Do you remember?

[Primrose]

Mike Vogel's post about technology made me feel very nostalgic, so how about a thread to remind us how many changes we've seen in all aspects of our domestic lives? I'll kick off with:

Scrubbing boards
The mangle
The blue bag for whitening washing
The gas poker for lighting coal fires.

[glallotments]

My grandma had all of those including a thing for beating up washing - I think it was called a posser and flat irons that she warmed on the range.

The trim phone and phones with a dial are more modern now fairly defunct items.

Retro is fashioanble at the moment so it will be interesting to see what turns up.

[Primrose]

Ah yes, I remember our trim phone. We had a starling living close by who could immitate it to a T. Lost count of the number of times we pointlessly rushed into the house from the garden to answer a phone call that never was.

[Johnboy]

Do you remember the innovation of the horn ring on the motor car in about mid fifties. One of my first cars was a 1928 Austin Taxi and that had a horn ring like thirty years before the great innovation! So what goes around does comes around! It will be interesting to see what comes around.
JB.

[Diane]

The smell of singed feathers from plucking a fowl.

And ruddy great coal bunkers. And the sound of the milkman's horse clip-clopping down the lane. 4 gallons of petrol for a pound. Threepenny bits in the Christmas pudding.

[Primrose]

Yes, we had one of those great big coal bunkers. I recall as a small child, during the dreadful freezing winter of 1947, my mother almost coming to blows with the coalman because she swore he'd delivered her one sack short of her measly coal ration. She'd counted the sacks in and he hadn't realised she'd been checking. I remember her pulling the empty sacks off his cart, throwing them onto the pavement and counting them again. She was absolutely filthy by the time she'd finished but he never diddled her again after that. And after that, she got all the neighbours counting too. He'd probably made a nice little sum on the black market selling the surplus.

[alan refail]

Some things I remember without affection:

Eggs preserved in isinglass
Waking up freezing cold every winter's morning
Syrup of figs
Being forced to go to Sunday school
Hot water bottles
Our huge corrugated iron lean-to coal shed which was pitch dark and smelled of cats' piss
Food rationing
The outside lavatory

And some I remember with affection:

Walking to school across the fields
Farmers walking on two legs instead of riding on four wheels
Haymaking with a pitchfork
Nobody having a phone
The day we got a nearby phonebox
Going to the "big house" servants' sitting room to watch the only TV in the village
Being paid to go to university

[Bren]

Having to boil rain water to pour over frozen water pump.
Fetching water from the spring well down the cliff side.
Having to go outside to the dry privvy in cold weather.
One little fire in the class room with the masters chair in front of it.
Getting slapped/ caned on cold hands/ fingers.
Making do with a parifin oil lamp for light or candles.
Good memories
Spending most of the summer on the strand/beach.
Picking wild mushrooms & strawberries.
Having the run of the countryside .helping making hay & thrashings.
Bren

[richard p]

book of road maps
the add was on telly last night.. sat nav only 150 quid... what does it do that a five quid book of maps and/or multimap.co.uk wont for nothing.... seems a total waste of money to me.

[The Mouse]

book of road maps
the add was on telly last night.. sat nav only 150 quid... what does it do that a five quid book of maps and/or multimap.co.uk wont for nothing.... seems a total waste of money to me.

What does it do that a five quid book of maps can't do?

Apart from the price, I'm not sure there's a lot of difference.

My son had one that had all the temperament of the passanger seat navigator too - if he ignored what the woman's voice instructed him to do, she would give him the silent treatment and refuse to say another word until he stopped the car and grovelled; well, until he switched the thing off, restarted it, thumped it a few times, shouted at it .......

[peter]

The huge coke stove gowing red hot in the "little ones" cedarwood prefab classroom that the 1/2 pint milk bottles were stood right next to if we wanted our winter milk warm.
Little old Miss Etritch who'd taught everyones mum and dad and some of their grandparents......

[Nature's Babe]

The hand pump that shunted fabulous cool fresh mineralised spring water up to the house and spoilt me, hate flat chlorinated tap water to this day.
The copper that heated water for the tin bath,it was used for the washing, and to cook live Jersey crabs that came to the door in a basket on Saturday and were eaten at a picnic tea with home grown salad on Sunday. Oooh yes and bellows that helped light the fire under the copper.
The shop where everything was sold loose, weighed, and scooped into blue bags, we could buy liquorish sticks and tiger nuts, dried bananas and fruit bars, and the whole shop smelled wonderful.
Some things never die, I have wood floors, so I dumped my hoover, and purchased a brush for £3. still using it four years later and my emissions are lower - no hoovering, and it is done in less time.
LOL and i just have to mention knitted bathing costumes, when wet they stretched indecently,and weighed heavily, rose up and down with each wave, giggles,

[Primrose]

Somewhere I still have a photo of me in one of those dreaded knitted bathing costumes - you were right, Nature's Babe, about how they sagged, and they were so itchy too. But before that, old jerseys had to be unpicked, the crinkly wool washed, and then held between my two outstretched hands or round the back of a chair before Mum could rewind it into balls.
My dad's old trousers being cut down to make skirts for me, and little pants for my brother.
Sheets repaired sides to middle.
Waking up on a winter morning to find all the pipes frozen, no water to wash in, and no water to flush the toilet.
Stiff frozen clothes hanging out on the washing line for days.
The smell of wet steaming clothes dripping from the clothes horse in front of a miserable little fire.
Rubber scrambled eggs from dried egg powder.
That horrible cod liver oil.
Making woollen pom poms using the waxed carton tops from our school milk (which always seemed to be frozen).
My brother and I fighting to avoid our turn having walk down the road to empty the smelly scraps into the pig food bin.
Pressing the button on our telephone and sneakily listening in to our neighbour's conversations on the party line.
Spending the whole day out in the school holidays with a packet of sarnies, making camps in the local woods, and going newting in a nearby lake without an adult in sight. Returning home tired and dirty at teatime, often with a "booty" when one of us had fallen into the water. (Gawd, what would the Health & Safety People think about that !!)

There may have been a war on, and rationing, but we still learned more about life and living than children do now in their sterilised existence, despite all their modern gadgets.

[Primrose]

Oh, and I almost forgot: Those packets of Smiths crisps with the invariably damp little blue bag of salt at the bottom.

[Monika]

My goodness, Primrose and others, that does take me back! I might have lived hundreds of miles away in central Europe but almost all the memories listed would apply there as well!

I would add:
harvesting pears, plums and apples in summer by climbing into the trees and shaking them as hard as possible to drop them to the ground