by Feeney, Paul
It was not uncommon for boys to be ceremonially caned in front of the class and sometimes in front of the whole school. This was usually done for bringing the school into disrepute, fighting in the street while in school uniform or barging in front of an old lady at a local bus stop. Apart from corporal punishment, other forms of chastisement included after-school detention, writing lines ‘I must not …’ and running around the perimeter of the playground or playing field. Whatever the punishment, there was an unwritten rule that discouraged boys from telling their parents when they had been punished at school. It was also unwise to tell them because you were likely to get another whack from them for having misbehaved at school in the first place, and you were obviously guilty! The absolute worst humiliation was for a parent to come to the school and complain. There was nothing worse than to have your mum turn up at the school to fight your battles for you.
The antics of fictional cane-wielding headmaster Prof. James Edwards MA, as portrayed by Jimmy Edwards in the early sixties television comedy series Whack-O! were not entirely imaginary, and Professor Edwards’ favourite saying, ‘Bend over, Wendover!’, was true to life for many a 1960s schoolboy.
Holidays
Throughout the school year, children would dream of their six-week summer holiday break and of what they would do and where they would go. By the mid-sixties, an increasing number of working-class families were abandoning the traditional British bucket-and-spade seaside holidays in favour of the newly arrived, and now affordable, package foreign holidays. For the first time, ordinary kids were being taken to exciting European cities and holiday resorts that they had previously only seen pictured in glossy magazines. People brought back all sorts of souvenirs to remind them of the places they had visited and the different cultures they had experienced. There was now a pair of wooden castanets hanging from the hook on the back of the bedroom door where you once proudly hung a kiss-me-quick hat that you got while holidaying in Bognor Regis. Your personalised Spanish Matador poster is stuck firmly to the bedroom wall and is now your second favourite poster of all time, only just losing out to the picture of a stunning red E-Type Jaguar that is in pride of place above your bed. In the living room, the sideboard is littered with all sorts of tacky souvenir ornaments, including ones of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower. Goodbye to Margate – Benidorm here we come. Oh, to have experienced such new holiday delights!
Meanwhile, back home in Britain, the likes of Butlins, Pontins and Warners continued to excite holidaymakers with all the usual join-in-and-be-jolly holiday camp stuff. And caravan and camping sites all over the country were still bursting at the seams with summer visitors, as were the traditional seaside boarding houses. In the 1960s, many working adults still only got two weeks paid holiday a year, with part-timers and piece-workers getting no holiday pay at all. They often had to take their holiday at a time determined by their employer, usually during the factory’s summer closedown period in August. And they needed to have the cash available to go on holiday because nobody in Britain had a credit card until 1966, when Barclaycard launched the first one, and many people didn’t even have a bank account. It was several years later before the use of credit cards became commonplace in this country (the second credit card, Access, was only launched in 1972). In spite of the increasing popularity of foreign package holidays, the traditional British bucket-and-spade seaside holiday was still alive and well throughout the sixties, with the penny arcades, Punch and Judy shows, paddling pools and funfair rides still providing plenty of amusement for the kids. And all of the typical British seafront specials were still proving to be popular with British holidaymakers, from candyfloss and peppermint rock to jellied eels and whelks, and not forgetting the saucy picture postcards. You just couldn’t get that sort of thing on a fancy foreign holiday in Majorca.
Typical family camping holiday at Billing Aquadrome Holiday Park in Northampton, c. 1964.
Children’s donkey rides at Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, c. 1965.
Whether you holidayed at home or abroad, in the sixties many people were still ignorant of the dangers from too much unprotected exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, and many annual visitors to the seaside would stay on the beach all day without using any suncream at all, their skin slowly burning under the sun’s rays to a glowing red lobster-like colour, and in the evening there was the ritual of slapping on loads of calamine lotion to calm the sore sunburned skin. Lots of boys believed that suncream was just for girls and wimps, and many girls used it sparingly because they thought it hindered their bid for a quick suntan. After all, it was important not to arrive back home from holiday looking all pale and white skinned, as though you hadn’t been to the seaside at all. In the evening, if you weren’t confined to bed with sunstroke, you would put on something white to show off your newly acquired crimson tan; your burning skin radiating heat into the cool night air, even though you actually felt quite shivery. The real problems began in bed that night, by which time the full effects of the day’s sun had taken its toll and you couldn’t bear the weight or even the touch of a single pink calamine powder-stained sheet on the tight skin of your burning shoulders and back. You lay motionless on your front, hoping that the exhaustion you felt from the day’s adventures would force you into a deep sleep and make you oblivious to the horrible stinging pain and feverishness that you now felt. The next morning, you looked in the mirror to see patches of peeling skin hanging from your shoulders, and further examination revealed evidence that lots more loose skin was beginning to lift from other parts of your body. All proof that the hard-earned instant suntan was just peeling away before your very eyes, but, undeterred, you prayed for another sunny day to come.
Nine
CHRISTMAS
Christmas is always the most special time of year for children, and it was no different in the 1960s. Christmas was much less commercialised than it is today and the overall preparation started much later. At school, there was always the usual exciting build-up to the big day with the making of Christmas decorations and decorating the classroom. Then there was the school nativity play and the carol concerts, which made the celebrations all-inclusive, even for non-Christians. At home, a sure sign of Christmas approaching was when your mum started to knit a ‘lovely’ Christmas jumper for some lucky recipient. Knitting was still very popular then with women and girls of all ages. You had experienced only a small number of Christmases so far in your short young life and it was still all so exciting for you. Each year, there was something new to interest and excite you, and as you got older you were allowed to help more with the preparations: writing Christmas cards, making a crib to go on the sideboard, blowing up balloons and putting up decorations in the living room. It was such a huge annual event that completely brightened up an otherwise cold and horrible winter. The Christmas tree was always the crowning glory, usually put up and decorated on Christmas Eve with the customary angel or fairy doll perched at the very top. Whatever you called it, angel or fairy, the same pretty winged doll would be used. There were baubles, bells, ribbons and fairy lights; chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil and balls of cotton wool for snow. Then there were the sprigs of holly and mistletoe to hang from the ceiling; it was all so wonderfully exciting.
An ABC theatre programme for the Blackpool Holiday Startime Season 1966, featuring Cilla Black and the Bachelors.
Christmas Shopping
The big department stores were magical places to visit at Christmastime, with huge window displays depicting all sorts of wonderful Christmas scenes. Inside, all of the stores would have enormous Christmas trees and brightly coloured decorations throughout. There was always a strong smell of perfume and leather permeating the ground floor areas. Each store had vast ranges of toys and presents on display, and they would all try to outdo each other in trying to build the most welcoming and realistic Santa’s Grotto. It was in the days when children were still encouraged to sit on Santa’s knee and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. The
experience terrified and confused kids; it contradicted everything they had ever been taught about being cautious of strangers. You would be taken into this small, scary, cave-like place where there was this strange man dressed from head to toe in a bizarre disguise that included a false beard and wellington boots. You were then either placed on his knee or made to stand next to him while he cuddled you and promised to bring you lots of new toys in the middle of the night. And parents were actually embarrassed when their young child kicked and screamed their way out of the place!
Britain was still a nation of shopkeepers and the streets were full of busy independent food, clothing and other specialist shops. There were no shopping malls, supermarkets or self-service shops until the late sixties and, even then, those that did exist were very small and rather dull places to shop; they were unsophisticated and not at all like the stylish shopping centres we have today. This was a time long before the days when future successive governments would encourage big-name retailers to dominate retailing, and local councils would stand by and allow the gradual demise of local high street shopping, turning once thriving town centres into pedestrianised ghost towns. It was in the days when the main roads were straddled with row upon row of small shops and your mum would drag you into each and every one of them when she took you shopping, and around every market stall as well. The downside was that when it was raining there was usually nowhere to shelter, so you just got wet.
At Christmas, high street shopping was so very different to today. You didn’t see people walking around with silly red Santa Claus hats on and brightly coloured Bermuda shorts, like you do now. No grownup would ever have worn shorts out in the streets in wintertime, and men wouldn’t even wear them in summertime unless they were in a holiday resort; definitely not in a large town or city. The new wave of 1960s clothing fashions were very popular with people of all ages and generally people took pride in their appearance when they were out and about. It was common practice to dress smartly to go high street shopping, especially if you were going to one of the main shopping areas in the city centre; that would be treated as a day out. Shopping for Christmas was a much more enjoyable experience than the boring routine of weekly food shopping, and so kids were much keener to go. The atmosphere was a lot more exciting and there were so many Christmassy things to see. The air in the street markets was filled with the smell of fresh pine Christmas trees and the market stalls were strung with hundreds of coloured festoon lights. There was always a man on the corner roasting chestnuts over red-hot coals in a brazier – another great smell of Christmas! Then there were the ‘Del-Boy’ illegal street traders selling cheap gonks and wind-up toys out of a suitcase. And, of course, the Salvation Army band would play festive music and sing carols on street corners. There were so many marvellous new space-age toys and games to see in the shops, and Woolworths always had the latest electric train set laid out on the counter with trains running around the track in both directions. But none of these toys, games and novelties seemed to impress your mum at all, nor did they distract her from the boring shopping list that she followed so rigidly. It seemed that there was nothing at all on the list for you. Food was always the main priority, and the only presents being bought were unexciting things like socks, scarves, hankies and cigars for family and friends.
There were no use-by dates printed on food packaging in those days. In fact, there was much less packaging altogether and most food didn’t come pre-packed in sealed plastic as it does today. Shops didn’t open seven days a week from early ’til late, as they do now. Many still had half-day closing once a week, and were also shut on Saturday afternoons and all day on Sundays. Even the John Lewis flagship store in London’s Oxford Street used to be shut on Saturday afternoons. Lots of shops would close at five o’clock in the evening. And many would shut for lunch! With these restricted shopping hours, mums needed to do a lot of strategic planning when buying food, drink and other perishables.
A traditional Christmas dinner was always considered to be roast turkey, but many people would have goose, chicken or capon for their Christmas roast dinner instead. But, whatever the choice, the bird had to be big enough to feed everyone that was coming for Christmas dinner, and provide leftovers for Boxing Day. It would be pre-ordered from the local butcher and picked up on Christmas Eve, along with all the other Christmas meats like ham and sausages. Most people bought their meat from a traditional local butchers’ shop, fish from the local fishmonger, fruit and vegetables from the high street greengrocers and dairy products from the local dairy, or one of the shops supplied by the dairy. Milk, of course, was delivered – everyone had doorstep deliveries of milk each morning and the milk was in glass bottles. People would buy fresh bread from one of the many thousand bake-on-the-premises bakers’ shops, which were often family businesses handed down from generation to generation and commonly referred to as ‘family bakers’. Such bakers could easily be identified from the other end of the street because it was traditional for them to have a large protruding green and gold ‘Hovis’ sign mounted on the wall above the shop, which acted like a homing beacon for anyone searching for them, not to mention the wonderfully enticing smell of freshly baked bread and cakes that could be smelt from some distance away.
Without the aid of sell-by dates on food packaging there was no way of telling how long something had been in the shop, let alone how long it had been in the food processing chain. But mums acquired the skill of detecting just how fresh things were by its appearance, texture and smell. By now, fridges were commonplace in average homes, but not domestic freezers, which didn’t start to become widely owned until the 1970s. This meant that perishable foods could be kept in the fridge for a period of time, but without the benefit of a freezer the food stock had to be efficiently managed, especially over the Christmas period when all the shops would be closed until after Boxing Day. It wasn’t unusual to see enormous queues gathering outside bakers’ shops on the day before and the day after a holiday, especially Christmas. It was considered very important not to run out of bread; this was probably a tradition carried over from the 1940s or ’50s, when a large doorstep slice of bread was often used to fend off hunger pangs between meals. In the 1960s a large cream bun was the more likely remedy. There were always back-up stocks of tinned foods to be bought, like Campbell’s soup, corned beef, Fray Bentos meat pies and canned fruits in syrup. Oh, and the essential Carnation milk to pour over all those puddings and sweets. Not forgetting a few cans of Kitekat for the cat, some Spiller’s Winalot for the dog and a large box of Trill to keep the budgie bouncing with health over Christmas.
Woolworths was always the best place to buy affordable Christmas decorations and crackers, and market stalls would also have a good selection. The fairy lights were always a bit dodgy though, you had to be really careful in handling them when they were plugged into the mains, otherwise you could end up being the brightest light of them all. While mums were always in charge of Christmas shopping, your dad would be roped in to get the Christmas tree. In so many ways the 1960s was such a creative decade, but the artificial Christmas trees, which were so obviously fake, and the Christmas decorations, were all still quite primitive when compared to what is available today. It was always best to have a real Christmas tree, but they weren’t as lush looking as most are nowadays. Back then they were mostly sad and sparse-looking silver firs that needed to be heavily dressed with tinsel, baubles and fairy lights to hide the tree’s thinly covered branches, which would all too quickly shed their needles to form a lumpy green carpet on the floor below.
Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas if you didn’t have a tipple of something special to offer guests, and even teetotal households would be sure to have at least a bottle of sherry and a bottle of port in the house during the Yuletide period. A tiny sip of these two sweet-tasting drinks are often remembered as being a child’s first ever taste of anything alcoholic. The red and white wines that we now consume barrel loads of over Christmas were very expensive back then
, and wine wasn’t a popular choice of drink for ordinary people. In the 1960s, you might have found a bottle of the then fashionable medium-sweet Mateus Rosé wine on the Christmas dinner table, but you were much more likely to have found a jug of water and several bottles of Double Diamond beer.
Christmas, 1965
The weather has been cold and wet throughout December, and although there has been much less rain in the last few days, it has got even colder. It’s half-past seven on Christmas Eve morning and although you are fully awake, your whole body is still curled up underneath several layers of blankets and sheets, as warm as toast. You are in no hurry to investigate the new day, but you eventually poke your head out from beneath the bedcovers to test the temperature in the bedroom. Your worst suspicions are confirmed as your first warm breath hits the bedroom air and instantly forms a fog-like cloud; it is freezing out there! Having accustomed your face and nose to the chilly bedroom air, you decide to brave it and get up. The snazzy new bri-nylon carpet feels really cold under your bare feet and you can only find one slipper to put on. You must have kicked the other one under the bed when you got undressed last night. You switch on the transistor radio next to your bed and willingly expose your ears to the sound of The Who’s latest record, My Generation, which you have turned to full volume, and is now bellowing out from Radio Caroline. While still trying to keep your one bare foot off the cold floor, you hop around the bed on your other slippered foot to take a peek out of the window and see what sort of day it is outside. It must have been very cold overnight because ice has formed on the inside of the window and sadly, unlike last year, there is no picture-postcard Christmas snow scene to greet you as you pull back the curtains. After retrieving the lost slipper from under your bed, you hastily plug in the single-bar electric fire in the hope that it will quickly take some of the chill out of the air. Within a few minutes the ice on the window is starting to thaw and droplets of water are running down the pane, creating small pools on the sill below. The puddles of water soon grow bigger and begin to creep towards the edge. Realising that the water is about to overlap the sill and flow onto the edge of your bed, you rush downstairs to get a couple of used towels from the laundry basket to mop it up. You just about manage to get back to your room and throw the towels onto the windowsill in time to stop the water from cascading over your bed. This is a well-rehearsed ritual that you are well accustomed to performing on cold winter mornings, but you never manage to have anything close at hand to soak up the water. By now, the room has warmed up a bit and you realise that the fog-like breath you had been discharging into the bedroom air has disappeared.