Britain in 1945
Not so nostalgic:
Britain in 1945. No supermarkets, no motorways, no teabags, no sliced bread, no frozen food, no flavoured crisps, no lager, no microwaves, no dishwashers, no Formica, no vinyl, no CDs, no computers, no mobiles, no duvets, no Pill, no trainers, no hoodies, no Starbucks. Four Indian restaurants. Shops on every corner, pubs on every corner, cinemas in every high street, red telephone boxes, Lyons Corner Houses, trams, trolley-buses, steam trains. Woodbines, Craven ‘A’, Senior Service, smoke, smog, Vapex inhalant. No launderettes, no automatic washing machines, wash day every Monday, clothes boiled in a tub, scrubbed on the draining board, rinsed in the sink, put through a mangle, hung out to dry. Central heating rare, coke boilers, water geysers, the coal fire, the hearth, the home, chilblains common. Abortion illegal, homosexual relationships illegal, suicide illegal, capital punishment legal. White faces everywhere. Back-to-backs, narrow cobbled streets, Victorian terraces, no high-rises. Arterial roads, suburban semis, the march of the pylon. Austin Sevens, Ford Eights, no seat belts, Triumph motorcycles with sidecars. A Bakelite wireless in the home, Housewives’ Choice or Workers’ Playtime or ITMA on the air, televisions almost unknown, no programmes to watch, the family eating together. Milk of Magnesia, Vicks Vapour Rub, Friar’s Balsam, Fynnon Salts, Eno’s, Germolene. Suits and hats, dresses and hats, cloth caps and mufflers, no leisurewear, no ‘teenagers’. Heavy coins, heavy shoes, heavy suitcases, heavy tweed coats, heavy leather footballs, no unbearable lightness of being. Meat rationed, butter rationed, lard rationed, margarine rationed, sugar rationed, tea rationed, cheese rationed, jam rationed, eggs rationed, sweets rationed, soap rationed, clothes rationed. Make do and mend.
– David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945-51
I like this. so much calmer than today.
Like Carla this was the Britain my Dad grew up in – he was 18 in 1945 and though some of the paragraph sounds terrible, I also think there was a lot then that was preferable to today. I agree with Carla that we all want things to be too convenient now and we have so much stuff and so much choice. I can see that a lot of time life was grim in 1945 but a shop and pub on every corner sounds good, as does a cinema on every high street. My grandparents went to the Lyons Corner house every week. No retail parks sounds good to me!
i admit that I am reminiscent for parts of this paragraph and agree with much of what Carla said but I also recognize that it is because of 1945 that there is a 2010 and TV and cell phones and internet and disposable trendy clothing and that I have the choice to accept or reject those items in my life. Such is the role of history, to show us how far we have come or how far we have fallen. No matter what you have or don’t have it is what you do with it and how you approach it that makes the difference.
I also read this with the ewan macgregor trainspotting voice in my head.
Well said!
Sounds SANE to me. Crazy is the fact that now everyone can have as much as they want of everything they DIDN’T have; yet everyone COMPLAINS. People spend their days in front of a TV, have no concept of where their food comes from or their clothes, have little to no pride in appearance (peopleofwalmart.com), etc, etc. Everyone wants everything to be convenient. That Britain of 1945 is the society my Dad was born into, and growing up with a single Mum in govt housing led to that lifestyle being continued his whole childhood and the mentality behind that is the mentality us kids were raised to have….thus I choose a lot of those options above instead of the “modern” and supposedly “better” way. Excellent paragraph.
It all sounds so crazy!!