Call the midwife

[NimbleHiker]

The Christmas special of call the midwife is on bbc 1 in 2 parts again. The first part is on at 20:15 on Christmas day and the second part is on at 20:30 on boxing day. I am not a fan of the Christmas special been in 2 parts. I wonder how doctor Turner and his simpering wife will save the world.

As a tortoise owner, I'm waiting for the Turners' tortoise to come out of hibernation soon. Hope they haven't forgotten it.

I couldn’t work out what Violet was doing to her handbags?! Was a weekly cleaning of handbags ever a thing? 🤷‍♀️😂

I liked the changing fashions.

The nun and Geoffrey thing was a bit silly, when you marry God surely you accept you won’t have children plus how old is she meant to be? Would she be able to adopt?

The child abuse storyline was disturbing but we needed to know a bit more - were both parents hitting the children? Or was she complicit in the abuse?

So...
So far we've had an incorrect can for the era WD40 in the xmas special, incorrect Airfix box, incorrect M+S material. Was that nit lotion bottle correct 😂
If it wasn't for the fact it's a BBC show I'd think it was Product Placement.
The Turner children seemed to be eating generic cereal though. I'm suprised Shelagh doesn't knit homemade Shreddies though instead of buying cereal in a box.

@Girliefriendlikespuppiesi thought the same about Sr Veronica, she will have worked through that before she made her vows. For the nuns and religious I know, their call to religious life is stronger than desire for children. Not that they didn’t want them, they just had another path.

I don't find it surprising that a person whose job is to look after and protect vulnerable children eventually has some sort of trauma response... such as a baby of their own to protect and nurture

Shelagh quit being a nun though so she could become Supermum Turner.

My husband was born a month before the change.

For a while I thought the Turners would take on the four neglected kids too, in their amazing Tardis house that has room for 2/3/4 kids plus 2-3 adults and several pets.
May’s little brother was far too well for a kid who’s just had a kidney and tumour removed, still awaiting “emergency chemo” two months after coming to the UK for life-saving treatment.
Part of me hopes the HK mafia comes to Poplar and starts chasing up his progress, as St Turner promised the kid would be returned to his family as soon as he was well enough and he certainly looked well enough.
Yes, it would be ludicrous and far-fetched but that seems to be par for the course now.

Their house is a new build and must be 4 beds so yes possibly - my parents house is a 60s build and has a downstairs toilet, as well as upstairs bathroom (I’m assuming that’s what the turners have)

How old is Sister Veronica/Beryl though? I thought she was in her 40s at least but maybe it’s the unflattering headgear!
I’m thinking Lavender marriage with Geoffrey, and using a Turkey baster (or adopting - a baby from Hong Kong maybe). There’s no way she could stop being a nun and be a single mother in the early 70s it would be a massive scandal.

Is Cyril divorced now? I see a wedding storyline there too

You beat me to it, I was going to suggest Pancake Day was included to point to D Day, which is what I remember decimalisation day being referred to.

There was loads of publicity and educational programmes in the time leading up to it. I was only 8, but IIRC people did get used to it pretty quickly. For a while I can remember my parents and their friends saying things like "Ee, that cost two and six, they tell you not to convert back but you have to." However, people did get used to it quite soon.

I had a game called Decimal Snap, the cards had pictures on of money, some in old money and some in new. You could call snap if the cards were identical or the two sums were equivalent, e.g 5p and a shilling would be snap. Wish I still had that for curiosity value.

I am not sure that Trixie splitting childcare with the nanny so she could go on strike was quite in the spirit of Women's Lib!

And Shelagh expecting the girls to be responsible and do household chores but not Teddy because she could trust them, then the next minute taking them to a Women's Lib meeting? Er, confusing.

It could be just a 3 bedroom. The girls sharing and the boys sharing.
Even though Timothy is considerably older than his brother Teddy in that era it was normal for siblings to share a bedroom despite age differences.

One thing that puzzled me about the "strike"... presumably as nurses some of them would have been on duty? Then they went to the cinema... where women would have been working... Or the Nanny working!

Removing the labour at home made sense. But not the paid employment like Fred running Vi's shop while Cyril ran his!

I looked up the age of the nun who plays Sister Veronica because I was confused by the “I want a child before it’s too late” comment. She is 50!

She might be thinking more of adoption (especially as she's worked with orphan children) but doesn't want to be an older mother.
Could single mothers adopt in that era?
She would maybe need to leave the nun-hood and find a husband (Geoffrey??) before she could adopt.

Will Beryl adopt the new HK toddler? She’ll have to fight Sheila Turner I expect,
but they did mention her reading to him in (was it?) Mandarin. In the way that they drop hints. I can’t see her marrying Geoffrey.

My house was built in 1970 and did not have a downstairs loo.

As an aside, I had the exact quilted dressing gown that the woman who gave birth prematurely was wearing. DM used to sew for M&S and it was a second from the factory shop.

It happens now. Big TV, big dog and neglected children.

A lavender marriage beneficial to both parties although I think we are at a date when homosexuality was legal if not acceptable in all quarters.

🤣 yes double standards.

My house is 1979 with a posh lying named guest cloakroom! But the houses on the estate didn't sell for ages because they were 4 bedrooms with an en suite and cost 7.5k.
Our previous house was built with an outside toilet. A lot still had downstairs bathrooms at the end of the kitchen.
We had friends with a 1960s posh house which had a utility room and toilet but outside the main house.

In those days the TV was almost certainly rented

I agree. Trixie's accent was awful to start with now it's completely unbearable.

If they were living on chips and bread they would be fat but malnourished.