Thursday 13 January 2022

Retrospective times

 Since my last post we have now entered into another new year, one that will be my 75th and I guess that, as I have lived here on Sheppey all of my life, it makes me someone with a quite full memory bank of how things have changed over the years.

My first New Year was that of 1950, a new decade and I was just two and half years old and not celebrating my third birthday until the July of that year. That year and indeed for much of the decade, we were to struggle to rise up from the austerity and poverty of the previous decade and it's World War, I believe that we still had food rationing until around 1953.

I'm always fascinated when old black and white photos from those times appear on on our local Sheppey History Facebook Page, and people comment jealously at how clean and tidy the town's roads were. An easy answer to that is the fact that councils employed teams of local road sweepers in those days, people who conscientiously walked the streets with a barrow, broom and shovel and were aided by the fact that there was none of the throw-away packing and litter that we have nowadays. But it wasn't all the Shangri-La, that those photos made it look, yes life was much simpler but in the side streets and roads behind the High Streets, there was a lot of poverty. In my childhood in the 1950's food  there was only enough food each day because of the invention of mothers who never wasted a scrap. They would shop in local shops each day, buying food that was fresh, in small quantities because there were no fridges and often in ounces rather than pounds. In the butchers the cheapest cuts were always bought and often included ox-tails, hearts, brawn, belly linings, pig's trotters. Chicken was a luxury that we sometimes had at Christmas  and often came from the few scraggy birds that we kept in the back yard for our eggs. The carcass of those birds was used the following day to boil in a large pan with vegetables and turn into a broth. Likewise, a rabbit in a small hutch was also kept each year for the purpose of a Sunday or Christmas dinner and I recall that my grandparents wasted nothing from those animals, even the head was cooked and the brains eaten afterwards!

To continue the non-waste of food, there was bubble and squeak. In my house it was usually left over food items from the Sunday roast such as vegetables and scraps of meat, all fried in a pan the next day to create another belly filling meal.

And what of puddings, or "sweet" as we knew it because it was normally just that, sweet. A common one was suet pudding. Those puddings were a staple of the Sunday Roast, created on the day by mother cooking the ingredients in the well used pudding cloth and then sliced and added to the roast as a typical stodgy belly filler. Any that was not used in the roast was served afterwards for "sweet," coated in sugar, jam or treacle. Other stodgy belly fillers were rice or macaroni, or in the summer months, home-made fruit pie and custard.

And so it went on, nothing was wasted, nothing came ready packaged with use by dates and vegetables and fruit were seasonal, sprouts and parsnips for instance only appeared in winter and when they did were seized on for the seasonal treat that they were.

So, younger generations might look at those old black and white photographs and wish themselves back in those times but in reality they wouldn't know where to start. 

14 comments:

  1. Love your reminiscences Derek. I smile about the use of every scrap - I squirrel away every scrap piece of bone, meat or veg and keep a constant stock pot for broth or soup. It really is the most nutritious meal. I guess I'd do this even if I was a millionaire and could dine off fillet steak every day!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellent Justme, you'd of been well at home in the 1950's

    ReplyDelete
  3. And don't forget that in the winter when it snowed, those on the dole up at least until the mid 1970s were required to go out and clear the pavements or put to work on the grit lorries with shovels. At least they were here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's an interesting comment Rachel but I'm not aware of it happening around here although it's a common sense use of such labour.

      Delete
  4. Ah Bubble and Squeak Derek on a Monday with the roast from Sunday cold and plenty of my mother's chutneys - and hopefully what was left of Sunday's apple pie

    ReplyDelete
  5. I do a fair amount of cooking from scratch and I hate to waste food, but I bet a lot of what I put into compost now would have gone into the soup pot in those days you describe. Very interesting account.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is a terrific post, Derek. Your memories of another time really make me appreciate the "luxuries" I have now. I live simply but my life is so much easier than it would have been back then! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Your memories strike with me, Derek. I am 83. My father rented an allotment which fed us fresh fruit and veg. We bought anything else from one of the three shops in the village (Mereworth, Kent). My grandfather, a farm labourer, kept a pig out the back, fed with all the family scraps/waste. It was killed each winter, everything was salted down (no fridges then), even the blood was used for black puddings. It was said that all the pig was used, except the tail and bristles!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Great memories Avus. I recall many evenings as a child, sharing a couple of cold, cooked pigs trotters with my father. He always enjoyed them after coming home from the pub. Not sure that I would still find them attractive to eat nowadays.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yes this post strikes a cord Derek. My wife and I are of similar age to you and both of us experienced many of the things you have described and as our parents lived by waste not want not we have maintained that and nothing is wasted.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Spot on Derek, I too grew up in small village in the 50`s/60s and my mum wasted nothing. There were four of us kids so food was always tight; I can still see the joy on her face when I used to bring a couple of rabbits back after a ferreting session! The other thing that sticks with me from childhood is how cold it was in winter with no central heating - we used to dress up to go bed! Keep the memories coming, and all the best 2022, Paul.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Great to hear from you Paul and yes, getting dressed to go to bed was quite normal in winter, with frost on the inside of bedroom windows!

    ReplyDelete