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Original poster

Why do older people always...

129 replies

UnquietDad · 01/12/2006 13:43

... go on about the fact that they had no central heating and no washing-machine, and "we certainly didn't have a car until we were 35, and do you know, a LOT of people weren't on the PHONE" etc, ad nauseam, ad infinitum, yakka yakka yakka.

I think it's to make us feel guilty that DW and I both work, and a hint that if we were prepared to give up these 'luxuries' we could live on one income. Oh, ho ho bleeding ho. Merry Christmas.

OP posts:

hatwoman · 01/12/2006 22:57

correct me if I'm wrong but is this not sligtly the case of two women making seminal children's characters and their husbands getting all the credit

Marina · 01/12/2006 22:57

ooh, thanks for that. I need to get that pattern I think!

expatinscotland · 01/12/2006 22:57

I do write on a computer now.

But for a long time, I couldn't.

hatwoman · 01/12/2006 22:58

marina - one of my contemporaries wrote his phd on an amstrad. it had a black screen with flicering green writing

edam · 01/12/2006 22:58

Good point, Hatwoman. Ooh, it's like Watson and Crick stealing all the credit for the discovery of the double helix all over again...

Marina · 01/12/2006 22:59

My personal fave was Noggin the Nog edam. But dh adores Ivor the Engine.
Another unsung hero of Smallfilms has to be the writer of their charmingly wackola music - Vernon someone. I always think of Firmin/Postgate when watching the Charlie and Lola "I want to play music too" episode...

Original poster

UnquietDad · 01/12/2006 23:00

For years it was a faded memory from a half-forgotten world for me... Bagpuss, the songs, the mice, the biscuit factory, blurred like everything else in childhood. The we got the DVD and it was just like being 6 again.

Kids today can't do that. You can buy Balamory and Storymakers DVDs in every high street or download them on to your PC.

Those of us who grew up in that, say, 20/25-year gap between the wide availability of TV and the wide availability of home video will always have that odd relationship with our childhood viewing. Stuff we watched is like ghosts from our past.

OP posts:

Marina · 01/12/2006 23:00

hatwoman - we had a show-off hussy on our course who had one of those. We were all envious and scornful by turns. Ah, happy memories

MrsJohnCuSackFullOfPresents · 01/12/2006 23:02

oooh yes UnquietDad - everytime I see something from my childhood that you can get on DVD, or where someone has dedicated a website to something obscure (like Moondial) I just can't believe that I can own it, or see clips or even just that someone else remembers it. It's GREAT

Marina · 01/12/2006 23:03

Unquietdad, the programme that evokes that kind of "did I dream it" memory for me is Yao, Story of an African Prince. Bought in to the BBC by children's producer Peggy Miller and disrupted more than once by three-day-week power cuts, I would love to see that drama series again. I so wanted Yao to defeat his usurping uncle and be able to come back to his village...

Linnet · 01/12/2006 23:03

I'm not 30 yet but I find myself telling my dd1 about how when I was little there was no day time kids programmes, we didn't have a phone until I was 9 even my dh is amazed at this, the housing area we drive through to go to my brothers house was all fields until a few years ago, we didn't have computers or mobile phones etc. She thinks this is great and asks for stories of the olden days when mummy was little!

My granny is 75 and often hand washes clothes, although she has a washing machine that she uses but still likes to do some things by hand.

Marina · 01/12/2006 23:04

And I can heartily recommend the grainy but official reissues of Noggin on video. Instant transportation back to the late sixties...

MrsJohnCuSackFullOfPresents · 01/12/2006 23:04

Vernon Elliot I think

i have the CD of the Clangers music plus something else by him

yes I can remember being helped by someone to print my first essay written on a computer - it printed out on the communal printer, on the other side of town, and you had to go and wait for it and then pull all the peforated bits of the side...it wasn't even that long ago.

the email we got was novell based and really shonky. I didn't think it would catch on

southeastastra · 01/12/2006 23:05

UnquietDad my 13 year old son was reminiscing about shows he watched when he was little!

you can't deny it, it happens to all of us!

Linnet · 01/12/2006 23:05

oh and we didn't have central heating until I was 9 either we moved house that year and got the phone and heating all in one go.

MrsJohnCuSackFullOfPresents · 01/12/2006 23:06

see, this is why they do it - instant recognition with other people, nostalgia, remembering things you thought you'd forgotten, something to talk about...

Marina · 01/12/2006 23:06

Vernon Elliot! Thank you. (I could not get Handley out of my head, the man would combust at the very idea I think ). We have that CD somewhere I am sure.
My essay was handed over by a hairy man in a lab coat ffs! The past really is another country!

DINOsaurmummykissingsantaclaus · 01/12/2006 23:12

I make the DSs grateful for their lot by telling them what a sadistic cow my primary school teacher was and how many lasting injuries she inflicted on the class.

Marina · 01/12/2006 23:14

Now that opens up a whole new vault of reminiscence dino, some of it not nice. My head, also a sadistic bully, used to keep a coil of unravelled rope on the back of his office door and point it out to children summoned to his presence Wicked man, he just would not get away with that nowadays thank goodness

DINOsaurmummykissingsantaclaus · 01/12/2006 23:17

Not nice at all, Marina

batters · 02/12/2006 08:37

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

BethleCAM · 02/12/2006 10:00

Sorry UQD, I read your post as a complaint against older people and being a fully paid- up member of that (ever-growing!) fraternity, I thought I'd complain back at you

And anyway, what's this with the 3 channels?

I still think of BBC2 as a newcomer

tallulah · 02/12/2006 11:24

We didn't have central heating until we moved to this house in 1997 (I was 34 then) so were well used to ice on the inside of the windows.

At school the other kids called us rich because we had a phone (supplied by the FA as my dad was a referee), a car (that only came out of the garage on Saturdays and for holidays) and we went abroad (parents belonged to a house-swap association and we went to Holland and Germany by car ferry).

My dad's parents though never had a bathroom, washed in the scullery and had an outside loo and this was in 1983!

My dad was always full of tales of walking 6 miles to school and getting rides on a haycart- he was evacuated several times but had a very selective memory- mum thinks he was only away a total of 9 months. But then she often comes out with "when we were your age we couldn't afford to go to America"

Original poster

UnquietDad · 02/12/2006 11:28

Yes, my dad rode 6 miles to work and back on his bike every day when my parents were first married, but this was 1954 and a lot of people still didn't have cars. Then again, a lot of people just didn't need them, because they lived and worked entirely in their little communities.

I sometimes wonder if this is said as a slight rebuke to us for relying on the car too much.

OP posts:

Original poster

UnquietDad · 02/12/2006 11:29

I don't recall that one, Marina.

Mine are Ivor the Engine, Bagpuss, The Clangers, Lizzie Dripping, The Changes (shiver) and all that kind of thing.

OP posts:

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