I was born in 1927 so not many years to go until I reach 100 !
My childhood was very different from yours: hardly any cars on the roads or aeroplanes in the sky, no holidays abroad, no TV, no fridges, no phones. Milk and bread were delivered every day by roundsmen wearing crisp white coats with an apron over the top. They didn‛t have a delivery van but a horse and cart and the horse knew exactly when to stop and start. If the horse did a poo, someone would rush out with a bucket and shovel it up to put round their roses.
For the first 12 years of my life most Christmases we went to a small Suffolk village to stay with my grandparents. We travelled with one of my uncles who had three shops so was quite well off and had a petrol delivery van. On Christmas Eve he would fill the back of his van with cushions and pillows and in we would get with his wife and three daughters. There were no motorways and no street lights and the van went very slowly so the journey took more than four hours. Today it takes about an hour and a half.
To me, my grandparents‛ house seemed huge; it wasn‛t, but space was found for 30+ family members. The women slept in one of the two upstairs bedrooms, my grandparents in the other. The men slept downstairs in the small parlour. All the children, boys and girls, were sent over the road to sleep in my cousin Lily‛s room, either on the bed or cushions on the floor.
The toilets were in an outhouse at the far end of the garden – just buckets under a plank of wood with different-sized holes in it; yes, a multi-seater so you often had company. The toilet paper was hard and shiny, not soft like today.
Continued tomorrow…