilliant!

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Surprise Peas, which I have mentioned before, were what came before frozen peas and were ‘freeze dried’ and very quick to cook. The rise of home freezers and cheap frozen peas meant that Surprise Peas were no longer desirable so they disappeared.

Now we come to blancmange. Everybody of my age and older remembers blancmange. It was a set milky fruit flavoured dessert made in a mould and went with jelly like fish go with chips. It could be made from scratch but there was a packet mix which most people used. I read on a website when I was looking blancmange up that the nearest equivalent is the Italian dessert panna cotta.

1950s-packet-pearce-duff-blancmange_360_de627073e5bc84a183883ef4953421a0

Burgers hadn’t reached Britain in the 1950s but we did have things called rissoles (I never hear that word now!) and faggots. I know faggot has a non-food meaning in some parts of the world but to us it was a kind of meatball.

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A few other edible things which are no more . . . .

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huntley s-l500

It’s unthinkable in this PC age but children could buy imitation cigarettes which were sweets!

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The tinned milk products below are still available but are largely used in cooking desserts. Back in the 1950s in Britain when most homes, and many local shops, didn’t have fridges these were what we called ‘cream’ and we had them on fruit salads (tinned in those days!), trifles and fruit pies.

105914 carnation-evaporated-milk-desserts_1200x1200 ideal-milk

Childhood Memories of growing up in the 1950s and 1960s.

'Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.' Chilli Davis

Tag Archives: trends