Call the Midwife

[Toddlerteaplease]

Well this is boring.

Maybe it just didn't occur to the nuns/other midwives to pitch for Cyril and Lucille living there? Clearly it was desperate solution to get rid of Constance!

I didn't view Constance in quite such a 'rose-tinted' light after seeing her being so strong-willed and taking advantage of Phyllis's good nature!

I stand corrected about the working classes being more fashionable than how they're being portrayed. Perhaps a clumsy device used to differentiate between different socio-economic classes in CTM?

I once had impetigo as a young adult but goodness knows how I got it as I was a very clean young adult at the time!

The baby was Constance.

Millicent was the one who has unrosied your specs newmodelarmy

The cheese sandwich I could forgive. Nipping at Phyllis for huffing and puffing? I cannot.

They should have given the cottage to Lucille and Cyril.

I’d have been humpy about that if o was them.

Oh yes, now I remember Constance (could have been Elizabeth or Julie). Getting muddled (and doing Dry January too!). Oops .

It seems a waste to give a whole 'cottage' to a singleton who had effectively made herself homeless rather than a newly married couple who could clearly have done with the support.

Could part of the issue be that Cyril is the Pastor of a different denomination of Church, and their flat doubles as that Church?

As the cottage seemed to belong to the church (C of E) it would be seen as unfair to give it to the pastor of another denomination, rather than a parishioner
The cottage wasn’t for the nuns to give away - that was made very clear.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

Could part of the issue be that Cyril is the Pastor of a different denomination of Church, and their flat doubles as that Church?

Snap!

I was shocked and disappointed that the Turners didn't come up with a cure for cancer and or a womb transplant.

I think I'm many service jobs having long hair wouldn't have been acceptable for the men. As often it's the rich posing as poor who can take the risks with their looks.

Oh - I never thought about the church aspect. That makes sense.

Late to it (it was lovely catching up with this thread!). I found the special and the first episode disappointing, but this one was much better.

DP and I unwisely let DD watch the first episode (it was late and I thought she'd be asleep in minutes). We both burst out in very inappropriate laughter at the baby's skull, I'm afraid. Not only was it far too big - it was also really obvious the fontanelle had closed! How would you not notice that?! They had all that ridiculous stuff about whether the baby breathed or not and not one single soul said 'wait a minute, this baby lived long enough for the bones in its skull to knit together'?

In this last episode I bloody loved Nancy taking Mr Posh down a peg or two, that was brilliant. And reminded me of how Trixie used to be written when she had a bit more spark to her.

I thought Nancy, in uniform, teasing someone in public about a medical condition to be a bit unprofessional. Especially since it was a cafe...

Extremely unprofessional!

But I still enjoyed it.

I know London house prices are mental now, but in 1960s London would they really have needed £500 as a deposit? I would have thought that would have been half the total cost at least, if not the lot.

According to Google, the average London house in 1968 was £4.5kish.

The cottage should have gone to Cyril and Lucille. What a snobby and entitled woman she was (too invested)

Loved the actress who played the lady with cervical cancer.

Loved the actress who played the lady with cervical cancer.
I thought she sounded just like Sheree Murphy.

Google says average wage would been around £890 in 1967 so we talking just over half a years wage. Considering Cyril had been running home on his one wage in theory they can save Lucille extra wage quite quickly. Plus nurses should been saving loads I know have pay towards lodgings but hardly posh and they are sharing rooms so you would expect decent savings when to busy to be out spending all the time.

I looked at scabies more and wondered how Mr Landlord had it when you need prolonged skin to skin contact with someone. It’s not as if has physical job where mixing closely lots people and very hard to get from old fabric mattress etc.

@Pegasussnail

The cottage should have gone to Cyril and Lucille. What a snobby and entitled woman she was (too invested)

Loved the actress who played the lady with cervical cancer.

See, I didn't get this vibe at all about Mrs Higgins! I thought it was really plausible she would be badly shocked by a burglary (wasn't it relatively uncommon for women to live alone then? I think you couldn't easily get a mortgage as a single woman). And then the seeming snobby/entitled behaviour was a reaction to that. She did seem quite self-aware about it, based on the conversation she had with Nancy.

@JakeyRolling

I know London house prices are mental now, but in 1960s London would they really have needed £500 as a deposit? I would have thought that would have been half the total cost at least, if not the lot.

Very strict mortgage lending criteria back then. Rare to get a mortgage for more than 90% of the asking price, and mortgages granted to a married couple would be for 3 x the man's wage or 2.5 times the joint wage (may have been less - this is how it was when we got our first mortgage in the mid 80s). You had to have been saving a decent amount monthly with the building society for at least two years as well.

My parents bought a brand new 3-bed semi-detached house in Leeds for £4k in 1971. Those were the days!

(I should add that by the mid 80s the wording was 3 x the higher wage, but in the 60s I'd expect them to have said 3 x the man's wage, because it would usually have been higher, and once a woman was married, there was an expectation that she would either leave her job immediately or she would be leaving it in the near future when they started a family. No statutory maternity leave entitlement.)

The cottage should have gone to Cyril and Lucille

Why?
The cottage is Church (ie C of E) property and they are members of a different church, which Cyril is pastor of. Their flat is provided by their church.

Yes I also wondered where Constance came from. Strange

She did say it was because Lucille was 'constant' in her support. I reckon she privately hated the name Lucille and had come up with a way to make a tribute to her without using it.

Most young guys had long hair at that time where I lived, despite parents , especially dads, being unhappy about it. It was part of the teenage rebellion thing. DH and his dad had endless rows about it, and most boys refused to have short, Brylcreemed hair!

My Dad would have been in his early 30s in 1967, in a managerial job, and he never, ever had long hair. He did use Brylcreem, though. Terrible stuff! No wonder people used to have antimacassars to protect the backs of sofas and armchairs from the greasy marks.

My husband was in the early years of secondary school at that time. His memory is that hair length was a big issue at school all through the late 60s and early 70s, with boys being sent home if their hair was longer than deemed acceptable. Hair below collar length started to get more and more common, though, to the point that short back and sides stood out as old-fashioned and fuddy duddy in the 1970s. Really long hair on men was very common by the very early 70s, and then started to look old-fashioned in just a few years, with the rise of punk and then the New Romantics.

This old Pathe newsreel clip of London street scenes in 1967 is good fun, if you have just under 8 minutes to spare.

It has only just occurred to me that my Dad was be around Timothy's age (1949?). Went to Hrammar school (but in Nottinghamshire) and then to University in Sunderland I believe. The days of Grants...

He's always had quite "shaggy" hair rather than close cut and styled in that makes sense.