Snippet 11

I myself was allowed a bath once a week. Not always that hot. If the water from the coal range boiled over during the week

what labour intensive days tho remember chopping the kindling in the weekend so mum could light & boil the copper for Monday washday & because we were a household of 10 only the bottom sheet was changed.

mum changed the bottom sheet and the top was put on the bottom Only had 1 bath a week and shared the water.When I first got married I had a copper.Got the washing nice and clean.Nine kids in our family

We never had a washing machine while I was at home, just a wringer over the tubs. We had a Singer sewing machine with the knee lever, which we thought was great after the hand operated one. My grandmother had been a seamstress and didn't have a machine, but she made our grammar school uniforms all by hand, and they had the most exquisite buttonholes.

and a washboard and blue bag of course. - I remember blue bags good for bee stings.

Milk bottles at the front gate with the money in one of them! try that these days. 4d a bottle that I recall

ah I can remember the milk 4 cents a bottle of 600cc in 1980. Thats when I arrived in NZ and found our first house to rent in Westmere/Auckland and we paid 50 dollars a week.

rented an old house in Ashurst for $5.00 a week in 1969 was very run down & had a drum in a shed at the back for a loo. Not good. couldn't afford anywhere else

I loved the smell of the copper boiling We had 8 kids two double beds in one room . I slept with my 3 sisters 2 to a bed and the stories that got told there and the thumps on the wall to shut up.- talking about billy bunter I bought a bessie bunter off here a while ago. I really enjoyed reading it and hey I am 1941 born.

Just a wee story re wallpapering with newspaper etc.. I have a friend who is older than myself that has taken old magazines.. taken the glossy pics out of them & placed them on her cottage kitchen floor.. she then varnished ?? all over them.. that floor is fabuloussssss.. but she didnt stop there.. she also wallpapered her dining room with the old adverts out of mags.. Milo, Marmite, Baking Powder.. Edmunds Cook book etc.. & I'm talking only about 5 years ago.. god knows where she got the old mags from.. but I always loved going there for coffee.. spent most of the time reading her walls.lol.. she's gone now tho.. Do you remember the big Pink paper/mag ?? they were great.. I had some until recently.. :O

I remember Saturday chores mine was to polish about 20 pairs of shoes, took me a good hour or so, Who polishes shoes these days? I had to clean the bathroom with VIM, and sweep, mop and polish the kitchen floor, I remember the day when we got this strange loking floor polisher thing. Oh and then there was cleaning our own bedrooms, three of us slept in there. One night there was an almighty explosion followed by several others, the ginger beer I made exploded in the wardrobe I had in the room lost about 5 bottles, hell of a mess.

I grew up in London think we might have been a bit luckier than NZ after the war with modern facilities etc., but can remember going to get the rations every week with my Dad - big hunks of cheese and tea and sugar in purply/brown paper bags that were folded down in a special way. Moved to Auckland in 1962 - totally different world!!

The London I remember after the war didn't have any modern facilities. No fridge, no car, outside toilet, no vacuum cleaner - had to beat the dust out of the mats over the line with a cane carpet beater, wore my grandmother's old grey thick stockings all wrinkled round the ankles to keep my legs warm, nearly had to go without school dinners because we couldn't rub enough money together. We used to tip all the vases out, look in the corner of the drawers etc, trying to find farthings to make up the amount. Maybe we were poor and I didn't realise just how poor we were.

I remember all those things about just after the war, Ration Books, travelling on the train abd bus to London to see my Auntie in Catford, and looking at all the bombed out houses, remember being fascinated by a bath sitting half way up a building, still intact and wedged, looked very strange and sad somehow..


Speaking of milkmen when I lived in Roseneath in wgtn as a child the old milk horse and cart still came round doing the deliveries, the horses were great and could do the round on their own I think. We used to walk from Haitaitai school down to shelley bay for swimming lessons, that is where the old Teal base used to be with the flying boats, also the patent slip. My grandmother lived in a big house in Oriental Bay, had 12 children, 6 boys and six girls who used to get up to all sorts of mishief, always remember my father telling me the boys used to stand on a whicker chair with a candle burning beneath and try to wee through the cracks in the cane to put the candle out, used to keep them all amused for ages. Another trick was getting a large mirror and reflecting the sun into the eyes of folk walking along the bay below their house.

Hot scones and pikelets. Fresh sponge cakes ( from the coal range) with mock cream. The three of us would eat almost the whole sponge for afternoon tea before Dad went to milk and keep one piece for me to take to school in my lunch box the next day

Do you remember the shops which had the overhead wires which carried your money for your purchase in a little cylinder to the office and then your change came whizzing back in it? One shop in Cambridge had it - Calverts and kept it intil a few years ago. Not sure about it now.