Our grandparents

[longdogs]

Following on from a comment I made on the plumbing forum (My granddad used to use matchsticks to hold wires in a socket if he didn't have a plug) I was wondering what other examples there were out there.

He lived to almost ninety despite: using tin foil as a fuse; using rolled up newspaper, lit from an electric fire to light his fags, then he would stuff the paper into one of those tall ash trays - flames leaping out of it.

 

[conny]

Putting a coal shovel across the hearth and then placing a sheet of newspaper across it to create a draw when lighting the fire.

 

[JBR]

My mother always used to use a sheet of newspaper" to draw our coal fire. As a young kid, it used to amaze me that it never caught fire.

(* The rest of it was used for toilet paper.)

 

[pred]

Newspaper for toilet paper! We never had such luxuries!

 

[pred]

We used grass to wipe our as.s

 

[DeletedUser]

We used grass to wipe our as.s

Dock leaves were much better

 

[bernardgreen]

My aunt would take a shovel full of red hot coals from the fire in the lounge and carry them upstairs to start the fire in the bedroom.

 

[dreadnoughtheating]

Always a green lidded pot on the hearth, with half pound of (salted!) best dairy butter in it, ready to spread on the toast (doorsteps) off the prongs of a 'toasting fork'

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be...

DH

 

[Norcon]

Pah... coal, fire, shovels, newspapers?

My Grandfather was in the B specials back in 1920. When the ira tried to kill him he escaped through a hole at the back of his home which led him into the byre with the cows. His assailants thought the front was the only access.
He got away alive but not before giving as good as he got. He was a real warrior.
They made two more attempts but could never nail him. He died of old age at 92.

 

[longdogs]

Always a green lidded pot on the hearth, with half pound of (salted!) best dairy butter in it, ready to spread on the toast (doorsteps) off the prongs of a 'toasting fork'

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be...

DH

Yum, I remember that, thick proper bread and best butter

 

[gigz]

Housebrick warmed up in the oven then wrapped in a towel and placed in the bed as a hot water bottle.

 

[conny]

Jumping over back yard walls and taking the lemonade bottles they had back to the shop and getting the 3d deposit on them.

 

[longdogs]

My Nan's sister used to live upstairs in her house. At the top of the stairs, on the landing, next to the toilet, she had a gas cooker - no extraction

 

[honda]

Going to a little shed down the lane to buy square shaped briquettes for the fire and bringing them home on a trolley. Think they were made from coal dust and cement.

 

[bernardgreen]

Jumping over back yard walls and taking the lemonade bottles they had back to the shop and getting the 3d deposit on them.

Friiends who lived in Southend on Sea ( how I envied them ) used to roam the beach collecting empty bottles and paying two pence for each one then getting the full tree pence ( thruppence ) deposit from the shop.

It seems most people were happy to get 2 pence if it saved them walking back to the shop with the empties.

truthfully I didn't really envy them as in summer the place was over crowded and in winter it was deserted, dead and dire.