Sunday 24 May 2015

Dads Army and Children's Hour

We turned the TV over in time to catch the last part of one of the very first Dads Army programmes in black and white. It was when they were waiting for uniforms and only had arm bands to show who they were. They were practicing their drill with broom handles and longing to have real riffles. Just near the end they played a voice over of the Children's Hour presenter saying
"Good night children, everywhere".

I was back in our house, a child of about 7, sat on the floor listening to a large wooden Pye radio with a fretwork front of a sunrise. The surrounding room was in gloom with curtains shut early for the blackout regulations, electric light bulbs that never gave out much light and dancing flames from a small fire. The walls were papered in pattern of close dark brown autumn leaves which only added to the atmosphere. For a moment I was safe, I had listened to the stories and songs, the night's bombing hadn't started, I'd had a nice tea and father wasn't home yet to chase me off to bed. He came from a generation of children being seen and not heard. More often with him it was both.

But Dad is my connection to the TV Dads Army for he was a member for a while of The Home Guard as it came to be known. Dad had fallen between two stools, too young to fight in WWI and too old for WWII. He tried to join the navy but after an accident on his motor bike - literally on the day war broke out - but they refused him. So he worked in factories as an engineering inspector and joined the local Home Guard. He had a uniform and I have a photo of him somewhere, but his platoon had only one riffle between them and as he said, nothing up the spout.

The platoon patrolled a hill on the outskirts of town where a cathedral was going to be built. Only the foundations and the crypt had been built and this was where they met. In turns they went out to patrol the hill passing on the useless riffle to each other.

Many years later dad recounted this to me but with a chilling addition. Just after the war they published the master plan of the Germans to invade Britain called Operation Sea Lion. Dad said the hairs on the back of his neck stood up when he read that the plan included a Parachute Regiment being dropped exactly on the hill he guarded with one riffle and no bullets.

Friday 22 May 2015

Biscuit Tins

I saw an old biscuit tin on TV and realised they were a thing of the past. They were not the posh, Christmas bisuit tins of today, all flash pictures and bright enamel colours. Don't get me wrong, these tins were around in years gone by but I mean the cube shaped tins ordinary biscuit came in at the grocers.

I am not sure but I suppose they were about 12 ins square, may be more. You went to the shops to buy loose biscuits and they were served from the tin and put in paper bages. As a child I loved the biscuit counter in Woolworths. These had glass tops and you could see all the lovely biscuits inside. A shop assistant would serve you and weigh out the biscuits you selected. If you were lucky they remained in one piece. If you were short of money you could buy a pound of broken biscuits which were fun as you didn't know what you might get.

I suppose biscuits barrels and tins come from this era. If you didn't put them in something air tight they went soft. Ugh! Tasted horrid. I have a feeling these cube tins came from the time biscuits were shipped out to the colonies, India and so on. Cubes would be easy to stack.

One last memory. As I got to the last days of my schooling I lived in Reading, UK, which was the home town of Huntley and Palmer Biscuits. They always brought the children on a trip round the factory in the hopes of recruiting workers. We were told we could eat as many bisuits as we liked on the way round but not the chocolate ones. This was just post war and there was still rationing and shortages. If there was not much money in the family like ours were were always hungry. It was a heaven sent oppotunity. We crammed our mouth full and made ourseves sick. But as for going to work there, I observed a young woman sitting by a conveyor belt that flipped the biscuits over. She had to pick out bad ones. I knew that was not for me let alone the poor pay.

Now I am sworn off biscuits for health reasons.


Monday 18 May 2015

In Starting Again


I have to say again that this is not a journal or a diary. My idea was to notice something that reminds me of a past memory. I'm now entering my 9th decade so with 8 to play with I have plenty to choose from. Born in1935, dare I say it, the same year as the King of Rock and Roll, I have lived through a war, a cold war and now a war on terror. All of them except the first nominally named Peace Time. Some hopes, somebody has always been fighting somewhere.
Today I have been musing on this and my other blog, History for 2525, on the changes that there have been in my life since I last wrote here. One, my husband has now retired and, bless him, is home with me all day. He is quite a bit younger than me so I have had some retirement on my own doing my own thing. No more. I have also gone back to real painting, watercolour and pen &ink, as versus digital virtual painting. I now work on an iPad, don't think I had it before, so time is limited. Plus I am doing lots of online university courses at Futurelearn.com. Can't recommend them highly enough. All to keep this old brain working.
This is all so different to old age as I observed in my youth. A few, very few, managed to keep lively and life expectancy was far less. Only my mother manage what is now considered almost normal and died aged 93 but father popped off at 77. My grand parents were in their 50s. So that is back to being born late 1800s. My great Grandmother, so I'm told, came downstairs on her 30th birthday with a black shawl over her head and announced she was 'now old'. Me, I remarried in my 30s.  Still going 44 year later.
I can't recall people talking about dementia, strokes or many other illnesses such as cancer. Now its pushed at one everywhere you go. Well I'm fighting it all the way. Though have to admit my short term memory is shot. So I am off and running again, I will write here when some memory hits me.

Sunday 17 May 2015

Back Again

I see I have not written anything since 2011! That is terrible and a shame. So much has happened since them. I am going to be 80 in three days time. We have just seen the 70th anniversary of VE day, the end of WWII. I now work on an Apple iPad and an iMac. Gone are Micrsoft Windows. And I am doing actual painting rather than virtual and this weekendI won a first prize for drawing. I am going to put this up on my other blog and then try to resume them - because they are worth it.