Living At Home- Part 2

Living on a farm we had acres and acres of places to explore, run completely wild and play. I think we were exceptionally lucky in that respect, unlike children bought up living in a town. No excuses when it came to finding something to do in the school holidays. My mother would never allow us to spend our time indoors. No such thing as mobile phones, tablets, computers, Gameboys or any sort of computer game console. No daytime television during the 1960's. Television didn't start until children's programmes started at around 4-5 o'clock. No 24-hour television as we have today. As I've said in earlier posts, we only had 3 channels until Channel Four came along in 1982. If it was sunny and warm during the summer we'd be outside all day and not go indoors until it was teatime. Long bike rides through the country lanes around Cardington, generally messing about in and around the village, particularly the brook that ran through the farm. I doubt children would have such a connection to the world about them today as we had then. Getting dirty, building dens, tree houses and having adventures. Probably in a world which seems to be dominated by our old friend 'Health and Safety' it's more than likely that they don't have anywhere the same sort of lives as we did.

Malting Farm house was large (and is. It's still there, although no Murdochs live there any more). Well, it would have to be because there were seven in our family. It had lots of corridors and it wasn't centrally heated. I think I've mentioned this in an earlier blog post on here. There was an Aga cooker in the kitchen, which could be very difficult to light and had to be kept going using special fuel, sort of nuts of coal. In the dining room and some of the downstairs rooms there were fireplaces which were lit occasionally. It could be extremely cold in winter. But, saying that, we didn't know anything different and we survived. With so many rooms, idea for playing hide and seek. There were two attic rooms which we used as play rooms. It meant you could make a mess up there and it didn't matter. We had a model railway layout. I'm not sure, but I think we inherited it from a relative. I'm not sure whether it was from my mother or father's family, but it was quite an extensive Triang railway with no end of track that ran around an amazing raised sort of construction which included tunnels, stations, houses and other bits and pieces. With four brothers, we did get toys passed on as they were grown out of. Me being in the middle of five, anything I got passed down had already come from my two eldest brothers, James and Robert.

I had Mecanno when I was a child. I doubt very much if young boys have this toy nowadays, or even girls. I doubt they would even know what it was. It had metal pieces, usually coloured red, blue or silver, nuts and bolts and various mechanical gears, pulley and similar pieces which you could use to build all manner of machines, cars, bicycles or a combination of mechanical devices. I inherited most of this from my older brothers and got more 'sets' as the years went by. It grew and grew. You could get clockwork and electric motors to drive the machines you created and a lot of these creations could be built using instructions you got in magazines and leaflets. I'm not sure that you can still get this 'toy,' even if you can call it a toy. Birthdays and Christmases bought more and more bits to build more elaborate creations. Endless fun and interest and no doubt it encouraged boys (and possibly girls) to become interested in engineering and probably careers in this field. I think perhaps today children are more interested in computers and similar electronic devices and the fact that they can communicate with other people via the internet makes things that are more physical, such as Mecanno, somewhat obsolete, which is a real pity.

It seems that children in particular, but also a great many adults, spend a lot of their time on smart phones and tablets (as well as other gadgets) and don't appear to communicate much face-to-face. Living in a cyber world, chatting on-line via chat-rooms, text or email, seems to have replaced speaking to another person in the 'real-world.' You only have to walk down the average street or visit a supermarket or shopping centre to see how many people only appear to interact through their devices. Also, I'm sure that manners have gone out the window. People seem to have lost the ability to be even remotely patient. Not everyone, but mostly young people. They don't like having to wait, especially in queues, for example, at the supermarket. A lot more short-tempered people on the roads. A lot of people cutting me up on roundabouts, impatient to wait if you stop at a roundabout, coming up behind me in their car and expecting me to drive faster. Pushing you to move out of the way for them or at least drive faster. People expect to have everything NOW, not time to wait for anything.

Living At Home- Part 1

I have many more memories of living on the farm at Cardington. Being a farm, life seemed to revolve around the kitchen. I've probably mentioned this in an earlier post, but it was some time ago if I did but never mind. 

We had all our meals around a large table in the kitchen. We rarely, if ever, had meals in the dining room. Probably at Christmas, but certainly not for every-day meals. The kitchen table was large, probably made of deal and had a Formica surface. My mother used it when she was making cakes as it was high enough to stand at comfortably to work.

We always sat around that table to have meals. I don't think we ever sat and watched television with plates of food on our laps. We had to eat whatever was put in front of us, no finicky eaters. I don't suppose my mother would have put up with that sort of carry-on, with having five children to feed. We weren't allowed to be fussy eaters. You had to sit and eat what was put on your plate and finish it off. You had to sit quietly and wait until everyone else had finished until you got down from the table. I think it's only manners. Thank goodness we had such manners instilled into us as children. I grew up during the 1960's, well before the introduction of gadgets such as smart phones and tablet computers. You certainly wouldn't  bring toys or any sort of gadget to the dinner table. I think we had more respect for adults when I was a child. We stood up whenever an adult came into the room and you gave up your seat, for example, if you were on a bus. You held the door open for a lady (I expect you'd be called sexist if you did this today.) You didn't talk unless asked to and you didn't butt in if two adults where having a conversation. I'm sure in general people had more respect for other people and you waited patiently if you were in a queue.

Then we  had just 3 television channels. We now have countless television channels on multi-channel-channel platforms such as Sky, Virgin and Freeview. BBC 1, BBC2, ITV and much later Channel 4. We didn't have colour television in our home until well into the 1970's. My father didn't want a set until the system was well established. People who had colour television tended to show off that they had a set by having their television positioned so that if the curtains at the window were drawn people who walked past the house could see in and see the television when it was on. Not in our house, as the television wasn't positioned in such a way. We had a black-and-white set and you couldn't record anything as you could when V.H.S. and Betamax recorders came in in the 1980's. We didn't have ITV in our house until around 1964-5 as far as I can remember, probably because we had to have a new television arial put up.  Anglia was the ITV company serving the East Of England where we lived. We didn't have BBC2 because you needed a set which had the higher definition signal which gave 625 lines for the picture. BBC1 and ITV were on the old system which had 405 lines. Colour didn't come in until the early 1970's, but BBC2 introduced colour in the late 1960's and I remember going on a trip to Robinson Rentals, which later got taken over and became Granada Television Rentals in Bedford when I was at school and they showed colour television pictures of Wimbledon tennis which I think was a sort of experimental broadcast.