Call the Midwife.

[Toddlerteaplease]

What is going on with Mother Mildreds make up?

I think the earlier series were better as they had the actual source material to work with.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

You could delay your National service if you went to university I believe.

A relative of mine did this and when he had graduated it had been abolished anyway

Have just caught up with this. It really is plot by numbers now.

I keep hoping it is going to go back to the grittier realistic original series. And please stop they dreadful music. If the acting is good we dont need computer generation sound to tell us how to feel!

But in fact this episode the dreary doctor did NOT solve the medical mystery with one of his 4 books.

Another doctor did!

Maybe the next episodes will be taken up with the dueling doctors with nuns and midwives standing on the side line in shock and awe!

About women going out to work. Find it very strange that it was recorded that women did not go out to work. Quite often it was the double shift thing on men at work during the day woman at home looking after children than dad comes home and looks after the children while mum goes out and does some low grade job like cleaning or whatever. Or as someone up thread said, had some work they did from home.

Also quite strange not to find women going out to work. The Dagenham Ford Strike was only a few years later than this point in the 60s.

The woman were striking in 1968, there were under two hundred woman on strike but it was a factory of 3000

Woman worked before they were married, so many may have been unmarried, or children at school with latch key kids

Dagenham wasn’t the east end though and I would have thought a different vibe.

I was watching the Christmas special from 2015 last night. So much better than the recent ones.

I was just pointing out that women were part of the workforce, and find it hard to believe that some small pocket of in the docklands had somehow escaped this trend. The strike was only a few years after the current series of CTM.

Dagenham would have had a connection to the east end (not just the tube line!) but was built to help relieve the pressure on housing in the old east end.

Another thing about the earlier series - with the old Nonnatus house you had the extra buns that only appeared to sing and float about occasionally. And the sounds of them singing was often played over something like Mrs Jenkins bath or Nora's gin bath or Sister Bernadette's loss of faith.

The extra floating and singing buns!
Oh that tickled me!

But I do agree, the singing was lovely.

I presume Sister Monica Joan has eaten all the extra buns now!

Dr MJ has become less barmy as the years go by... I miss her from the early days.

Nuns! Nuns!

Did they get blown up with the first Nonnatus house?

Absolutely Dagenham and the east end have that connection. That whole area of Essex housed displaced east end communities following the slum clearances. Many of the Dagenham workers would have been born in the east end of London.

Loving the floating buns, and I miss them too. Less Dr Turner and more buns please.

I’m sure they both worked and didn’t work. But those the very young new midwives came accross would have not worked as they were busy having babies. No one recollection can tell the whole story.

Have just watched the last episode and am getting a weird vibe off the two little turner girls, why do the do everything together, it's a bit creepy.
Am getting a slight village of the damned feel.... can't we see them squabbling Mr. Turner kindly crumpling his face at them and sorting it all out?

I revise my earlier prediction - the Turner Twins are going to be the ones hiding Dr T's shoes and covering the top step in marbles.

I remember my DM telling me that my DDad, who was born in December 1933, did National Service and then went to university. She said many men did, so undergraduates tended to be slightly older in the 1950s & early 60s. There was a third year 6th for people wanting to go to Oxford & Cambridge as well. A degree in medicine is 5 years. Since his family weren't wealthy, Val's doctor friend may have worked for a year or two, possibly with his Dad in the bike shop, to earn money to help him through university. He could easily be in his late twenties.

DF did third year sixth for Oxbridge BUT he did only the bare minimum O Levels as I think he was in a very small group who were fast-tracked to sixth form. I believe he was still 18 when he went up to university. Missed out on National Service too.

There was still a third year in the sixth form for Oxbridge when I left school in 1973.

So, what's the prediction for tonight?

I revise my earlier prediction - the Turner Twins are going to be the ones hiding Dr T's shoes and covering the top step in marbles.

A Chinese docker becomes mysteriously ill. Despite it being a completely unknown infection, Dr Turner correctly diagnoses Coronavirus, cures it and saves the day, for it to become completely dormant again for over 50 years.

The Turner twins visit the Overlook Hotel...

Tonight's predictions......the doctor that diagnosed the chest complaint last week will return as the new GP, Lucille and Cyril will have another date somewhere, Trixie will do campaign for the contraception clinic (can't remember who it is!) to become part of the GP practice, Dr Turner will slip down the stairs in his stockinged feet which will leave him unable to sign May's adoption papers and she will potentially go back to foster care.

I think Cyril will suddenly have completed his exams and pop the question soon.

Dr Oneface gets a strange disorder completely
paralysing his face.

Nobody notices.