What I Don't Miss About the 50s 2

Now UKIP are trying to drag us back to the 50s, let's remember the good old days. (Thanks to friends.)

There is an ancient attitude, too, that I saw in my mum and which seems to have disappeared along with the wireless and the mangle and the lardy cake: no fuss, no moaning. (Liz Jones meets the Pullein-Thompson sisters.)

We don't miss:
Outside toilets.
Tin bath in front of the fire.
Ice on the inside of the windows in the morning.
Coats on top of the quilt to keep you warm.
Burst hot water bottles.
Weekly wash day when the kitchen was full of steam from the gas clothes boiler.
Liberty bodices.
Short trousers till you were at secondary school.
School caps.
Sadistic teachers with leather tawses.
Sago puddings
Semolina puddings
The smell of my grandmother cooking tripe. (JB)

Polio.
Rickets.
Boils.
Bullying.

Even worse having to resort to violence to stop people bullying me.
No TV.
Very few sweets even the Sherbet was rationed.
Violence on the streets.

Domestic violence.
Water freezing solid in the glass in my bedroom.
Children being abused – and the cover-ups.
Being forced to go to church and Sunday School.

Being forced to be a Christian – which I am not.
Having to Read the Bible out in classes, didn't make sense then – even less now.
Seeing children in dire poverty, we appear to be moving back to that.
Having everyone in one room as that was the only one with heating.

The sheer pomposity that abounded the "class society", yes even as a little un I remember that. (TD)


Some more reasons to loathe the 50's: Being routinely beaten by teachers (from the age of six in my case) with implements including shoes, rulers, straps, canes and cricket bats. Brutal, brutalising and utterly ineffective.

Pollution: the London smogs were appalling and killed large numbers of people. Rivers and canals were bio-hazards and disgusting beyond belief.

Housing: I never met anyone with central heating. Houses were heated with coal fires (hence the smog), typically only in one or two rooms. Homes were freezing in winter. Many were draughty and cramped. Even in the early 70s I visited slum houses in East London with no inside toilet. In the 50s north these were commonplace as were back-to-backs* with a shared toilet block at the end of the street. Then imagine getting up in the night and trudging down the road in a northern winter to use a shared toilet.

Parenting: It seemed to be a grim business for most parents, with children being seen as creatures needing to be forever disciplined and constrained. The idea that spending time with children might actually be fun seemed not to have occurred to many people.

Safety: Many workplaces were positively lethal. As were the roads. As a seven year old child to get to school I had to cross a six lane road (with central reservation) having no speed limit.

Food (again): Many families in the north couldn't afford enough food. Despite full employment money was that short.

Even if your experience was different, surely you can see that for many people the 50's were grim?

* Before anyone comments, check that you know what a back-to-back actually is ;-)
(PH)

More here.

Inspirational Quotes 66

You can't see me

Just be yourself, don't think about what others are thinking about you, people will take you at your own valuation, you'll be stronger on your own, pigs might fly... Has anyone blogged "how I lived on cliché'd advice for a year?

In my social life... I became more extrovert as a performer... Eventually... I couldn’t remember how to “do” my personality any more. (Girl who went deaf in her 20s.)

There is a certain advantage for a woman novelist in being middle-aged and overweight. You acquire a curious social invisibility: strangers sometimes carry on in front of you as if you weren't there; or if they chance to fall into conversation, they talk, on occasion, with a surprising lack of inhibition. (Jane Stevenson, Guardian 2006)

Considering his particular interest in how primates manipulate their own and others’ reputations to their own advantage... (Nicholas Humphrey on Robin Dunbar)

Approach an elk upwind and it will spook. Run your hand against the grain of the wood and you'll get a splinter. (John Eldredge Live the dream! As long as it doesn’t involve elks and planks.)

Everything is awesome, everything is cool when you're part of a team. (Mr The Boy ‏@knitboy)

Conferences can be challenging without a sidekick... (CP)


It was a constructivist approach that… “moved teaching away from the traditional/academic approaches of memorization, repetitions and activity books, to a much more comprehensive approach focused on learning in a contextual setting in which children are expected to find the answers for themselves.” And it didn’t work. (Re maths teaching in Canada. Web of Substance)

Parents on programme Child Genius “never seem to have asked themselves where it is all going to end". (Hugo Rifkind, Times July 2014)


For a lot of people, the 70s were a rebellion against authority. In my family’s case, authority figures were parents, too... We would hold ‘meetings’ if there were issues to be discussed. (Her stepfather suggested they all pooled their money and took out what they needed.) I was 9 and my brother was 7. It was completely insane. (Sophie Grabol)

Everyone deserves to have a nice job and have a nice family when they're older. (Boy interviewed on BBC News)

Everybody thinks they belong in the group ten years below them in age. (Katharine Whitehorn, paraphrase)


Can we not with this mindset that being accused of an -ism/oppressive behaviour is worse than actually (constantly) facing it? Can we NOT? (@FeministAspie)

Also, remember, folks, labelling offensive tweets "parody" makes them funny & acceptable. (Rose ‏@SwissMinx)


The world of dating has certainly changed since I was ‘out there’ over 14 years ago. Back then, you met people either through work, friends or going out to the pub. It was almost impossible to meet anyone any other way... (Says a dating service website. What about “take up an interest”? Does it really not work?)

As a brilliant student of Latin and Greek, the 18-year old Gissing seemed destined for an academic career until, in May 1876, his life changed dramatically and for ever. He was caught stealing money from the cloakroom of Owens College, Manchester, convicted and sentenced to a month in prison. The money (five shillings and twopence) was intended to help out an alcoholic prostitute, Nell Harrison, whom he later married in the hope of redeeming her. It proved a terrible miscalculation, and, after repeated salvage attempts on his part and much abusive behaviour on hers, he left her for good. The next time he saw Nell, in March 1888, she was lying dead from syphilis in a Lambeth boarding house.

10 Things True Friends Don’t DoGossip behind your back.
Make personal attacks.
Start pointless arguments.
Interrupt your every word.
Discourage you from pursuing your goals.
Look down on you for your past.
Abandon you in social situations. (“True friends are emotionally intelligent enough to know that bringing a friend to a party where they don’t know anyone, and then proceeding to throw them to the fishes, is a very inconsiderate thing to do.”)
Get jealous of your success.
Judge you or try to “fix” you.
Take your friendship for granted.
(lifehack.org, paraphrase)

More here, and links to the rest.