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Odd things - do you remember your mum doing these in the 60s?

500 replies

Waltons · 14/01/2017 19:29

Putting a drop of water on a tin can before opening it, because if an air bubble came up through the water, the can might be blown? (I think that was the reason?)

The only bottle of olive oil in the house was absolutely TINY, and labelled "Olive Oil. BP". I think it cost a fortune, and was kept in the first aid cupboard. For earaches, perhaps?

OP posts:
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TSSDNCOP · 15/01/2017 11:35

Coming back to say I'm so pleased so many other people had entire frozen animals in their chest freezers.

Am I imagining it, but wasn't the National Anthem was played at the end of evening broadcasting.

We had those quilts nylon dressing gens that melted if you got too close to the fire, but gave you a patch of iron hard melted nylon to pick at whilst you watched Basil Brush and the Generation Game.

In our house we were TV devotees and often conversed along with Bruce and co when they did the catch phrases.

Did everyone have a nana that was kind but a bit of a fruit loop and a relentless social climber whilst at the same time commenting with acid about "her,she's no better than she thinks she is"

Parties where EVERYONE smoked, mums drank, lemon and dads drank bitter and nana's drank stout.

Dinner and dances where the men wore ruffled shirts and velvet dinner jackets.

TSSDNCOP · 15/01/2017 11:36

Dressing GOWNS and mums drank port and lemon

EastMidsGPs · 15/01/2017 11:46

Just had coffee with a friend and we've spent all the time talking about our childhoods.
She pondered on the china tea sets kept for best that never got used and now languish in charity shops. Her mum bought, by paying weekly, a canteen of cutlery but says they never used it. Kept for best.

MiddlingMum · 15/01/2017 11:46

This thread needs to go in Classics. Please MN, can you put it there?

So many memories, things I'd forgotten about Smile

jennielou75 · 15/01/2017 11:46

German friendship cake fermenting in a jar.
Pippa dee yes, Tupperware yes. Oh and the Webb ivory Christmas hamper full of stuff we never ate like milk tray chocolates and fray bentos pies in tins!!!! It was ten minutes of sheer joy unpacking it.

Badders123 · 15/01/2017 11:48

...and babycham and snowballs! 😀

CycleHire · 15/01/2017 11:51

For the royal wedding in 1981 we didn't have a colour tv so went over the road to watch it at our neighbour's.

When I was at uni in the 1990s one of my friends had a b&w tv in her student house because the license was cheaper.

BattleaxeGalactica · 15/01/2017 11:51

Didn't have the German friendship cake but there was a fad for passing on ginger beer root at one time. If you didn't crack on with it it would collapse into a stinking mess Grin

There was also a fad for making a kind of cottage cheese from on the turn milk drained through a muslin. Surprisingly delicious.

CondensedMilkSarnies · 15/01/2017 11:54

I remember my dad boiling a suet pudding in a tea towel tied up with string.

Waltons · 15/01/2017 11:57

MiddlingMum, I've asked MNHQ to move this to Classics. My first ever Classics thread! Blush Smile But I agree - so many wonderful memories, and I want to read it back again - probably more than once.

OP posts:
CondensedMilkSarnies · 15/01/2017 11:59

I remember my mum coming home from Marksies and with great ceremony putting a Continental Quilt on my bed .

hotdiggedy · 15/01/2017 12:03

What a great thread. Loved reading everyones memories.

I also remember my grandmother having a powder puff in a pink and see through tub - very fancy.

Also, her pink slippers with a peep hole for the toes and some very frou frou feathers on them - just wow! I loved wearing them.

I also loved her fur coat collection and used to love holding onto them in her wardrobe pretending I was actually in the Lion, the witch and the wardrobe.

Bath cubes and the pearly bath balls that had oil inside and you could pop them.

BalloonSlayer · 15/01/2017 12:14

Our area still does a Lucozade test when you are 6 months pregnant.

You have to fast, come to the hospital, drink a certain amount of Lucozade then have a blood test exactly xx minutes after you've drunk it. You get to skip the blood test queue.

You have to provide your own Lucozade though.

ReasonsToBeModeratelyHappy · 15/01/2017 12:17

Condensed milk - Ah yes continental quilts! I remember staying at my friend's at about 12, and they were V proud of this quilt/duvet, but they'd put it in a rather small nylon cover, so I must have woken up 30 times cold, to find it had slithered onto the floor again! I was v pleased to get home to my cotton sheet and 3 hairy wool blankets :-).

jennielou75 · 15/01/2017 12:54

We used to do our Christmas shopping in Woolworths. Mum came in with us. We shopped by ourselves and waited by the tills. Life just seemed simpler then although my mum must have worked so hard to make it that way!

fussychica · 15/01/2017 12:58

Born in East London in 1956. So much on here I remember. Here's a few more
My dad working overtime on Saturday mornings and meeting him off the bus to go and get sweets like sweet cigarettes, mo jos and milk bottles.
Coalman coming and having to block the door to the coal hole so the dust didn't fly up the passage
Walking to school alone alone a busy main road at 5 or 6 and getting on a bus alone to visit my aunt at 8 or 9
Sending sheets and pillowcases to the laundry as no washing machine of any sort and it meant my mum didn't have to iron them. No fridge, no bathroom and a toilet in a cupboard in the kitchenShock . Ascot providing hot water. Freezing passage and bedroom as only a fire in the lounge.
Everyone smoked, everything was brown.
Lived on milk and Virol for ages as I was such a fussy eater as a baby.
Some of it sounds awful but I was so happy and am tearing up thinking about it all. Thanks for stirring up some great memories.

KatherineMumsnet · 15/01/2017 13:00

Hallo all,

At your request, we're going to move this one over to classics shortly.

ReasonsToBeModeratelyHappy · 15/01/2017 13:21

A big black dial phone in our draughty hall, and neighbours who saw phones as an unnecessary luxury, but used to come and use ours for up to an hour when they needed one ( giving my mum a few pence for the cost, back when calls were quite expensive...) and schedule incoming calls to it from their relatives!
Crocheted toilet roll covers on display in the bathroom, consisting of a doll with a big skirt (to cover the roll).

Cedilla · 15/01/2017 13:32

My mum was an ex-hairdresser whose clients were all the local elderly ladies - she had a hood hairdryer and they'd come along to our house and have their shampoo and sets, or perms etc. I was a very quiet, shy child and used to love sitting in the corner while all this went on. Grew up in a small seaside place where everyone knew everyone else so my mum and her ladies would chat about everyone they knew and reminisce.

The ladies would be holding an old toffee tin which had the hair clips in, and would hand them up as needed. Mum would make a coffee at some point and there'd be a biscuit (usually Morning Coffee). Amami setting lotion would be involved. Some of them had blue rinses, and some were partial to those almost invisible hairnets with tiny, tiny beads in them. I loved these occasions and they really became a defining part of my childhood (they often forgot I was there so some enthralling gossip would be revealed).

Many years later I happened to flick on the TV and there was a documentary called '3 Salons at the Seaside' by a director called Philippa Lowthorpe. I was in floods of tears in moments because it was exactly, and I mean exactly my childhood memories come to life. Not the same place, but the ladies, the conversation, the hairdos (!) - just so, so familiar.

This is a wonderful thread, thanks OP

NotCitrus · 15/01/2017 13:33

They still have a shelf in my chemist of tiny glass bottles of olive oil, castor oil, etc. Apparently people still buy the olive oil though I looked at the prices and went to the supermarket!

My parents were into healthy eating in the early 70s, so eating out meant Cranks cafe which sold weird hippy food like quiche and stuff with wholemeal flour. I got vitamin C daily, which came from a 5kg pharmaceutical brown glass jar, and a couple times I got to go with my dad to a back entrance at UCL and he'd hand some cash to his friend who ordered it in bulk! Bread came from Holland & Barrett along with ingredients for moooozlee, like prunes, but sometimes we'd splash out on Loseley ice creams from there. Thankfully my dad made mum promise never to buy carob anything ever again once I was about four.

Pick and mix at Woolies across the road was wonderful to see but I was never allowed any as it was expensive. Never had takeaway Chinese nor went to the chippy, but about once a year would go for a typical 70s curry. Mum worked near the original Pizza Express and the fourth opened in our town so we went there quarterly, back when it was amazing and good.

Mum fretted about dinner parties which she'd host every few months. Especially as we didn't have a freezer until the mid 80s (amazed how many had chest freezers in the 70s!). Starters were usually cheesy fish in real large scallop shells, and I'd have one for dinner and go to bed, then in the morning drink all the dregs of Bailey's in all the glasses. My parents were very square compared to most (or ahead of their time!) and not only didn't smoke but also didn't think drunk children were funny or cute.

We lived in a 1969 new build so there was an en suite shower and basin. Which were used the former for the laundry rack, in case of drips, and the basin when my dad did DIY etc.My dad had to test the shower in 1983 before we moved, and didn't see them catching on! Other people had bidets which invariably housed a large geranium.

ManorMouse · 15/01/2017 14:40

Being given small red pills in a spoon of jam because they were good for me, no idea what they were but they were crushed and as bitter as anything.

I'm pretty sure these were worming pills. I can still almost taste the bitterness you describe. They were so bitter that they completely overwhelmed the sweetness of the jam.

My grandmother's house had an assortment of electric sockets - some two-pin, some round three-pin, and only one or two modern sockets for plugs with fuses! She wouldn't hear of having the house rewired.

My gran's house was the same. I house-sat the place for a couple of years in the early 1990's while she was in a care home and it was a nightmare trying to get any modern appliances to work without blowing a fuse.

I remember Fridays being the best day of the week. School over with for another week and it was grocery shopping day so there was a good chance of a treat for tea - cream cakes usually. Saturday evenings, my dad would drive off to the local chipper (on his own, we were never allowed to go with him for some mad reason) to fetch the goodies and the waiting for him to get home seemed like an eternity.

My hated cooking or anything housework related (still does) so was a sucker for any gadget that claimed to make such tasks that much easier. There's several cupboards in her kitchen that are crammed with all manner of long-forgotten 'miracle inventions' that got discarded as soon as it became clear that they didn't live up to their claims.

My mother hosted a fair few Tupperware parties in the early to mid '70's. There's still a few pieces knocking about the house - forty-odd years later.

Idratherhaveacupoftea · 15/01/2017 15:07

Anyone remember two way family favourites on the radio about Sunday lunchtime. Coming home with my dad from the allotment with all the fresh veg and smelling the roast beef with the radio on in the background. Home made treacle art and custard and if we were really lucky a glass of Tizer.

Gatekeeper · 15/01/2017 15:16

I'm 53 and remember my mam standing in front of the coal fire and lifting the back of her skirt to warm her backside- she also wore nylon bloomers to cover the gap between stockings and knickers! She used to use my hairs to mend her stockings as I had long, waist length very thick hair!!

I also remember her using Belair hair lacquer- she had a a plastic 'puff' bottle and bought a long , pink sachet of lacquer. mam would cut of the end and decant it into the puff bottle and spray her hair. I can 'hear' her doing it now. Can also 'smell' the Yardley lipstick she wore and Californian Poppy scent

Gatekeeper · 15/01/2017 15:17

Listening to Waggoners Walk and Sing Something Simple on the radiogram

Gatekeeper · 15/01/2017 15:20

I loved dial phones...wish I had one now!. The resistance you feel dialling round. Buttons just don't have the feel good appeal