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Back in the days of tanners and bobs,
When Mothers had patience and Fathers had jobs.
When football team families wore hand me down shoes,
And T.V gave only two channels to chose.
Back in the days of threepenny bits,
when schools employed nurses to search for your nits.
When snowballs were harmless; ice slides were permitted
and all of your jumpers were warm and hand knitted.
Back in the days of hot ginger beers,
when children remained so for more than six years.
When children respected what older folks said,
and pot was a thing you kept under your bed.
Back in the days of Listen with Mother,
when neighbours were friendly and talked to each other.
When cars were so rare you could play in the street.
When Doctors made house calls; Police walked the beat.
Back in the days of Milligan’s Goons,
when butter was butter and songs all had tunes.
It was dumplings for dinner and trifle for tea,
and your annual break was a day by the sea.
Back in the days of Dixon’s Dock Green,
Crackerjack pens and Lyons ice cream.
When children could freely wear National Health glasses,
and teachers all stood at the FRONT of their classes
Back in the days of rocking and reeling,
when mobiles were things that you hung from the ceiling.
When woodwork and pottery got taught in schools,
and everyone dreamt of a win on the pools.
Back in the days when I was a lad,
I can’t help but smile for the fun that I had.
Hopscotch and roller skates; snowballs to lob.
Back in the days of tanners and bobs.

I've got sixpence
Jolly. jolly sixpence
I've got sixpence to last me all my life
I've got twopence to spend
And twopence to lend
And twopence to send home to my wife-poor wife.

I remember it from a war film, maybe Dunkirk with John Mills or a POW film as they were marched to captivity

+1
For both contributions.

"When doctors made house calls..." - I discovered among my mother's effects something I recognised as "The Doctor's towel" - an embroidered hand-towel of white huckaback linen, which would be placed in the bathroom for the doctor's use after a house-call.
I realise now that my mother would have done the embroidery and the delicate crochet edging.

Other memories of my childhood illnesses include wakeful nights hearing the milkman's deliveries quietly clanking past in the night, and the street-lights going off at 11pm.

Thanks for the poem, CharlieOneSix, and for the ditty, PN.

Do you remember home isolation? In your bedroom, curtains drawn, not allowed to read, comics not just confiscated but dumped. Though whether that was to get rid of the germs or an excuse to get rid of the pile under the bed.

The bed. Remember the single bed, your from 5 years until you left home. The metal mattress base, the spring net, the steel lateral bars with coil springs. The thin utility blankets. A bedspread, an eider down if you were lucky.

All our furniture was Wartime 'Utility' - plain and simple and functional.

For a long time the blankets on the 'spare' bed were grey Army blankets, scratchy...

Karearea wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 22, 2021 6:51 pm

"When doctors made house calls..." - I discovered among my mother's effects something I recognised as "The Doctor's towel" - an embroidered hand-towel of white huckaback linen, which would be placed in the bathroom for the doctor's use after a house-call.

I'm here now because a doctor made a house call. At the tender age of nine months, my grandmother looked at me and called the doctor. The surgery was at the end of the street, the doctor came down, looked at me and I got my first (and probably only, to date) trip in an ambulance.

My 1st home visit by a Dr. was my birth!

Some years later, while on leave I managed to get pneumonia and went through the 'sick at home' routine. The family Dr came out and while on his 1st visit, he read up the paper work. He realised that I was to be treated as a private patient and that he could bill the RAF for his visits.

He came to see me most days!

Idle reminiscences.......I never thought anything about it when I was a kid but my father always had his bath first and then my mother had hers in the same water. Money was short but I never knew. I remember those scratchy grey blankets but at some point I was lucky enough to have a thin eiderdown as well. We lived in a Council house until I was 11- so did all my mates, it was normal. A holiday was a day trip on the bus from home in Worthing to High Salvington, a walk up Honeysuckle Lane and a picnic before a walk over the South Downs to Findon and a bus home. Happy and contented days! Always wondered how Jack Frost made all those wonderful patterns on the bedroom window after a cold night. Central heating? Well I know the early Greeks and Romans are supposed to have invented it but it hadn't reached my parents first and only owned house by the time I joined the RN. There was a fireplace in my bedroom but I don't recall it ever being lit.

Remember walking to Sunday School. If running late taking short cut through bombed buildings. Given good thrashing by father for doing so. Apparently there were cellars underneath that hadn't collapsed. Yet.

Weren't supposed to get jobs if under eleven, but I lied, and they didn't check. Was delivering papers by age of nine. Only time ever been to a professional cricket match. At Trent Bridge pushing a W.H. Smiths trolley around with cricket magazines,books, etc. Bank holiday weekends used to push same trolley around platforms at Nottingham Midland station.

Used to be able to buy chicken entrails at butchers, 1/- for a big bag. Giblet stew was one of my favourites. Necks, livers, kidneys etc. Mum used to peel the inner skin off the chicken stomachs as very chewy. For a bob, plus host of vegies, feed the whole family twice over. Neighbour used to hang a couple of rabbits on back fence for us after going out with his ferrets.

The River Lean, whch flowed into the Trent, had been bricked over. Every time it flooded our cellar would fill up. '47 was the big flood. Ferried out of our house from first floor by Dad in a tin bath. Three kids in the bath and him swimming whilst pushing it along.

Weeks before Nov 5th we would collect all old furniture that people wanted rid of and build a huge bonfire in the middle of the street. Used to roast potatoes in the hot ashes, scooping the contents out from the blackened carbonised/burnt skins.

Happy days.
PS. Holidays were a day at Skeggy or Cleethorpes. Dad used to get free train tickets for whole family. He worked for LMS. Remember getting off LMS train at Newark, walking to LNER station for train to East Coast.

Our Doctor was Doctor Grant, an enormously impressive individual because he was very tall and had a gravitas that would make a Judge jealous. His consulting dress was a grey suit with waistcoat on which dangled not the normal stethoscope but an archaic hearing aid that had a stethoscopic type earpieces on a springy band and what looked like a small trumpet cone on the patient end. He would hold the trumpet end out to you as you spoke. I suspect the hearing loss was one of the WWs, probably WW1 based on his age.

Sometime before my tenth birthday I contracted pneumonia which lasted six weeks, I later found out that for part of the time I was unconscious although I did not realize this until I was told later. On every one of the days, including the week ends, Dr. Grant visited our home, occasionally giving me what appeared to be huge dose of a creamy white fluid, which was probably pennacillin, in my back-side.

Did he save my life? Most likely yes.

.

Boing, our first doctor was Dr Magill but that was before the NHS. We then moved and my mother begged him to keep her as a private patient but as we were probably 4 miles away he refused.

Our new Dr Baker drove a convertible with two hatches in the boot for the dickie seats. He used to do house visits. I hated it, every time he prescribed glucose. Hated it.

Glucose I like, together with malt extract (Virol) and NHS orange juice - though it would be MoF.
Wasn't keen on cod-liver oil though.

Pontius Navigator wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 22, 2021 7:07 pm

Do you remember home isolation? In your bedroom, curtains drawn, not allowed to read, comics not just confiscated but dumped. Though whether that was to get rid of the germs or an excuse to get rid of the pile under the bed.

The bed. Remember the single bed, your from 5 years until you left home. The metal mattress base, the spring net, the steel lateral bars with coil springs. The thin utility blankets. A bedspread, an eider down if you were lucky.

+1 And the frost on the inside of the window on cold winter mornings...

G-CPTN wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:18 pm

Glucose I like, together with malt extract (Virol) and NHS orange juice - though it would be MoF.
Wasn't keen on cod-liver oil though.

I hated cod liver oil - it used to give me indigestion!

I have clear memories of being wheeled in the Tan-Sad pushchair to the clinic to collect the orangejuice and codliveroil.

I could take you there - but it is no longer the clinic (and the replacement clinic has been long closed).

boing wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 04, 2021 8:31 pm

.....giving me what appeared to be huge dose of a creamy white fluid, which was probably pennacillin, in my back-side.

Oh, jeez, that brings back memories of when I was about 10 at the long gone Royal Victoria Hospital in Bournemouth - it was penicillin and bloody painful I recall as it seemed to be the consistency of wet crushed chalk.

I love malt extract, wife can't stand it.

Foxes my sore throat in a trice

Oddly enough, on a quiz show this week there was a question, which was the largest, farthing, tanner, or Guinea.

The contestant admitted not knowing what a Guinea was and opted for a farthing.

Whilst TGG would be a wiz at music trivia, and others at US sports teams or Soccer personalities and other trivia, we remain amazed at general ignorance of geography, history, politics, and other important facts