In, as my daughter once put it "The Olden Times", don't laugh, she was serious!
I tell them that we didn't have a phone until 1968 and if a call had to be made we had to find a red phone box, hold our noses because they always smelt like toilets, and call from there....
That there was no heating in my dad's old Morris Minor, nor a radio, seatbelts and, often, brakes
In winter the house was so cold my hair once froze to the window and my brother told me Jack Frost had grabbed my plaits and wouldn't let them go. I cried because that's how it felt...
Our black and white TV finished at midnight and once we stayed up late to watch the little dot in the middle of the screen disappear and that was a Huge Treat
We could buy enough black jacks, sherbet dips and pear drops to be sick for 6p
My grandfather made me a beautiful doll's house for Christmas 1963 and I kept snails in it
and that Monday was the day when my mother dragged an old twin-tub to the sink, filled it using a hose, and did the weekly washing. I loved helping her to wash the clothes, I scalded my hands pulling them from the tub and popping them in the other side to rinse and once I almost wet myself when my dumb brother put his fingers through the mangle.
But best of all was the cold meat left over from the Sunday roast that she served with bubble and squeak on Monday evening. Not, you understand, for dinner, dinner time was midday, at school,the evening meal was called tea and came with enough bread and butter to make up for the small servings of meat.
So, in a fit of nostalgia for the days when life was simpler and I could sit on my blonde plaits, tonight I am cooking bubble and squeak to go with the slices of yesterday's beef....
While the potatoes and cabbage boil I will pop a few clothes in the washing machine, charge my iPod and make a few phone calls to France, simply because I can!
