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Original poster

I miss the old days!

49 replies

MagicSummer · 22/06/2021 19:33

I have been re-watching Call the Midwife from the beginning and I so wish we were back in those times - everything was so gentle, kind and happy. Hardly anybody was aggressive or on drugs or generally horrible. No swearing apart from the good old sailors and such - it seems such an idyllic time. And before anyone comments, yes I know women's rights weren't good and I am not suggesting that was good.

OP posts:

FitYeDaeinYeMadRadge · 22/06/2021 22:16

I cry all the time at Call The Midwife. I find it unbearably harrowing and sad. The one I watched the other day almost finished me. Not one element of happy to be had. All those poor, desperate women. If Call The Midwife is sanitised I’m glad I didn’t nurse back then.

I watched a nurse in an episode leave a little newborn to die of hypothermia by an open window in a shitting sluice room, just because they had been born without limbs. Fucking hell.

Hotcuppatea · 22/06/2021 22:17

Huh?

Comedycook · 22/06/2021 22:19

I think it's the sense of community you're wistful for op...it does seem lovely.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

RightOnTheEdge · 22/06/2021 22:24

You could get put in prison for being gay!
Racism, horrific illegal abortions on kitchen tables, squalid housing, unmarried mothers not being allowed to train or do certain jobs.
Oh yeah, seems idyllic

Cowbells · 22/06/2021 22:30

Bless. Oh yes, the good old days when black people and Irish people were not allowed to mix with Brits, where racism and sexism were rife, rape and DV in a marriage were no one's business, there was no central heating, no inside loo, a bath shared between several houses, so one a week only but not at 'that' time of the month for some fathomless reason. Children got beaten by parents and school teachers, unmarried mothers were forced to give up their children for adoption. Delicious food like tripe and onions - none of your disgusting foreign muck. Oh take me back there!

Tangledtresses · 22/06/2021 22:41

No pill
No social security
No abortions
No morning after pill
No Unmarried mothers
Domestic violence
Child abuse
Adoptions of unmarried mothers children

No bloody thanks

transformandriseup · 22/06/2021 22:45

The TV show is very sanitised compared to the book. The whole chapter on Mrs Jenkins and the workhouse is very distressing.

thinnerlikeachickendinner · 22/06/2021 22:52

I think you should read The Road to Wigan Pier! And then maybe Below Stairs, Tuppence to Cross the Mersey, Round About a Pound a Week and Her People! Might reset the balance.

MondayMorningYetAgain · 22/06/2021 22:52

Try watching Cathy Come Home and see if you still feel the same...

Ostara212 · 22/06/2021 22:56

@topwings

OP, did you actually live in the old days or is your knowledge based on Call the Midwife?

As others have said, it's not a documentary! That time had all the violence and horrible people that we have now, along with extreme poverty, living in squalor, infant mortality, domestic violence, lack of life choices, the list is endless.

I am hoping OP will come back and clarify this.

TheoMeo · 22/06/2021 22:58

Why are people so determined to prove it was awful.

Everything's perfect now, people are so supportive of others, no racism or child trafficking etc etc

ObviousNameChage · 22/06/2021 23:22

Doubt OP will come back since posters have well and truly shattered her rose tinted glasses and shoved them up her arse.

A bit hard to moon over the idyllic good old days when people insist on mentioning things like poverty, mortality rates, life expectancy, women's rights, abuse etc.

Ostara212 · 22/06/2021 23:26

@TheoMeo

Why are people so determined to prove it was awful.

Everything's perfect now, people are so supportive of others, no racism or child trafficking etc etc

I can't prove anything I just can't square the things OP says with what older relatives said.

And if the comments are based on the show....unless OP was around then and living a very wealthy sheltered life.

BastardMonkfish · 22/06/2021 23:56

I get you OP. I love gentle Sunday night dramas and thinking of how things used to be. Poldark made the 1780s look quite glamorous. The life of a housemaid in Downton Abbey seemed quite fun! The Call the Midwife music slightly makes me wish I could have a lovely home birth with a kind no nonsense midwife in a starched apron. It's all very wholesome but of course we know for the vast majority of people life was really shit with endless days of hard work, short life expectancy and so on.

TheoMeo · 23/06/2021 07:37

It's all very wholesome but of course we know for the vast majority of people life was really shit with endless days of hard work, short life expectancy and so on.

Yes, probably due to class and money.
But life's pretty shit now for the majority of the planet population. But we have to look at today through rose tinted glasses it seems.

thebabessavedme · 23/06/2021 08:07

There are always elements of life that were better 'in the old days', for example, my family were all very close by, I could cycle to see my nana (not many cars), my dm was able to trust that I could get myself to school etc, BUT there is always a but, my experience of childbirth and early years (1990s) were a doddle compared to my mothers (1960s), she had no money, we didnt live in poverty by any means, never hungry or cold but her life was at times bloody drudgery, cloth nappies and no washing machine, just a coal fire and a clothes horse, she cried when my dad bought home a second hand spin drier when she was told she should not have any more children because of the danger to her life my dad had to sign the fucking consent form! he did of course but I'm willing to bet some women were not so lucky with their husbands.

I was bought up by a woman who takes no shit though!

thisplaceisweird · 23/06/2021 08:11

Fucking deluded

thebabessavedme · 23/06/2021 08:12

consent form for sterilisation I should have put, thinking about it she also could not get any form of credit without his consent and when my grandad died in the mid 60s my gran was made to leave the pub they ran because a woman could not hold an alcohol leisence on her own, so in a few weeks she lost her husband, home and living in one go.

ShopTattsyrup · 23/06/2021 08:47

As sanitised and rose tinted as Call the Midwife can be ... are we watching the same program OP? Backstreet abortions,chemical castration for gay men, and a polio outbreak are all plot lines from the series that I can remember off the top of my head ... idyllic!

Original poster

MagicSummer · 23/06/2021 09:19

Ok - maybe I should have worded my post differently! Yes, I was a child of the 60s, had a very comfortable childhood, and @Cowbells we did have central heating, albeit one radiator in the hall and one on the landing. We had our own house with a bathroom, certainly not shared! I have never eaten tripe and onions in my life, although I don't like foreign food much, apart from French!

My point was not about the living conditions or the rights and wrongs of the laws etc., it was more about the community spirit mentioned by a PP, how people seemed to respect others more, how they enjoyed simpler pleasures and pursuits and were not so self-indulgent.

However, I was a child, so perhaps some of it is rose-tinted.

OP posts:

Ostara212 · 23/06/2021 10:23

Thanks OP

My family were still using coal, and chilblains were a feature of every winter. My parents first home after marriage was lodgings with a shated bathroom.

My gran was worried when I first used a train alone as a teenager.

mum remembers having to get dad to sign for her to have her own bank account.

My boyfriend is a lot older than me, 20 years, so his parents are like if I had young grandparents. One of their pet hates is the idea that there was less crime. I think a lot just wasn't reported. They live in a village and they said that big days when everyone was down the pub were the days that people learned to lock doors.

I can see your point in a "vibe" way. I am rewatching old Greys Anatomy and thinking, wow, remember when you didn't have to use PC terms for everything etc.

My family is of Indian origin and race issues seem much worse now than before, in the sense of being weaponised.

Perhaps we hanker for the days someone else faced the real world and paid the bills.

Spandrel · 23/06/2021 10:26

OP, you still seem to be confusing a soft-core, mildly saccharine tv drama with the actual historical period it was set in.

VeganVeal · 23/06/2021 13:43

@wheresmymojo

I'm hoping this isn't serious?

Of course there was swearing and violence...

In the 1950's one of my Grandads was raping his daughters and beating his wife and son and on the other side my Great-Grandad was an alcoholic wife beater.

Funnily enough while I wasn't around to witness it I'm pretty sure they swore too.

It's just that people talked about it less.

Yes but the summers were better and you didnt need to lock your doors, so swings and roundabouts really

ZZTopGuitarSolo · 23/06/2021 14:55

@Ostara212

Random anecdote When mum was a teen, she asked the dentist what age she would likely need dentures.

She was delighted when the dentist said that improved care and knowledge made this highly unlikely.

I wouldn't live in that era, no way.

Yup - my grandparents had most of their teeth pulled in their 20s. They wore dentures for the next 60-70 years.

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