We take it for granted now!

[Daisy]

What do we take for granted? All the technology we use every day almost without thinking.

Just think of all the gadgets and services our grand children (and us) take for granted that didn't exist when we were growing up.

Just for starters

We didn't have a phone at home when I was a child.
No central heating
One light bulb in the centre of each room
No washing machine or dryer
No steam iron
Dishwasher - in your dreams!
Showers

there must be lots more!

[Plantaholic]

No cars, no supermarkets, no holidays here or abroad, no television,

[Mimi]

No constant hot water . For the Sunday bath the immersion heater was put on but it was deemed far too expensive to have on constantly so water was heated in a kettle but obviously not an electric one, the one we had was put onto the gas ring .

No freezer, mum would shop at least twice a week for groceries, no such thing as a ' big shop ' then

No duvets on the beds, just lots of blankets to try and keep warm because in the winter there would be ice on the inside of the bedroom window, no such thing as double glazing

[WeeGranny]

No ready meals. Fish supper once a week if you were lucky!
For many of us, no car.
No electricity... we had gas lighting for many years when I was a child.
No inside toilets.

[Lizzie48]

We had an outside toilet, until we moved house when I was 8 years old, it was still outside but a FLUSH toilet!!! No fridge but a meat safe to keep the flies away. I can remember my mother scrubbing the washing in a 'dolly tub'. my eldest brother is 10 years older than me, when I was 8 he would have been 18 years old and we had a wind up gramophone, no Spotify in those days. Things have changed so much, my friend was telling her GS, not so long ago, that there used to be just one channel on TV and later just the 2, he replied with "there wouldn't have been many buttons on the remote control nan", she told him we didn't have one, if we changed channels, sound etc we had to get up and do it, that isn't even so long ago.

As you say Daisy, everything is taken for granted.

[Daisy]

Lizzie, saying about the tv channels - lots of people didn't even have tv. I was about 9 when we got one - it was just before the Coronation I think. It used valves and you had to put it on about 5 minutes before you wanted to watch it. Sometimes the valves would explode in a cloud of black smoke and a loud bang. What a lovely comment from your friend's GS!

Even though my parents ran a grocery shop we had no fridges. Everything was fresh, tinned or packaged.

In the office - Typewriters were heavy sit up and beg manual machines. No photocopiers. Eye-ball switchboards, handwritten ledgers on sloping desks. Most people didn't have bank accounts and were paid in cash every week. I think you got 2 weeks paid holiday a year when I started work. You had to speak to a GPO operator to make long-distance phone calls.

[Lizzie48]

Yes Daisy . I think I was almost 10 years old when my mother rented a TV! My grandma had a TV though, we used to go there on a Wednesday afternoon to watch childrens hour. Exciting!! I remember shops in our village and going shopping, biscuits were sold loose out of the tins, we even had a tin for broken biscuits. Sugar, lard etc all weighed out. I can remember this, things were still on ration and my sister had been to the shops, with the coupons, turning into the path she went in the dyke! Sister, bike and all the rations, my mother cried for the wet sugar etc, my poor sister was just wet and smelly!

[Oma]

No Microwaves ,
Food processors ,
fan ovens ,
Electric kettle , Water was boiled on the trivet over the fire or later on a gas ring ,
Toaster , Toast was done on a fork in front of the fire ,

Wall to wall carpets ,
One fire to heat all the house
Double glazing

The list goes on ,'
I remember GS1 asking us when you were little and everything was black and white when was colour invented hahaha

[Daisy]

Lizzie - I remember rationing as well. Your poor sister, and your poor mum. Sugar came to the shop in 1 lb bags contained in a sort of stiff brown packaging (no plastic, of course). There was always some spillage in the packaging and my dad would open it really carefully and mum would empty out the bits of sugar into our sugar bowl. Even long after rationing finished my mum would always tear open a new bag of sugar to get the last grains out. That generation learned to be frugal because they had to be, I suppose.

Oma - your GS1 must have thought everything was black and white!

[Gemini]

My parents bought our house in 1957. A solidly built (as they were in those days) new build detached bungalow.
it was source of great pride to my mum that we had a low level flush toilet.
Her brother bought, at the same time a new semi detached bungalow. To this day if I was able to chat with mum, she would be regularly bringing up the story that her brother paid more for a semi with a chain toilet than they did for detached with a low level flush. She was very proud

[Oma]

I remember when we got our first stair carpet ,
Up till then it was that woven stuff with a stripe down that only went up the middle of the stairs with stair rods (all the fashion now )

Littlewoods catalogue came out and the woman over the road had one ,
Mam ordered a stair carpet it was Grey with pink roses and went across the stairs , it didn't go in the hall or the landing only the stairs ,

She was so proud of it she left the front door open all day so the neighbours could come and see

We were poor so this was a big thing for us , I remember us kids playing on the stairs it was so soft and warm , little pleasures meant a lot in those days

[Lizzie48]

Oma, that toast from an open fire was always delicious!!! So true about the little pleasures, we didn't have much but could enjoy what we did have. The stair carpet story I can relate with, only on the stairs.

Daisy, yes, my mother was the same with sugar and scraping the foil for the rest of the butter.

[Plantaholic]

Apart from an open fire, no other heating, toilet often froze in the winter. We did have fireplaces in the bedrooms but they were only lit if you were ill. Hot water came from an Ascot or a copper. Coal was delivered into a coal store in the kitchen. My father kept chickens for eggs and cockerels for the Christmas table.

[Mimi]

I don't know if there was oven ready chicken back in the 50s.
My earliest memory of chicken is mum feathering a chicken and then taking out its inners 😯
It was a few years later before I realised that the chickens came from the chickens that were kept at the top of the garden 😯😲

[Nanto2girls]

Well i can relate to everything thats been mentioned.