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.

Yes, my parents went through two currency changes - decimalisation in 1971 and then the switch to the Euro in 2002. The switch to the Euro was quite smooth - you paid with IR£ notes and then you received your change in € notes and coins. Within a few days, all my IR£ notes were gone and I was just left with some random Irish coins. Most people used cash back then, unlike today. I'm assuming the shops had to be fitted out with special cash registers, which enabled a conversion from punts to euros. All of this would have been much more difficult back in the '70s, when calculations were probably done with pen and paper. In 2002, there were complaints about prices going up.

The Euro makes travelling around the EU so much easier - no need to change your money when you travel to France or Spain or Italy. But I really struggled when I went on holiday to England a few years ago and had to grapple with sterling - I just couldn't get my head around the different notes and coins. And I was by no means elderly. I still feel sorry for the shopkeepers waiting for me to pay, as I fumbled around with unfamiliar coins. Next time I can just use my bank card.

Phyllis urging the pregnant lady in the prison cell to suck on her barley sugar reminded me of the chemist shop when I was a child - there was always a jar of barley sugar sticks.

I enjoyed the episode overall, but I agree that the women wouldn't have burnt their bras. It would have been seen as a shocking waste of fabric and money, especially given the poverty of the East End. Having said that, I was amused that Trixie picked out one of her old style bras and not one of the current styles. And we've solved the mystery of poor, neglected, baby Jonty who now appears to have a Nanny. Although I'm not quite sure how bankrupt Matthew manages to pay for two homes (one in the US and one in London) and a Nanny.

I'm curious to know where the Sr. Veronica and Geoffrey storyline is going to go. I can't see a romance forming - Geoffrey is definitely gay. I think they're just confidantes. Two people carrying secrets.

@Megsdaughter I'm so sorry for your losses

So were stamps

I was 6 when decimals came in. I remember my dad giving me a sixpence on a Saturday and taking me to buy my Twinkle comic, and then having to explain to me the new coins and price!

I was 10 when we went decimal..
There was a weekly radio programme at school to help us. Most of us kids got it pretty quickly, it was the older folk who struggled.
15 years later my parents were still complaining that all the prices went up with decimalisation. "Three shillings for a loaf of bread? Outrageous!!" 🤣🤣🤣

We had lived in Singapore until early 1970, so had used dollars and cents, came home to old money then decimalition came in on my 10th birthday. I was given a pound for it, all in new coins.
Took me ages to get used to it all. Then we got posted back to Singapore just as i had got used to it! We were an RAF family.

I was born after decimalisation but I remember shillings and two shilling coins being in use well up until the 90s.
My mum started a job behind a bar the day the money changed! She said she was glad as she didn’t like working out change in LSD.

Years after decimalisation, my parents and grandparents were still converting prices back into old money to express outrage at how much things cost. A shilling for a loaf of bread! Ten shillings for a gallon of petrol!

She's been on stage a lot recently, and the only role I've seen her in was as Anna Leonowens in the King and I. She needed the plummy voice for that! I think that might also be why her acting has become very exaggerated - she's acting for the stage, not the screen.

DD had a trachy in 2000. She was just a few weeks old. We are extremely fortunate that the children's hospital near us is a centre for excellence for paediatric ENT surgery, so I was used to seeing other kids on the ward with trachys.

For obvious resons this episode really resonated with me and I felt it was the best episode in a very long time.

@NotMyRealAccount mine too, and my aunt carried on sending a 25p postal order for birthdays for many years afterwards as she was still thinking of it as 2’6d which had a bit more buying power in her younger days.

I was only 6 when decimalisation happened and remember being terribly disappointed when my father exchanged the coins in my piggy bank for the new decimal coins, they were so much smaller, he tried to cheer me up by saying how shiny the new ones were

I think her RL accent is pretty much like that although she has turned it up a notch lately.

My old house that was built in the 1950s and we (parents and me) moved in to in the late 70s had a downstairs toilet!

My great grandma was born in 1900 and would give us 5p for a treat when she was getting very old, because she'd forgotten decimalisation. Our mother would swap it for a pound when she wasn't looking!

I wasn't born when decimalisation happened but my grandma struggled to get use to it.

Ah that makes sense thank you! I hadn’t seen her stage work, I follow her on Instagram but hadn’t see anything posted bar CTM

I was 5 when decimalisation came in and can still remember sixpences but nothing else! Found the new decimal coins set when I was having a clear out last summer
I still do imperial weights and heights. 2lb mince at the butchers and when DS was born in 2003, the midwife told me his weight in metric and I asked what that was in old money Still only understand miles and it really annoys me when British tv shows do long distances in kilometres!! Having said that, I'm better at metres than yards
Another difference for me is temperature. I understand hotter temperatures in Fahrenheit, so 70F, but colder temperatures in centigrade, so 0C is freezing.

We had a victorian terrace in the 70/80s the bathroom was downstairs in the extension

Was that scene with Nurse Crane and the receptionist whose name escapes me a subtle way of coming out to each other?

No.
Neither of them are gay.
Nurse Crane once mentioned a relationship she had (with a man) during the war and Miss Higgins had a relationship that resulted in her illegitimate child.

But that doesn’t mean they arent gay.? It was very common in those days for women to have been in straight relationships and have had children

Neither of their back stories hint at either of them being gay.

I know . But Nurse Crane specifically mentioned being different when they were talking about sexuality

I dont think they were gay but they were both unconventional in their way

Different in not wanting marriage and children.