Vocal Voices

I just posted on the Random Thread about Soreen malt loaf and it got me thinking....

We always had porridge or Weetabix for breakfast. No corn flakes or rice crispies for us.

Tea, as we called it, meat and two with gravy, was always followed by a pudding - a crumble, jam sponge, both with Bird's custard, or rice or semolina pudding. They were cheap and filled you up.

We hardly ever had sweets. Dad would call in the sweet shop on Fridays and get each of us a 'penny bag' plus a few other things. They were to last till next Friday, but once they were gone they were gone.

There was always a fruit bowl - help yourself. "If you're not bread and butter hungry, you're not hungry."

The Corona man came once a week and we could each get a bottle of pop, plus a soda water for Dad's evening (Irish) whiskey.

We could get Crystal Springs pop or Ben Shaw's. My favourite was fresh orange juice from the milkman though.
We do a relative's shopping and he buys 1960s style food.
Tinned mandarins and fruit salad, potted meat, dripping, PEK tinned pork and so on.

Ah that took me back - my dad always bought sweets home on a Friday night Usually Smarties or Rollos for Julie and me, and either a box of Maltesers or Weekend chocs for mum

It was Alpine man who delivered the pop around here. We never had it though, I had to make do with council pop although there was sometimes squash to go in it. My best mate Rob* had the Alpine man deliver to his house, I used to love the cherryade.

Crisps were a treat. We’d go into Mary’s, the corner shop owned by Les Bishop and, yep, his wife Mary and they kept the crisp packets in tins behind the counter. Sometimes in the week we’d share a Mars Bar, my Mom would thinly slice one up and share it out. On a Saturday we’d go to the sweet stall on the market and buy a few quarters of sweets to eat while watching TV on Saturday night.

Dinner was always meat, veg and gravy apart from Friday when it was homemade chips and stew on Saturday.
Every Sunday evening we’d go to my Nan’s. My uncle lived next door, this was in the early 70s and he was a single Dad, and me and various cousins would all load into his kitchen and he’d cook that long spaghetti (which you don’t see much of any more) and we’d each have a plate of it with just Parmesan on top.

*You name it, Rob had it. He had an uncle who had no children and used to spoil him, their house was like a toy shop.

It was always R. White's Lemonade in our house. Or Ginger Beer. They're still going.

Sweets, had to buy my own from the weekly pocket money.
I collected the Sunday papers from the local newsagent / sweet shop - Sunday Mirror, News of the World and Reveille from memory. My parents had them reserved rather than delivered.

We had a maiden aunt who lived with us who drank like a fish. The 3d back on the empties at the local off-licence was a great way of supplementing pocket money.
And occassionally my ship came in - 2/6d back on an empty soda syphon!

As a kid, I used to love collecting all the old coins - Victorian pennies and halfpennies, especially the rarer ones with "H" or "KN" stamped on them - Heaton (Birmingham) or Kings Norton Mint. Still got an old tobacco tin full of them somewhere!
Then there were the farthings with a wren on them, the strangely shaped threpenny bits, and the old silver coins (pre-1920, of course, for the best silver content ).

I used to collect those pennies too Os.
And those sixpences (?) were called silver joeys around here.

Cereal for breakfast, cornflakes, rice crispies, puffed wheat, weetabix or shredded wheat. They didn't do the sugar coated ones in those days. I remember hoping to get the cream off the top of the milk, that was a treat.
We had school dinners so tea was usually something on toast, baked beans or scrambled eggs. Sometimes a sandwich, jam or potted meat paste.
Sundays dinner was always at midday, meat, 2 veg and gravy. Tea was bread and jam. jelly, blancmange and cake.

R Whites lemononade or my favourite cream soda, but the best treat was a big bottle of Tizer. Saturdays meant Saturday morning pictures. My favourites were Shirley Temple films and Laurel and Hardy. It only cost sixpence to get in and we were given threepence for sweets and threepence for the bus fare, but of course we chose to walk to buy extra sweets. A Jubbly cost threepence, I always had it frozen as it lasted longer, but a few sucks and it lost it's colour, much the same with the penny lollies Saving the bus fare meant being able to buy a Jamboree bag with a mixture of sweets. Also remember spangles, whatever happened to them. Loved Saturdays.