Monday 30 March 2015

Laughing at the 1960s

Gales of laughter in our house on Sunday afternoon when we caught a bit of the Living and Cooking over the decades on TV. Who could mess up a Vesta meal??  My mother, I remember the watery beef curry carried into the dinning room as a treat, it lay flat as a pancake on the plate.  My mother firmly believed my father would enjoy a reminder of his war time service in Burma/India which I never understood as I know he hated it and I once watched him cry throughout "The Purple Plain" film.

I also remember in the 1960s feeling that using cafes and eating out was not something my family (or was it social class?) did and as result it always felt very strange to me.  We were definitely a family that took own sandwiches, on the train, to the beach. I still feel eating out is slightly "foreign" and a "privilege" .

Why did we laugh so much???  The TV were using our wedding present dinner service at one point and sitting at our first kitchen table set gifted from an aunt !  We can't wait for the full 1970s experiences - cooking an evening meal in the Ted Heath era of timed electricity black outs.  My husband got a timer, and worked out a formula to allow for the 3 hour power cut during the day and for a casserole to cook in the oven in the afternoon and turn off at 6pm when the next power cut was due. We then had a hot meal by candle light when we arrived home just afterwards (if the train was running!).
And ohhh - those '60s dresses with the bright, bright colours and hemlines!!!

4 comments:

  1. The can opener was a highlight for me. What a mess they made of it. My brother is 12 years older than me (70) so I remember a lot of what he was involved in to.

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  2. It'll be interesting to see if they have the wife standing in a queue to get a loaf of bread like we had to in the 70's - do you remember the bread strike? Xxx

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  3. I would love to see these programmes, but doubt they will air here in Canada

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  4. I remember a fight in supermarkets over sugar and loo rolls! I still fight with can openers! Gill when you see it you will be amazed about the social comment on how women felt trapped in the kitchen! I got muddled I was sure the Advacdo era was the 1970s perhaps it was the 1980s when it was the bees knees to have advacdo in everything?

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