General Chat

My sisters grew up in the 50s (I'm younger :-D). Yes, they enjoyed the freedom and joys of lots of outdoor play with few restrictions (so did I in the 60s), but other memories are of no central heating, chilblains, very dodgy haircuts, hand-me-downs, clumpy shoes, barbaric dentists and Dad trying to move on from the 'lost years' of the war which had jeopardised his Oxbridge and career hopes.

I love South Pacific, one of the classic musicals and a sure fire antidote to the blues and the Black & White Minstrel show. Inspired lyrics.

I rather prefer Mizi Gaynor to Mary Martin as Nellie Forbush but it depends on my mood.

I can relate to all of these memories (in our minds we can be forever young :-D )

Here in north east of England, although there was heavy industries, we didn't experience smog. When anyone we knew went to London to work, it was said they were going down to the smoke, and I couldn't think then what they meant :-S

In the 1950s our generation became the first 'teenagers'. Dressing differently from our parents/older folk and having our own style. I saw lots of bands & singers, usually at the City hall (GP will know that venue) met the Everly brothers and also saw Bill Hayley and his Comets at Newcastle Odeon.
First ever trip to London my sister and I went to see Sunday night at the London Palladium. It was televised live and hosted by Brucie :-D...main act as I remember was Frankie Vaughan.

Family got very first tv set year after the coronation, when Newcastle United were in the cup final.....and won!! (wish we had the same team ;-) )
Lots of happy memories (though some sad).
........ and my boyfriend went to Hong Kong for his National Service Ann, when I played Ricky Nelson rather a lot on the wireless :-)...or should I say the gramophone and Buddy Holly, Elvis, Fats Domino oh loads of fab favs.:-D

I could write a book....and have done :-D

Yes, Jax is right Summer Holiday was 1963.

Let's all get up and dance to a song
That was a hit before your mother was born.
Though she was born a long, long time ago
Your mother should know (Your mother should...)
Your mother should know (...know.)
Sing it again.
Let's all get up and dance to a song
That was a hit before your mother was born.
Though she was born a long, long time ago
Your mother should know (Your mother should...)
Your mother should know (...know.)
Lift up your hearts and sing me a song
That was a hit before your mother was born.
Though she was born a long, long time ago
Your mother should know (Your mother should...)
Your mother should know (Aaaah.)
Your mother should know (Your mother should...)
Your mother should know (Aaaah.)
Sing it again.
Da-da-da-da...
Though she was born a long, long time ago
Your mother should know (Your mother should...)
Your mother should know (Know-)

As I was born a couple of years after LG, starting school in 1958, I can’t remember a great deal of it.

My parents had a small TV – 15 minute of children’s programmes after lunch with the set having to be turned on early to ‘warm up’.
The front room was for visitors and Christmas and out of bounds at all other time.
Bacon on ration – there must have been other things, but having dropped the packet out of the pram, the repercussions were one thing I remember. I suspect I used to be put into the pram so that Mum could use it to carry the shopping home.
Orange juice in a medicine bottle; Mum meeting my Dad at the door very excited about it. I was given a teaspoonful – it was horrible!
Washing was boiled up in a big pan in the kitchen – I think they had an electric washing machine kept under cover outside. Water was squeezed out with a hand operated mangle.
Heating was the coal fire in the back/living/dining room – we still have the fireguard which was put into use again when our children came along.

Roughly aged 4, I used to be sent to the shop at the end of the road with money to buy a block of ice cream or peas which were wrapped in newspaper for the return journey. A child of that age wouldn’t be allowed out alone now!
Once I started this FH research, OH realised that his grandparents lived next door to the shop. Who knows, we might have stood next to each other in the queue!

We moved to a new-build bungalow on a development in the country in the summer of 1958.

Although I can’t recall the smogs, a neighbour in the early 60’s did say that she thought we were being effected. Mum poo-hooed it!

Thanks Rollo. Can't say that I remember that big fog, it probably wasn't very much of a problem to us but I do remember the snow because that was made for playing in.

I do remember there being a very wet winter about that time too, the only time we had water come indoors.

Another indelible memory of the 1950s/1960s

http://www.turnipnet.com/radio/horacebatchelor.wav

I can't remember the 50s, too young but I know Summer Holiday didn't come out until 63...

For Sharron

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/6/newsid_3251000/3251001.stm

After the Great Smog we had the Great Snow and even in Essex there was snow in the fields as late as May.

Rollo, I am not doubting you, I wasn't there, but wasn't the last peasouper 1952 rather than 1962? It just has always been lodged in my head that it was the year before I was born and how awful it would be to discover I was ten years younger than I thought!

I can remember a neighbour going to London for the day, which may as well have been Cairo to us, and saying how he had seen smoke coming out of the chimney of Battersea power station and disappearing because of the new law which must have been the Clean Air Act.

We lived in a back road with three cottages in a mile of road and, on a summer Sunday when a dozen cars might pass, my grandmother would say it was like London. So I grew up, with no television, thinking that was what London was like. She would not have known either, I don't think she had ever been there.

At the back of Woolworth's in Chichester was the old woolstapler's warehouse standing empty. We didn't go out of the backdoor of Woollies very often, in fact just the once. That old warehouse certainly put the wobblers up me and I wasn't going out there again!

My father bought his first TV just before the coronation in 1953. My grandfather thought it the biggest financial folly since the Great Crash but that didn't stop him and my granny coming weekends to watch it or a great aunt staying a fortnight for Wimbledon a few years ( and another telly ) later. All the same 1950s TV was not exactly riveting (*). When the TV was off ( mostly ) the combined ops of Workers Playtime, Reginald Dixon and so on would push most young people outdoors to escape the noise pollution.

(*) There was a program called "Qatermass" which was apparently riveting. It can now be found on YouTube. Make your own judgement.

Pop music was banned from the BBC and only accessible either by buying records (expensive) or Radio Luxembourg. I learned how to make a crystal radio set in an old tobacco tin.

The foggy London winters were not so bad until the Great Smog of '62/3 which was yellow and nasty and rasped down the back of your throat, so thick even on foot it could be difficult to get along. It cut down swathes of elderly relatives and even worse forced young people indoors for renewed audio attack from Reg Dixon and friends. The other end of the soccer pitch was invisible. Aaagh.

It didn't help that most homes were freezing cold most of the time with just a single fire in the grate for some of the evening. We had some sort of coke burning device with a glass front which was always on and an Aga :-) Shifting all the coke into the house was no fun though especially in the snows of 1963.

My granny was a French chef with whom my mother had no chance. I grasped at an early age that the English can't or won't cook. When I went away to school my weight dropped like a stone until I learned the English trick of eating at high speed and getting it over with. It took years to unlearn. The BBC tv tried to do something about the awful food starting I think with Fanny Craddock.

Right at the end of the 50s I saw my first color movie, "Summer Holiday". Never seen it since.

Not many people went off on holiday to Spain and so on in the 1950s. Mostly we endured the long long journey west leaving at dawn threading our way through "Slough Safety Town" and down the A30 to Cornwall, land of clotted cream strawberries warm raw milk a blue azure sea the beach and lots of fun. At least in my memory it was always sunny. Those trips gave me a lifetime addiction to roadside burgers and the A30/A303. A couple of years ago another addict even made a BBC short movie about the history of the A30.

One year to please my mum we went to Skegness. That convinced me that the Ice Age was not yet over and an aversion to the east coast which lasted until middle age. I remember with some cousins a Just William episode when we found some large bones poking out in a field. I was sure they were mammoth relics lol.

The 1950s were not especially safe what with the wartime spivs and wide boys moving on to stolen and ringed cars, cut 'n shut, flick knives, good kickings, "protection" and so on. It was also the time when the Richardsons, Kray and Davis gangs were learning their trade. The up side is that it was good business for my old man, part of London's thin blue line.

Like most decades the 1950s started late with the accession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth. It ended late too in July 1962 with the Rolling Stones playing the Marquee Club in London.

So ended one of the most boring smokey decades ever. No doubt older people who had endured ww2 were happy. For younger people it was an era of boredom and uncomfortable clothes.

Brought some memories back there!

I still have my mothers bottle of Californian Poppy....also saw Mary Martin in South Pacific. Washing her hair,but that was at the Opera House in Manchester

Went dancing most Saturday nights with my friend from work.
The band at the Plaza in Manchester was Sonny Swann and when they had a break it was Ray Ellington. who later became famous.
Had to run across town to get the train home to be in before 11 pm.

Married in 1956.big wedding ,honeymoon in Ilfracombe at the Beacon Castle Hotel which was full of honeymoon couples.went from there on Paddle steamer to Cardiff . Jack Train was on the boat and got his autograph.then up to mid Wales by train where my new in laws had a guest house and stayed a week there before going back to work.
Not lots of money,but we learned to save up for everything we wanted....and I think that is something that has been lost .We did appreciate what we had.

Don't we love to reminisce as we get older?

Fred was a long distance lorry driver then and he used to take Brylcreme in his wash bag when he went away,(A little dab'll do ya!), his stick of shaving soap, Breeze soap (Darling, please bath with Breeze!) because he was sensitive to some soaps. I can remember him having Lilypads which were for washing your hair I think and were sort of flat sheets of soap or something slmilar with a hole to stick your finger through.

Ann - I saw a lot of the old stars in Newcasle and got a lot of autographs which I gave away. They would be of some value today i suppose. Alma Cogan gave me her autugraph and that was the last one I got. Unfortunately she died later.

GP

Sunday Night at The London Palladium, with all those great acts, well they seemed great at the time, it had Beat the Clock, and I loved the end, where everyone went round on a a moving wheel, waving :-D

The Blck and White Minstrel Show - would never be allowed now, but it was great

What's my line, Animal Vegetable and Mineral

The Sunday night play - filmed live - we always watched it in the dark and during the interval - when you had a variety of things to watch - a cat with a ball of wool, a potter;s wheel, swans on a lake - my mother used to dash out the kitchen to make sandwiches and a pot of tea ready for the second half

Having cod liver oil tablets, malt by the spoonful, given by the caretakers wife at school, if you had a shilling a week that is.

Liberace on the telly, with his candelabras, ring on every finger, and that cheesy smile, can you imagine anyone watching him now, well apart from an act on X Factor :-D

White Rain shampoo sachets, Californian Poppy perfume, Kardomah coffee houses with Kunzle cakes wrapped in cellophane, Tangee lipstick which looked orange until you put it on and then it turned pink

Yardley's Pink Magic lipstick which made you look as if you had heart problems

Coty talcum powder in plastic puffer bottlles, Tweed perfume and Yardley's April Violets, Yardley's Flair

Virol :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P or Vile as I used to call it and clinic orange juice yum

that would be nice GP - we'd both have very sore throats!!!!

Saw lots of shows in the Palladium in the 50's when staying with an Aunt in Maida Hill - saw Norman Wisdom with Jerry Desmond - got Norman's autograph, went to see White Horse Inn on Ice somewhere in London too - also saw South Pacific at the Palladium - Mary Martin [Larry Hagman's mother] did the "I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair" number - the Mitzi Gayor part