by Feeney, Paul
In summer, there were boring cold meat salads to contend with, only made tolerable by drowning everything in salad cream. Thinly sliced pieces of Spam would often be found haunting the salad plate. Spam was one of those mystery processed meats, supposedly made mostly from pork, but it had a strange taste and texture that didn’t appeal much to kids and was often found hidden under some leftover lettuce after a salad meal.
The practice of eating food in front of the television from a plate that was sliding around on a melamine tray balanced precariously on your lap was not yet the custom. Most families adopted the tradition of the whole family sitting down together at the table for meals, and usually at specific times. But, as always, kids could be picky eaters, and they would sometimes select favourite bits of food from their dinner plate to eat as a sandwich and then push the rest of the dinner to one side; mashed potatoes or chips stuffed between two slices of bread would often be more desirable to them than having to eat the whole meal that their mum had painstakingly cooked for them. Other popular kids’ sandwiches included salad cream, jam, banana, cheese, fish paste and, of course, beef or pork dripping – mmm, bread and dripping – lov-e-ly! Dripping was the product of fat and liquid that was left in the pan after mum had cooked a joint of beef or pork. Kids loved the taste of it and fish and chips cooked in beef dripping were just delicious – yet another joy of not knowing about cholesterol.
Puddings, sweets or ‘afters’, as they were often called, were usually a luxury reserved for Sundays, after your Sunday roast dinner. Rice pudding, bread and butter pudding and semolina or tapioca milk puddings – you either loved them or hated them. Homemade spotted dick or apple pie served with Bird’s yellow custard with the skin on top, or if you were really posh you might have pink blancmange. Pineapple chunks with Carnation milk, jelly and ice cream, trifle and the occasional luxury of a block of Neapolitan ice cream.
Tradesmen and Services
Right up until the end of the 1960s, there were a lot of homes that were only just having their very first telephone installed. Some telephone exchanges couldn’t cope with the ever-increasing demand for home telephones and you often had to wait months for a phone to be installed. Even then, many households had to make do with having only a shared or party-line, which meant that two or more subscribers shared the same pair of wires and only one party could make a call at a time. It was a terrible service, and neighbours could listen in on each other’s phone calls. Before you could make a call, you had to press a button on top of the phone to signal the exchange that you were about to do so and that you should be billed for it. If you wanted to make a phone call when the other party was already using the line, then you had to wait until they had finished. If you needed to make an emergency call then you had to tell the other party to get off the line. For obvious reasons, there was no such thing as telesales or telemarketing in the 1960s, which was good. The only telephone calls you got were from people you knew. Simply bliss! Also, there were no computers to compile lists of addresses for direct mail companies to bombard you with mountains of junk mail. But businesses did have to get their message across somehow, and so there were a lot of door-to-door salesmen and tallymen selling goods on the never-never. Encyclopaedia Britannica salesmen were very active at the time, selling their 24-volume set of encyclopaedias door-to-door on easy payment terms. They struck fear into the heart of every timid young parent who wanted their children to do well at school. After all, your child had no hope of passing their 11-plus or GCE exams if they didn’t have access to their very own set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the books did look stunning. Our parents just weren’t used to the American style of ‘hard sell’.
It seems like an ancient bygone age now, but it was a time when postmen still wore a smart head-to-toe uniform with collar and tie, highly polished black leather shoes and a flat ‘military style’ peaked cap. It would have been inconceivable for them to wear trainers and shorts back then. The post always dropped through the letterbox at about 7 a.m. each day, with the second post arriving at about 11 a.m., or did we just imagine that?
We still had a telegram service with telegram boys delivering about 10 million telegrams a year. Other than by telephone, a telegram was the fastest way to get a message to someone, but they were expensive to send and were usually only used to relay urgent messages. Telegrams were traditionally sent to announce the birth of a child or to congratulate a newly married couple, but an unexpected telegram was frequently carrying bad news, more often than not advising the recipient of a serious illness or the death of a friend or family member. Nobody liked to see a telegram boy coming along their street, and people would breathe a big sigh of relief when he carried on past their house. The young telegram boys, in their navy blue uniforms with red piping and pillbox caps, were a familiar sight, especially in urban areas, but numbers were gradually reducing with more and more messages being delivered by telephone and telex. Fax machines were still a long way off and emails were decades away.
Throughout the sixties it was still common practice to have your milk delivered fresh to your doorstep each morning. Virtually every area had a milk roundsman, and as with most delivery men back then, the milkman wore a uniform, including a collar and tie and a peaked cap, with a lightweight protective jacket or overall, and some also wore an apron. By the mid-sixties, most large dairies were using electric milk floats for their daily doorstep deliveries, but many of the small local dairies were still using handcarts or horse-drawn carts. In rural areas, it wasn’t unusual to see milk carts being pulled by a farm tractor. Each evening your mum would put all of your empty milk bottles (washed, of course) out on the doorstep for the milkman to collect the next day when he delivered your fresh milk. Everyone had a regular standing order, but if you wanted to change your milk order or needed to add some dairy products or orange juice to the next day’s order, then your mum would leave a note for the milkman in one of the empties. The milkmen would start their rounds very early in the morning and so the milk would arrive on most people’s doorsteps while they were still tucked up in bed. It meant fresh milk for breakfast, but people would often grumble that the noise from clinking milk bottles and the clattering of metal milk crates disturbed their sleep and woke them up far too early. Oh, and milkmen always seemed to be whistling unrecognisable tunes – loudly! In outlying areas, people would often have groceries and bread delivered to their door by van, and it was quite usual for the delivery roundsmen to be offered several cups of tea en route.
Once a week the dustmen would come to collect the dustbin full of rubbish. It now seems amazing that the rubbish accumulated by a whole family would only fill one small metal dustbin. There was very little unnecessary packaging to dispose of and there was hardly any waste food. The dustmen would collect the dustbin from wherever it was normally kept, be it in the back garden or in a side alley, but most people did put them outside the back gate or next to the front door, ready for collection on the prescribed day. There were no bureaucratic rules for the disabled and old people to worry about.
By the mid-sixties, many households were using electric or gas for their heating, but there remained a lot of open fires in regular use, which meant there was still a demand for local coal deliveries. The coal was usually delivered on motorised flatbed lorries, but there were still some horse-drawn drays around. The coalmen were usually large, intimidating men with faces and hands blackened by coal dust. They often wore flat caps and sleeveless leather jackets. The coalmen would heave the huge hundredweight (cwt) sacks of coal off the flatbed lorry and carry them on their backs to the coalbunkers, or tip them through a coalhole in the pavement into the cellar below.
Mums hated it when the chimney sweep came to clean the chimney. Some chimney sweeps had small vans, but many were still using pushbikes to get around – riding along with the aid of just one hand while supporting a few long-handled brushes on their shoulder with the other. The sweep would have a permanent covering of soot all over, even when he had just arri
ved. All the furniture would be pushed back from the fireplace and covered with sheets, but it was always a nerve-wracking experience for house-proud mums. For the kids, it was amusing to watch the expression on mum’s face as the sweep manoeuvred his brushes up the chimney and a cloud of soot bellowed out from beneath the protective sheet, dispensing a nice covering of black dust around the room. The sweep would always be carefully escorted from the house when he had finished, making sure that he didn’t rub up against anything he passed on the way. Then the clean-up would begin.
Window cleaners were also beginning to change their mode of transport from old-fashioned pushbikes to small vans, but many of the steadfast pushbike users still carried their stepladder and bucket in a homemade wooden box attached to the side of their bike, just like a motorbike sidecar.
More and more people were switching from the pay-as-you-go shilling-in-the-slot gas and electric meters to, instead, paying an invoice or bill. The gas and electric meter readers still called regularly to take meter readings, but you no longer got an immediate cash refund for the amount that the pay-as-you-go meter had overcharged (these meters were set to overcharge and so there was always a refund).
Three
OUT ON THE STREETS
It’s Whit Saturday morning, 16 May 1964, and in the high street there are hundreds of excited kids standing outside the Odeon cinema waiting for the doors to open for their weekly session of children’s films and live entertainment. Some are looking at the still pictures from the new war film, 633 Squadron, which are displayed on the wall outside the cinema, while others are practising their yo-yoing skills ahead of the yo-yo contest that will take place during the interval. As more and more kids arrive, the queue becomes increasingly disordered and spreads out across the pavement, making it difficult for people to get by without stepping into the road or weaving their way through the noisy crowd of youngsters. One of the older boys lets out a loud wolf-whistle in admiration of two miniskirt-clad teenage girls walking along the pavement on the other side of the road. Their miniskirts are actually micro skirts that are so short they could easily be mistaken for belts. The girls smile and blush with embarrassment as they look across the road and realise that their admirer is just a pasty-faced 12-year-old boy. A spontaneous collective cheer of delight goes up from a group of queuing boys as they see the two girls react with obvious discomfort at the unwanted attention they are getting. As if in haste to escape a thousand ogling eyes, the girls quickly enter through the doors of the adjacent C&A store and disappear from view. A few minutes later, a large convoy of motor-scooters drive past, briefly replacing the more usual high street traffic noise with the combined sound of their throaty engines. Everyone looks on in amazement as row upon row of customised Italian Lambrettas and Vespas pass through the high street carrying scores of parka-wearing mods on their journey to the South Coast for the big ‘secretive’, but well-publicised, bank holiday punch-up with their arch-enemies, the rockers. They casually weave their way through the slow-moving traffic, forcing some car drivers to brake sharply or stop altogether to avoid collisions. The scooter-riding mods soon disappear from view leaving scores of Cortinas, Zephyrs, Minis, Rovers and 1100s stranded in their wake. Young children kneel on car seats and poke their heads out of windows to get a better view. There are no child locks on the car doors; nor are there any special child seats. Kids just jump around in the back of cars, moving from window to window, without any restraints. The cars aren’t even fitted with seat belts (how did we manage to survive?). There is only a short gap in the traffic before another group of mods begin to swarm through the high street on their chrome accessory-laden scooters. Each scooter is fitted with as many chrome fog lamps and mirrors as possible, with chrome crash bars and luggage racks, and reflective chrome bumpers and side panels. The scooter-riding mods are all wearing similar casual clothes underneath their parka jackets: blue Levi jeans, brushed-suede Hush Puppies or desert boots, Fred Perry polo shirts and dark sunglasses. Some distinguish themselves by having their names printed on the small windscreen at the front of their scooters. They’re not wearing any crash helmets of course, because that would not suit the cool mod image they seek to portray (it didn’t become compulsory to wear crash helmets in the UK until 1973). The queuing youngsters are completely mesmerised by the unusual sight of so many mods on scooters and many fail to even notice when the cinema doors are thrown open for their much-loved Saturday Morning Pictures to begin.
Later that morning, the cinema’s exit door slams open to release hundreds of kids back onto the street, some riding on imaginary horses and shooting at passers-by with their outstretched fingers in typical Lone Ranger style. Most of the kids are squinting their eyes to shield them from the sudden shock of daylight. A few of them congregate outside the cinema while they consider what to do next, but most head off in different directions towards their home turfs. One young girl stops outside the Home and Colonial store to peer through the window and watch a man behind the counter slice some bacon on the big slicing machine. She is fascinated by the mechanics of it, as each rotation of the handle produces one evenly sliced piece of bacon, which then falls into a neat pile on some greaseproof paper. Having satisfied her curiosity with bacon slicing, she walks on a bit further, slowing down to absorb the mixed aroma of fine foods that hang around the shop’s main entrance, before stopping again at the next window to observe a lady shop assistant wielding a large cheese wire to slice through an enormous wedge of Cheddar cheese. The young girl presses her nose up against the shop window to get a better view. Her eyes flit from counter to counter as she marvels at all of the appetising foodstuffs they sell and she ponders: ‘Could this be the job for me when I leave school?’
A bit further down the high street, some girls have stopped to look at the latest list of top twenty records that has been posted in the window of the Harlequin Records shop. They all scream with delight to see that their current favourite record, Juliet by The Four Pennies, has reached number one in the pop charts. Meanwhile, the mischievous boys in their group have nipped into the entrance lobby of John Collier’s menswear shop next door to perform an impromptu rendition of the John Collier television jingle: ‘John Collier, John Collier – The window to watch!’ But their jovial mood soon turns sour when the girls tell them that Chuck Berry’s latest record, No Particular Place To Go, hasn’t yet made it onto the top ten list.
The whole gang have pocket money that is burning holes in their pockets, but none can stretch to the price of a pop record; a seven-inch vinyl single with an A and a B side costs 6s 8d (33.5p in today’s money), a seven-inch vinyl EP (extended play) with two or three tunes on each side costs 11s 6d (57.5p) and a twelve-inch vinyl LP (long player) with about six tunes on each side costs £1 12s 3d (£1.61p). By now, they are all feeling a bit peckish and want something to eat, but they can’t agree on what. They decide to split up and meet again later in the park for a game of British Bulldog. The boys head off down the road, past the old ‘fleapit’ cinema (every town seemed to have a fleapit cinema), towards the market where they are at first tempted by appetising smells coming from the apple fritter stall, but they resist that temptation and continue on past several more market stalls to the next corner where they separate; two walk across the road to Manze’s pie and mash shop, while the others join the queue for ice cream sodas at the hatch window of the Italian ice cream parlour. Meanwhile, back on the high street, the girls have already been into Woolworths and cleared much of the stock from the pick ‘n’ mix counter, and they are now on their way down to the Wavy Line grocer’s shop to empty their fridge of fourpenny frozen Jubblies.
The Changing Street Scene
At the time, the main streets were still considered to be safe places for kids to roam about unattended. There was plenty of bullying, but you never heard stories of children being mugged for their plimsolls or pocket money, nor did you hear anything about kids being abducted. From a young age kids were told not to talk to strangers and they were taugh
t how to stand up for themselves and how to look after their mates. They seemed to have a built-in instinct for spotting weirdoes and knew that they should keep well away from anyone acting strangely.
It wasn’t unusual, especially in big towns and cities, for kids as young as 7 or 8 to go out in the morning with their friends and be missing for hours at a time, sometimes all day. This happened more in the early sixties, when in many areas it was quite normal for people to leave a key hanging down behind the letterbox for children of the house to come and go as they pleased. Everybody knew one another and they were also familiar with all of the regular doorstep tradesmen, like the postman, milkman and breadman, and, of course, ‘the man from the Pru’. Everyone seemed to have the Prudential Insurance man call each week to collect small life insurance premiums. The tallyman was often an unwelcome visitor, persistent in persuading people to buy stuff on the never-never that they didn’t really need, but equally unrelenting when collecting the unaffordable weekly payments.
Most people felt comfortable with the comings and goings in their local streets and believed themselves to be reasonably safe in their own environment. However, as the years went by, growing numbers of motor vehicles were causing more and more traffic congestion on the main roads, resulting in the greater use of side roads as shortcuts, or rat-runs as they were commonly called. By the mid-sixties, previously quiet, traffic-free residential streets were becoming congested with large numbers of vehicles passing through, and cars and vans competed for roadside parking spaces outside houses. The popularity of motor-scooters and motorbikes with the mods and rockers only added to the noise and traffic danger, with side roads being turned into unofficial race tracks for their enjoyment. This created a lot more air pollution and noise, and where once small boys floated their toy boats in rain-filled gullies next to the kerb, there now sat oil-leaking hefty lumps of painted metal. Having your own motorcar was just great, but the ever-increasing use of motor vehicles had damaged the established way of life in local neighbourhoods. People stayed indoors more, and kids were finding that they could no longer play safely in their local streets. Instead, they had to play in each other’s back gardens or go to the park to play their games and to find adventure. The days of using jumpers for goalposts in the middle of the street were slowly disappearing and, sadly, the long-established neighbourly community spirit was beginning to wane. Gradually, people were becoming less trusting, more cautious and security conscious. By the end of the sixties we all had our windows and doors securely shut, locked and bolted, day and night. But, thankfully, the days of an Orwellian, ‘Big Brother’, totalitarian society of surveillance was still a long way off, with no CCTV cameras anywhere to be seen.