The way we were in bygone days.

THE WEEKLY WASH
In our house the ‘weekly wash’ was usually done on a Monday morning, weather permitting that is, but first it was necessary to light up the old coal-fired copper in the backyard to boil the water for the wash. This was a relic from much earlier days, as we lived in an ex-fisherman’s cottage, and the copper would have originally been used for boiling up crabs and lobsters.

The hot water was then poured into a large galvanised-iron container, called a dolly tub, and the clothing and sheets put in with some soap flakes, and agitated with the dolly, a long-handed three-legged device, in our case. Later on, when soap powders became available there were such products as Oxydol and, later on, Tide (Tide’s in, dirt’s out, the advertising slogan declared!).

When dry, the washing had to be ironed, so a good roaring coal-fire was made up in the grate in the kitchen and a flat-iron was placed on a trivet in front of the fire to heat up. This had to be done summer and winter alike in the days before electric irons. In fact, as I recall it, two irons were used, so as one iron went cold another one was ready. A good spit on the back would tell you when it was hot enough to use!

BATH NIGHT
Oh, what a luxury, a bath in front of the fire! On a Friday night, in our house, the old tin bath was brought indoors (it usually resided outside the back door hanging on the wall) and placed in front of the fire in the kitchen. It was filled with water boiled in saucepans, and, later on, in a Burco boiler, and everyone took their turn to wash away the week’s grime in the tub. No bath or shower gel in those days either, just a big lump of carbolic soap – not particularly nicely-scented either!

Mind you, sometimes it wasn’t particularly easy to get the fire going in the grate, so, if puffing away with the bellows didn’t work, Father used to cover the fireplace opening with a large sheet of newspaper to get the fire to ‘draw’ better. Often the paper would catch light and get sucked up the chimney and out of the top, setting light to all the soot on the way resulting in clouds of acrid-smelling smoke invading the neighbourhood – we were really popular with the neighbours then!

FOOD
Forget your TV dinners and convenience food, in my day there wasn’t any! We had vegetables, fresh from our allotment, with peas in the pod complete with maggots and potatoes dug up fresh from the soil. We had eggs from our chickens, when they were ‘on the lay’ that is, and a fowl for Christmas dinner, not weekly as now. In the ’40s and ’50s you were lucky to get a good joint of meat for roasting, but rabbit was on the menu in most homes.

Then there was bubble and squeak, using up cabbage and potatoes from the day before and fried, it made a tasty meal I can tell you. For breakfast there was Kelloggs cornflakes, or Farmer’s Glory and Force wheat flakes. On the packet it proclaimed: ‘High o’er the head flies Sunny Jim, Force is the food that raises him!’ If you saved enough coupons from the packet they’d send a doll – I know, I’ve still got mine!

In the 1940s, the milk was delivered daily by a milkman with his pony and trap. From a large churn of relatively-untreated milk he would ladle out a pint or two into our jug, which would be placed in a container of cold water in summer to keep it fresh. Then a lace, bead-fringed crocheted cover was placed over the jug to keep the houseflies off, as there were no freezers or fridges in those days!

THE CALL OF NATURE
Like most people in our town in those early days we had an outside toilet. When ‘the call of nature’ beckoned it involved a quick dash through the back door to the outside toilet (water closet) situated in the backyard. During the hours of darkness it was necessary to take a light, in the form of a candle, as there was no electricity in the WC. Heaven help us if the candle blew out! Later on, I recall we had a proper electric light fitted, with a fancy brass light switch. I was always one to be a bit of a ‘fiddler’ and, on one occasion, I unscrewed the light fitting whilst seated on the toilet. What I shock I got – it was an instant cure for constipation, I can tell you! I soon reached for the ‘Izal’.

LITTLE LUXURIES IN LIFE
During my early days, in the ’40s and ’50s, there were some luxuries in life that I remember: ginger beer, made by Steward & Pattesons, in diamond-patterned, dark brown glass bottles (not the stone bottles illustrated above). It was hot – hot enough to burn your tongue, whilst, to cool down, there were delicious ice-creams made by Bussey Hannah! He would take a wafer, place it in a holder, scoop a liberal amount of ice-cream out of a tub under the counter and then place another wafer on top. A quick press on the handle of the holder and up popped a wonderful thrupp’ny wafer!

Then there was the forerunner of the ice-lolly, a cube of lemon- or orange-flavoured ice, as made and sold by Mr Smithson. You just popped it in your mouth and kept it on the move, from side to side, until it melted – lovely! He also sold the most wonderful aniseed gobstoppers, which changed colour the more you sucked on them. We always ended up with purple-coloured tongues!

Wills’ Wild Woodbines. But we couldn’t wait to be ‘grown-ups’ of course, so we could do just what we liked, but why they ever went around puffing on their old fags I never could understand, although I seem to recall making myself rather sick on one occasion on a Woodbine... but that’s another story!

THE WAY WE PLAYED
For a boy such as myself in the ’40s and ’50s, a train set was always popular, as every schoolboy yearned to become an engine-driver.

Duchess of Montrose.

My first train set was a Hornby ‘O’ gauge clockwork set with a little maroon-coloured tank engine, but this was replaced in 1953 with another Hornby, this time an all-electric Hornby-Dublo, which I still have to this day. Then there were Dinky toys, now all highly collectable of course, and, at one time, I had many of the cars and ’planes that would now be worth a fortune. But, alas, I did what many other small boys did, I played with mine and, although this gave me hours of pleasure, they all got broken!

PUSH-ALONG TOYS
Then there were the tinplate toys; push-along cars and motorcycles, eventually to be upgraded to friction-powered versions, some of which issued showers of sparks as they went along.

In the 1950s, we progressed to more useful pursuits, like making Tower Bridge out of Meccano. Again I seemed to be more adept at losing the numerous sections of green-coloured metal and teeny nuts and bolts in the garden, so all I have are memories of that marvellous construction kit and the models I made!

OUR CHOICE OF READING MATTER
My first real ‘grown-up’ comic had to be Eagle, with its great stories and illustrations. ‘Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future’, was my favourite. Week by week I followed the exploits of Dan and Digby in their relentless struggle against the evil powers of the Mekon, a ruthless little green man with an enormous head, and the ruler of the Treens on Venus. Yes, you’ve guessed it, I was mad keen on any thing to do with Space back in the 1950s.

Also featured in Eagle was ‘Riders of the Range’, a Western comic strip following the adventures of Jeff Arnold, and how could I ever forget that lovable London bobby, PC 49. It almost made me want to be a policeman.

Other comics at that time were Dandy and Beano, and another space-age comic called Lion. During the mid-1950s I seem to recall a magazine, aimed at the up-and-coming popular music scene, called Mirabelle. It was really meant for girls, I think, but I used to buy it as it had the words for a great many of the songs of the day and I was well into guitar music by then.

SOMETHING FOR THE GROWN-UPS
From the late ’40s through to the ’60s more adult reading material, albeit pretty harmless, had started to emerge with such titles as Tit-Bits and Reveille, both with a smattering of swimsuit clad lovelies with names like Sabrina (remember her?), Yana and the blonde bombshell, Diana Dors.

Then there were the little pocket-sized magazines such as Lilliput, dating from the late ’40s, with an assortment of articles, short stories and some ‘art studies’ for the gentlemen, perhaps even considered risqué in their day, who knows!

PICTURE THIS
During my days at the Norwich School of Art,, in the late ’50s, I developed (excuse the pun) an interest in photography and obtained my first camera, a Brownie 127, with which I began to take pictures of people and places around me. Later, moving on to a more upmarket camera, an Ilford Sportsman, the old Bakelite, kidney-shaped Brownie became the start of a collection of such devices that has now passed the 100 mark, three of which are seen below.

Old Cameras Left: Kodak Baby Brownie; introduced into the UK in 1948, this little camera, with a moulded black plastic body, was styled by Walter Dorwin Teague. Centre: Kodak Junior I; a folding camera, with a moulded grey plastic top, was introduced and manufactured in the UK from June 1954. Right: Coronet Captain; a box camera made by Coronet in England, with a tin-plate body and colourful green and red front, still popular in the early 1960s.

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