My, how life has changed.......

I remember when I was a kid and we got the phone put in - it was a day of excitement! The yellow Morris van arriving at the door, the engineer with all of his tools (which to me at that age were a wonder in themselves!) and watching him put in the cables and then showing my mum how the cream rotary dial phone worked...

We were one of two houses on the street that had the phone, so some of the neighbours would come to our house to make calls rather than walk all the way to the phone box.

That day, however was soon to be trumped.......... when we got our new COLOUR telly installed. Wow!! And they broke down, relatively often, and I used to love it when the 'telly man' was coming out because I could watch him do his magic. One of those 'telly men' later became my mentor as an apprentice, and to this day, I love the bones of the man.

Hell, we didn't even have central heating until the mid-80's, and even then it was crappy Economy 7! I remember as a youngster waking up and cracking the ice in the blankets that I was sleeping under - my best pal was my Labrador dog who would sleep in my bed during winter, and given that he was about the same size I was at the time, he was like a big hot water bottle.

Life seemed better then though somehow.

 

When I first knew Mrs Shiney we lived 30 miles apart, a long distance in those days, and when I was home on leave she phoned me every evening from the phone box a half a mile from her home (we had a phone because my father worked at home). I can't remember how much the calls cost them but she had to be connected through the operator and the operator used to interrupt the call when the money had run out. She was then told to put more money in the box before we could continue talking.

One of the operators, they were all women then, took a liking to us and when the money ran out she used to say to Mrs Shiney "That's alright, dear, you just keep talking and don't bother with the money". That was over 55 years ago!

With TV. I remember when the Quatermass Experiment first came out in 1953 and I used to go down the road to watch it at my friend's house on their 9" TV (it had a magnifying glass on the front of it ). They were the only ones in the street that had TV.

 

Is that one of those new fangled things?

 

When I started training, we went to a customer that had a fault - Ferguson TX, not a million miles away from this one Ferguson television TX90 1984

Being the bright eyed and bushy tailed youngster, and full of my own confidence, I was sat right next to the TV as the lady of the house explained the problem; arriving at a conclusion in my head, I thought I had a rough idea of what was wrong, and decided that I needed to whip the back off it. I reached out to grab the metal leg of the stand that the TV was sat on, and as I did, my mentor shouted "DON'T!" ....... it was too late, my hand was there, and I was pulling.

I got one hell of a belt of the thing - full on, mains voltage shock; thankfully, I was able to let go, and recoiled in pain from my experience. My mentor then went on to explain (and I apologise for this being sexist, but it is simply how things were back then) - Mrs Woman will dust and clean this TV regularly, and will twist it back and forth holding onto the wooden case, not realising that the mains cable is trapped under the castor on the stand. The castor slowly gnaws its way through the cable, and then the exposed wires inside connect with the metal stand, and the whole stand is live at mains potential........ common as muck apparently.

I never once grabbed a stand like that ever again without first unplugging the set, and inspecting the mains cable.

 

And of course the wee embroidered doily underneath the vase... you don't see doilies any more. Nor do you see loo roll covers - - the crochet type; or even tea cosies!!!

 

I started to learn crochet, and have made a few small blankets when friends etc have had babies, but I was never able to get enough time to learn more than the very basics. Maybe one day I will get back to it.

The sad thing is that we are all struggling nowadays to find the time for hobbies/crafts as we are all so busy working and keeping our homes/gardens/lives in order, regardless of gender. I personally think that is where some of our problems stem from now - if one parent (no matter which one) were to be at home for kids etc, maybe they would get into less trouble and learn life skills such as cooking, cleaning and repairing things? It is also a sad indictment on society that we all need as many adults as there is in the house out to work as soon as possible, just to pay te rent or mortgage