Growing up in another time

I grew up in the 1950s. 

 That decade which is often described as grey and tired, exhausted after six years of war where the scars of that conflict were everywhere to be seen. There was rationing, as well as ugly bomb sites and that air of make and mend.

Maybe, but that is not what I remember. The bomb sites were my playground, I accepted that darned socks were part of the natural order of things and my family laughed as much as anyone’s.

Of course by the time I was five the worst of the austerity years were over, and that growing consumer prosperity was beginning to spread downwards.

And so Christmases in the 1950s were special in the way that just perhaps they aren’t any more. There were more things around but not the glut that bombards us all today. My father still made some of our toys out of wood on the kitchen table during the winter months in the run up to December.

This is not to sink into some rosy glow view of the past. We still had coal fires, there was ice on the inside of the windows in the coldest periods, and the one television channel closed ridiculously early.

But there was a mounting sense that things were on the move which would really burst forth a decade later. New spindly designed furniture, bright new colours and the beginnings of rock and roll. The television had begun to replace the radio as a focus for the family and yet we still put lit candles on the Christmas tree with a bizarre contraption consisting of a small metal cup and clamp.

Then when my own children came along in the 1980s I found myself trying to recreate the Christmas of the ‘50s. We played Monopoly, made jigsaw puzzles and even designed rocket ships out of cardboard.

You cannot go back in time but at least you can sometimes save a little bit of what was good.

Picture; from one of the early Eagle Annuals, which were bought for me each year. Sadly mine were all lost but I now have a collection of all of them again