Back in the good old days

[HappyHarlot]

I follow several 'local' facebook groups up and down the UK. Why does any wonderful old photo get loads of comments like 'Back when was the REAL"?

I get things seemed a lot rosier when we were kids, and that times (and towns) change, but sometimes they do change for the better.

It's almost like a form of "I'm considerably more local than yow" oneupmanship. Spoils my experience of loving the old photos.

I live in a small market town and any old photos put up on the fb page get this all the time, especially the 'when xxx was great' type comments.

Clearly living in tiny two up two down terraces with no inside plumbing was so much better than what we have now. I don't get it.

A lot of people look back at how things were when they were growing up and remember sunny days and snowy winters and everything covered in roses. They tend to forget that they were probably hungry a lot of the time and cold, especially the sort of town I'm in because it was a very poor place.

There's been a lot of development around the edges of the town and a lot of the original towns folk hate us incomers and resent us and the sort of houses we live in.

I can understand it to an extent. If your family has lived somewhere for generations it's probably annoying to have a load of new people taking up the roads, doctors and so on but places move on and people need somewhere to live.

people do tend to forget the negative stuff [not talking abuse etc] but the fact summers used to be wet on a regular basis when i was a kid, we had an outside loo, not good old days having an frozen arse

There’s an awful poem that does the rounds every now and again about how back in the day only one person needed a job and ‘the wife was content with her lot’. Grinds my gears every time. The fact is that women generally had poorer education and were often forced to give up work when they married or got pregnant, and were stuck being glorified servants from then on in. I’d have been off my head on Valium if I’d had to be ‘content with my lot’.

I was smiling at our local one only today, because contrary to the normal 'back in the day' posts, someone had, very accurately written, 'back when it was all raggety'.

I know what you mean - it's really just OTT nostalgia and rose tinted glasses. I do think there are some areas (for example where I grew up in London where the nature of the area has completely changed so people feel pushed out.). Other areas though have just become more modern (inside toilets - yes please!).

One of the groups is for a large city that had enormous bomb damage from WW2 so yes, lots of very beautiful buildings were lost, and yes the 50's and 60's town planners were probably slightly misguided in thinking that we'd all be flying personal jetpacks and have no need for cars in the future, but it is what it is really and was like that anyway for many of these people growing up.

My mum's always going on about travelling on the trams, sparking her clogs on the cobbles and collecting coal from the railway tracks.

She was born 6 years after the trams stopped running and both her siblings confirm they never, ever had clogs and had a two bar electric fire (one older, one younger).

As someone who remembers a lot of it, I’ve often thought it’d be a great idea to have a ‘good old days’ holiday village, where people who bang on about how great they were, could go and live it for a while. Preferably in winter!

No central heating
Coal fires, all the mess and having to be re laid every day
Freezing cold bedrooms in winter, and no electric blankets
No fridge, milk always going off in summer
No TV
No automatic washing machine
Shops closed one half day a week, plus all day Sunday, rarely anywhere to buy anything at those times if you’ve run out of milk or loo roll
No ATMs, the only place to get cash out was the bank - which closed at around 3

Plus of course no mobiles or internet.

In my ideal holiday village people would be obliged to stay for at least a week, no slinking off once they’d realised how shite the ‘good’ old days actually were.
That’d larn ‘em!

I think much of it in the area I am in is because so many shops have closed down the high street has died and the town as 'we' and the 'oldies' remember really is no more. It is seaside town and it is getting to the stage where we will even lose the tourists because apart from the prom and sands there is nothing that any tourist would want. Very sad.

Coventry. Is odd like that. Full of those nostalgic for when there were greater employment prospects and there are a lot of racists as well unwelcoming of those who chose to settle in the area in general. I worked there a while, but lefthe because of that. All of those born in the area I met at work would talk at length at how awful it is now. Utter miseries. No doubt they are all on Facebook now.

My mum's always going on about travelling on the trams, sparking her clogs on the cobbles and collecting coal from the railway tracks. She was born 6 years after the trams stopped running and both her siblings confirm they never, ever had clogs and had a two bar electric fire (one older, one younger).

That made me laugh!

I remember being cold mostly!

This kind of shit grinds the gears of my 84-year-old father, who grew up very poor. As he says, 'We don't live there anymore! It's 2020. GET OVER IT! It sucked!'

One factor in my opinion is that people are remembering life back when they were young, so yes they did feel differently - it's the being young, that has put a gloss on it. The invisible transitory impact of having energy, vigour, hope, things happening for the first time, the wonder and mystery of youth. So yes "back in the day" things probably were a lot happier in that sense, if you're a lonely old person with arthritis and piles.

I think people look back and think things were better then, even though that may not really be true, but they were happier then because they were young.

Cross post BuckingFrolics!

Yes, the closing down of a lot of the shops in the High Street seems to be a big issue where I live, but it's the same everywhere.

There was a post on a thread on our fb page a while ago by some bloke who was bemoaning the dearth of decent shops in our town and how everything had closed down over the years - he was born and bred here - he then finished his post by saying, 'well I always shop in', and named a large supermarket in the nearest big town. I felt there wasn't much point in answering that, tbh.

What I take from it is more the loss of community than the actual living conditions.

I think it's in the name Lost Glasgow etc. It's a melancholy for good things that have gone. Eg old cinemas where you went every Saturday morning as a kid. Now flats that only the owners love. It didn't matter it stopped making money or the old guy allegedly molested young boys - it's sad because It's a lost part of history. Also, reflecting on a no car road where kids played out and lack of 24/7 culture is bittersweet. With every gain comes loss and loss is sad.