Did we have the best of times?

[Ninni]

17 hours ago, ChipButty said:

I think the best times where in the 60's the place was rocking

and we were young........

[Lacessit]

9 hours ago, Date Masamune said:

They can Buy themselves a home in Longreach


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Or Wilcannia, Euabalong. etc. This week's award for the most asinine post goes to...

[IssanMichael]

19 hours ago, Date Masamune said:

So you decide to make a bigoted post on social media? The immigrants who you claim Britain is "overun" by have their own lives you think it is not exciting or fun for them now? They are not afraid to voice their opinions neither should you. "Time and Tide waits for no man" there is no way to go back I think the best days for most people are yet to come.

You say that people should not be afraid to voice their opinions, then you call them bigoted!! can't have it both ways, and it's just been confirmed that native white people in London are now in the minority, and please don't accuse me of being a racist.

[ThaiFelix]

The 70's was the greatest time ever.  It was an exciting period that will never be seen again.  The future however looks very dark to me and I fear for my children and grandchildren.  Truth, justice, freedom, and democracy are just lies and catch phrases today with Governments becoming more and more fascist. The people are controlled and kept silent through debt.  Some states and their puppets seem to only be able to cope economically by continually waging war and spreading racist myths to support them.  Beware the military industrial complex!!

[bluesofa]

18 hours ago, bluebluewater said:

So why can't you do that now?  You might be older and it might not be like the days of yore but it can be done.  Older generations have been lamenting upcoming generations since the dawn of time.  Not to worry  . . . .  

True, nostalgia just isn't what it used to be.

[transam]

"Cripes, it's Qwelch"...

 

 

[Dek Somboon]

My parents often reminisce about how lucky the baby-boomers were. My brother-in-law who is the same age is a self-made man who worked hard indeed, yet didn’t need a portfolio of college degrees and other certificates to become highly successful and wealthy.

 

With business as usual, today’s youth will have absolutely no future whatsoever. By the time they reach our age, our once pristine Planet Earth will be nothing more than a smoking, stinking ball of shit - and so much for the ECONOMY and Holy Infinite (quantitative) Growth.

 

We urgently need to get rid of outdated post-WWII financial incentives for childbearing, when much of the world was on the ground and needed to be rebuilt. The dire consequences of our overconsumption and overpopulation will far outweigh a temporary decrease in GDP. Maybe a 25-year moratorium on childbearing could bring us back to the “golden ages” (minus climate change) - where the whole world isn’t competing for unpaid internships (read: slavery) for “experience on your CV”, increasingly shittier jobs with lower wages and endless commutes, overpriced and lousy accommodation, suffering from burnout or depression, etc. etc.?

 

In the meantime and before we go the way of the dinosaurs like 99% of all other life that has graced this beautiful planet, let us lighten our footprint by packing our shit and taking part in as many beach and underwater cleanups and eco-projects here as we can manage! ????

[GarryP]

17 hours ago, KC 71 said:

Climbing trees
Playing out until it got dark etc


Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect

Climbing trees. Falling out of trees. Taken to hospital for stitches. Recognized by the nurses and asked "Back again Garry? What have you done this time?" 

 

More than 40 stitches on my head, but never more than 5 or 6 at any one time.  Sort of explains a lot about me. 

[Date Masamune]

12 hours ago, Date Masamune said:

They can Buy themselves a home in Longreach


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Tongue in cheek but did the AUS government say they were gonna move new immigrants to the outback?

Housing costs in America ARE ridiculous for people anywhere there are lots of tech jobs.

USA really needs a national housing policy but that is a political non-starter. I know people on fixed income who have moved to old towns in "fly over country" the likes of eastern Montana  state only place they have cheap rents.

[Date Masamune]

1 hour ago, IssanMichael said:

You say that people should not be afraid to voice their opinions, then you call them bigoted!! can't have it both ways, and it's just been confirmed that native white people in London are now in the minority, and please don't accuse me of being a racist.

White people a minority London, Is that a bad thing? In actuality it is white british overrunning the  UK over 80 percent according to google .

Why should somebody be upset a hometown "doesn't look like it used to"  back in the 1970? 

[Thingamabob]

22 hours ago, Date Masamune said:

So you decide to make a bigoted post on social media? The immigrants who you claim Britain is "overun" by have their own lives you think it is not exciting or fun for them now? They are not afraid to voice their opinions neither should you. "Time and Tide waits for no man" there is no way to go back I think the best days for most people are yet to come.

Britain has become a humourless, frightened, mongreloid

dump. 

[allanos]

My take on the kids of today is that all seem to have a sense of entitlement; "I want it all, and I want it now".  The youngsters rioting and burning in London a few years ago, protesting their "unfortunate and deprived" life situations were all in possession of the latest smart phones, and had used social media to bring their large crowds together.

 

As a baby boomer, I grew up just after WW2, when there wasn't much to go around.  The British Labour Party introduced bread rationing after the war, which, ironically, was not in force during the war, and lots of other items were still being rationed.  There was not a lot to go around in those days, and so we had to wait for our wants to be satisfied.  I was 12 years old when I got my first bicycle, and around the same age when I got my first watch.

 

Despite all of that, my growing up years were good.  i was walking to primary school alone from the age of 5, along a narrow, wandering country lane.  I could play alone in the nearby wood without my mother being scared that I would be abducted, or raped by a passing paedophile, for example.  In spite of the relative affluence these days, children can't indulge in what I would call life's simple pleasures.

 

Times have certainly changed, possibly not for the better.

 

 

[ianezy0]

And you try telling the kids today. 

I used to get out of bed 3 hours before I went to sleep, work 16 hours down’t pit, come home and lick road clean wit tongue. Aye, they were the days they were.

????????

[allanos]

For those of us who have expressed some kind of concern over the effect that the enormous volume of Third World immigration has had on the England of our youth, changing it beyond all recognition, my take on it is that it has been something of a "leveller", but to the overall detriment to the country.

 

The out-of-touch political elite (in their remote ivory towers) would have us believe that there has been an overall net positive effect to the economy, and thus, the well-being of the nation.  This may, or may not, be true.  There are lies, more lies, and statistics!  

 

But the levelling effect that I refer to is that far from the majority of the Third World immigrants raising their lives and circumstances up to be equal to the average British citizen, the average citizen's life has been lowered to meet the low standards which the immigrants have brought with them from their impoverished countries.

 

This is not a bigoted nor racist viewpoint.  It is a realistic, factual viewpoint, I believe.

 

[Lacessit]

18 minutes ago, allanos said:

 

But the levelling effect that I refer to is that far from the majority of the Third World immigrants raising their lives and circumstances up to be equal to the average British citizen, the average citizen's life has been lowered to meet the low standards which the immigrants have brought with them from their impoverished countries.

 

 

 

This is an effect that has been seen with the Aboriginal population in Australia. The mixture of white and Aboriginal children in outback schools was supposed to lift the standard of Aboriginal education.

Some white parents ( not necessarily racist ) were pulling their children out of the schools, and sending them to board at schools in capital cities, as the opposite effect occurred. White children started to yabber and return lower performances under the influence of peer pressures.

[ivor bigun]

I remember when i was very young,my mum and dad walking around a new council estate and deciding which one we would have,we lived there for a good few years before the bought a house and we moved there,i had lots of mates and all the people were British except my dad,and a couple of neighbours,i suppose they had come over during the war and eventually married local girls.about 7 years ago i went there to look at my old house, there was hardly a white person on the estate,Indians,Africans,Eastern Europeans, and a nice mosque.
No wonder there is no housing for locals.
Glad i lived there when i did.

Sent from my SM-A720F using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[xylophone]

2 hours ago, allanos said:

My take on the kids of today is that all seem to have a sense of entitlement; "I want it all, and I want it now".  The youngsters rioting and burning in London a few years ago, protesting their "unfortunate and deprived" life situations were all in possession of the latest smart phones, and had used social media to bring their large crowds together.

 

As a baby boomer, I grew up just after WW2, when there wasn't much to go around.  The British Labour Party introduced bread rationing after the war, which, ironically, was not in force during the war, and lots of other items were still being rationed.  There was not a lot to go around in those days, and so we had to wait for our wants to be satisfied.  I was 12 years old when I got my first bicycle, and around the same age when I got my first watch.

 

Despite all of that, my growing up years were good.  i was walking to primary school alone from the age of 5, along a narrow, wandering country lane.  I could play alone in the nearby wood without my mother being scared that I would be abducted, or raped by a passing paedophile, for example.  In spite of the relative affluence these days, children can't indulge in what I would call life's simple pleasures.

 

Times have certainly changed, possibly not for the better.

 

 

A good post and somewhat mirrors my experiences as a boy and my growing up years.

 

I do remember going to the local shop with a little book to get stuff that was on ration and the little bags of this and that that were weighed out in front of me were taken home with much glee.

 

Despite the fact that there wasn't much food around, I don't recall it ever being a problem because we just made do and I had some great times picking blackberries over in the very large field on my council estate, so that my mum could make a blackberry and apple pie and although she was an extremely poor cook, this was great.

 

Times spent exploring in the woods, climbing trees, making camps and hunting for sticklebacks in streams and little pools, then catching newts and watching them grow in little containers, before setting them free.

 

Never a care in the world and it was not a problem walking many miles to school and back, no matter what the weather, because that was how it was.

 

In essence, we made our own fun and explored everything which was out there to be explored, and I don't know that this is how it is now this especially as in my hometown a lot of it has been developed and I doubt if I could find my way around these days.

 

The reality of our situation dawned on me when I had to wear clothes from a jumble sale to my grammar school and was ridiculed for it because they really didn't match. No matter I just upped and left at the age of 15.

 

After that it was all adventure and exploring and finding a job, and living in the 60s was a blast in just about every way possible.

 

Through all of this we made our own fun and never really worried about TV or anything else, because life just went on at a fantastic pace and in my opinion, growing up in that era where everything in the world seem to be changing – – music, the space race, landing on the moon, the Vietnam war (not that I viewed that with anything other than disdain) and the fact that no matter at what pace the world changed, there was always social interaction and discussion and the fact that if you wanted to work you had to look for jobs, and although never always easy, I always found something.

 

For me personally I explored the Sahara desert, Nigeria and also worked in the oil industry around the place and although initially it was a struggle to get a mortgage, it was the aim of most people in my group.

 

I could go on and on but I won't, but looking back now I don't think there was a better time for me to have experienced life on this planet and no doubt things will change even further before I pop my clogs, but what I do despair about now is the fact that IMO there is the feeling of entitlement by the youth of today, that the state will look after them and that they don't need to work or learn or indulge in social intercourse/social skills, because everything is done via a small handheld electronic device.

 

I'm just so lucky that I was able to experience so many life shaping and changing things in my time. IMO I had the best of times and wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

 

PS. Just adding a postscript to this because I believe some of the "problems" these days and in the not too distant past have been the result of overindulgent parents!

 

At the end of my career I was managing and running an investment division for a bank and I outlined our offer and so on to a group of influential customers at the presentation I was doing, and at the end of my presentation a tall and very well spoken and dressed man with a distinctly upper-class English accent stood up and thanked me for the presentation and then had a question for me, "I have my investments and plenty to live on, and I have some spare money, what do you think I should do with it?".

 

My answer, albeit initially tongue in cheek, was, "I believe in the SKIN principle – – spend kids inheritance now – – and do whatever your heart desires with that money and I say this because I have seen many people in their later years scrimp and save and barely get by on the money they have, because they want to leave an inheritance for their children. It is my belief that money that is earned rather than inherited is valued much more by offspring".

 

However I did add that he should sit down with one of our qualified investment advisers to look at the bigger picture and see what his other alternatives were!

 

[CharlieH]

You tend not to reflect too much, but reading some of these replies it opens all sorts of doors that were long since closed.

I could relate to a few of them and took a happy wander down some of the same memory lanes as others.

 

Thanks to those, I enjoyed the walk and visit to times long since gone, but happily not entirely forgotten.????

[allanos]

19 minutes ago, xylophone said:

A good post and somewhat mirrors my experiences as a boy and my growing up years.

 

I do remember going to the local shop with a little book to get stuff that was on ration and the little bags of this and that that were weighed out in front of me were taken home with much glee.

 

Despite the fact that there wasn't much food around, I don't recall it ever being a problem because we just made do and I had some great times picking blackberries over in the very large field on my council estate, so that my mum could make a blackberry and apple pie and although she was an extremely poor cook, this was great.

 

Times spent exploring in the woods, climbing trees, making camps and hunting for sticklebacks in streams and little pools, then catching newts and watching them grow in little containers, before setting them free.

 

Never a care in the world and it was not a problem walking many miles to school and back, no matter what the weather, because that was how it was.

 

In essence, we made our own fun and explored everything which was out there to be explored, and I don't know that this is how it is now this especially as in my hometown a lot of it has been developed and I doubt if I could find my way around these days.

 

The reality of our situation dawned on me when I had to wear clothes from a jumble sale to my grammar school and was ridiculed for it because they really didn't match. No matter I just upped and left at the age of 15.

 

After that it was all adventure and exploring and finding a job, and living in the 60s was a blast in just about every way possible.

 

Through all of this we made our own fun and never really worried about TV or anything else, because life just went on at a fantastic pace and in my opinion, growing up in that era where everything in the world seem to be changing – – music, the space race, landing on the moon, the Vietnam war (not that I viewed that with anything other than disdain) and the fact that no matter at what pace the world changed, there was always social interaction and discussion and the fact that if you wanted to work you had to look for jobs, and although never always easy, I always found something.

 

For me personally I explored the Sahara desert, Nigeria and also worked in the oil industry around the place and although initially it was a struggle to get a mortgage, it was the aim of most people in my group.

 

I could go on and on but I won't, but looking back now I don't think there was a better time for me to have experienced life on this planet and no doubt things will change even further before I pop my clogs, but what I do despair about now is the fact that IMO there is the feeling of entitlement by the youth of today, that the state will look after them and that they don't need to work or learn or indulge in social intercourse/social skills, because everything is done via a small handheld electronic device.

 

I'm just so lucky that I was able to experience so many life shaping and changing things in my time. IMO I had the best of times and wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

Great post, full of nostalgia and reminiscence, and will resonate with those of us of a similar age and who trod a similar path in the early years of their lives.  Largely uncomplaining, stoically facing the future whilst drinking in, and learning from, the moment. 

 

I think it was Perry Como who sang, "Memories are made of this"!

[Date Masamune]

32 minutes ago, xylophone said:

A good post and somewhat mirrors my experiences as a boy and my growing up years.

 

I do remember going to the local shop with a little book to get stuff that was on ration and the little bags of this and that that were weighed out in front of me were taken home with much glee.

 

Despite the fact that there wasn't much food around, I don't recall it ever being a problem because we just made do and I had some great times picking blackberries over in the very large field on my council estate, so that my mum could make a blackberry and apple pie and although she was an extremely poor cook, this was great.

 

Times spent exploring in the woods, climbing trees, making camps and hunting for sticklebacks in streams and little pools, then catching newts and watching them grow in little containers, before setting them free.

 

Never a care in the world and it was not a problem walking many miles to school and back, no matter what the weather, because that was how it was.

 

In essence, we made our own fun and explored everything which was out there to be explored, and I don't know that this is how it is now this especially as in my hometown a lot of it has been developed and I doubt if I could find my way around these days.

 

The reality of our situation dawned on me when I had to wear clothes from a jumble sale to my grammar school and was ridiculed for it because they really didn't match. No matter I just upped and left at the age of 15.

 

After that it was all adventure and exploring and finding a job, and living in the 60s was a blast in just about every way possible.

 

Through all of this we made our own fun and never really worried about TV or anything else, because life just went on at a fantastic pace and in my opinion, growing up in that era where everything in the world seem to be changing – – music, the space race, landing on the moon, the Vietnam war (not that I viewed that with anything other than disdain) and the fact that no matter at what pace the world changed, there was always social interaction and discussion and the fact that if you wanted to work you had to look for jobs, and although never always easy, I always found something.

 

For me personally I explored the Sahara desert, Nigeria and also worked in the oil industry around the place and although initially it was a struggle to get a mortgage, it was the aim of most people in my group.

 

I could go on and on but I won't, but looking back now I don't think there was a better time for me to have experienced life on this planet and no doubt things will change even further before I pop my clogs, but what I do despair about now is the fact that IMO there is the feeling of entitlement by the youth of today, that the state will look after them and that they don't need to work or learn or indulge in social intercourse/social skills, because everything is done via a small handheld electronic device.

 

I'm just so lucky that I was able to experience so many life shaping and changing things in my time. IMO I had the best of times and wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

 

PS. Just adding a postscript to this because I believe some of the "problems" these days and in the not too distant past have been the result of overindulgent parents!

 

At the end of my career I was managing and running an investment division for a bank and I outlined our offer and so on to a group of influential customers at the presentation I was doing, and at the end of my presentation a tall and very well spoken and dressed man with a distinctly upper-class English accent stood up and thanked me for the presentation and then had a question for me, "I have my investments and plenty to live on, and I have some spare money, what do you think I should do with it?".

 

My answer, albeit initially tongue in cheek, was, "I believe in the SKIN principle – – spend kids inheritance now – – and do whatever your heart desires with that money and I say this because I have seen many people in their later years scrimp and save and barely get by on the money they have, because they want to leave an inheritance for their children. It is my belief that money that is earned rather than inherited is valued much more by offspring".

 

However I did add that he should sit down with one of our qualified investment advisers to look at the bigger picture and see what his other alternatives were!

 

A great post and the fact that there are blacks and muslims in britain now who can walk the streets without being called <deleted> or ooga-booga man does not take anything away from your experience does it? Other poster here seem obsessed with it like it is some of kind of problem.

[Lacessit]

9 minutes ago, Date Masamune said:

A great post and the fact that there are blacks and muslims in britain now who can walk the streets without being called <deleted> or ooga-booga man does not take anything away from your experience does it? Other poster here seem obsessed with it like it is some of kind of problem.

In these days of political correctness, even the term black is apparently unacceptable. African-American is the correct usage.

Skin colour, eye shape or whatever other racial characteristic anyone wants to pick out is the result of favourable genetic adaptation to an environment. Personally, I'm more interested in the character of an individual.

[allanos]

41 minutes ago, CharlieH said:

You tend not to reflect too much, but reading some of these replies it opens all sorts of doors that were long since closed.

I could relate to a few of them and took a happy wander down some of the same memory lanes as others.

 

Thanks to those, I enjoyed the walk and visit to times long since gone, but happily not entirely forgotten.????

Like you, I actually try not to think to much about those long-ago days; I keep them tucked away in a corner of my mind which I don't visit too often.

 

But Ivor Bigun's opening thread has allowed for some nice stories to come out.  I chuckled at Xylophone's comment that his mom was a poor cook.  I must have been extremely lucky, then, coz my mom was a good cook, and we always had a Sunday roast, be it lamb, beef, or rarely, for some reason, chicken.  Always delicious and well worth waiting for.

 

Those were the days when, as a youngster, and accompanied by our dog, I would go out early with my father and pick mushrooms, and chestnuts.  With the other kids in the street, we would collect blackberries and sell them to an old lady living on the street corner, Mrs Bellamy maybe, because she used to make blackberry wine.

 

I only had one pair of shoes.  When a huge hole wore in the bottom, my mom would cut out a cardboard piece to cover the hole with.  It worked to a degree if the weather was dry, but in the rain, it was hopeless.  When this used to happen after a few days, I would be kept back from school for a day so that we could go and shop for a new pair of shoes.

 

The fact is, this is how one's life was, and we didn't know any different, so things were ok.

[sharktooth]

On 4/11/2019 at 4:11 PM, 55Jay said:

Unappreciative punks never had to walk to school, in the snow, uphill.  Both ways! 

 

My secondary school was six miles from my village. Once in a snowstorm on the way home the bus got stuck in a drift three miles from home. The bus driver kicked all 30 odd kids off the bus aged 12-16 in a blizzard in the dark. Luckily my dads mate was passing in his van with a trailer and four of us jumped onto a moving trailer. All the other kids had to walk three miles uphill in the dark in a blizzard.

Can you imagine that happening now?

[xylophone]

29 minutes ago, allanos said:

I chuckled at Xylophone's comment that his mom was a poor cook. 

Now you have got me started so I'll share a couple of funny stories about my mum's cooking..........

 

First of all, an easy one, and I never knew what gravy was in my younger years because my mother's recipe was to boil cabbage for a couple of hours and drain out the greenish coloured water into the pan which she had cooked a piece of grisly old fatty meat, so it mixed with the fat, and that was gravy as far as she was concerned.

 

Imagine my surprise when I first tasted school dinners and the gravy was thick and although it had lumps in it, it was a damn sight better than my mums and I revelled in school dinners!!!!

 

Everything had to be boiled or cooked for many hours at a time and I really didn't like her cooking at all apart from the blackberry and apple pie.

 

Sometime later on in the piece when she got a job as a cleaner at a local mental hospital, she would smuggle things home in various containers from this place and in a cupboard under our sink were various bottles and things of liquids.

 

Now suffice it to say that my mother had absolutely no sense of smell having worked in a munitions factory since the age of 12 (poor girl) and at one time my younger sister tried to earn a couple of bob by cleaning the toilet and bathroom, such as they were in those days, so she put some Dettol into a bowl and added the water and got to work, leaving the bowl with the milky coloured Dettol liquid in it laying around the place.

 

My mother had decided to try and cook a cake (and one that hopefully didn't collapse in the middle like all of her others) so she bought some Mary Baker cake mix and mixed the ingredients, and put it in the oven and lo and behold at the given time out came a very good looking sponge, which was iced according to the recipe, so I started ripping into it, only to spit it out in disgust telling her that it tasted of Dettol, of course she couldn't taste it but sure enough she had used the bowl of milky coloured Dettol in the sink as her container of what she thought was milk. Absolutely true and it was disgusting.

 

This one is a cracker because I'd come home from my apprenticeship and had to go football training so a fried egg was on the menu along with a slice of bread, so she plonked the egg on my plate and I started ripping into it, and suggested that there might be some soap powder or something on the knife and fork because it tasted soapy. Anyway to cut a long story short she had managed to fry me an egg in the equivalent of industrial washing up liquid which she had spirited home from the hospital she worked in – – yes you can fry an egg in washing-up liquid, because I am living proof that it can be done and that it's not poisonous.

 

Quite a few others like this, but I must tell you this one because not only is it extremely funny it was dangerous at the time. Good old mum decided to buy a small fray benthos steak and kidney pudding, this for me to have again before I went training and it was the flat circular tin type that you can see these days, however she hadn't seen one before wasn't used to this, so when I sat down, she opened the oven door and with a pair of oven gloves put this container on the sink and I looked at it and it didn't look right – – far from being flat it now had a big hump in the middle and just as she was about to plunge in the old-fashioned tin opener, I shouted for her to stop, but it was too late and the pointy end went into this heat expanded tin and all hell let loose, because the pressure was so much it blew a big hole in the thing and it went spinning round like a Catherine wheel, covering us in hot gravy and shredded meat and it was very lucky neither of us was seriously injured or even blinded.

 

Anyway this stuff was all over us and up the wall and on the ceiling, but I had to go football training so I said to my mum that I would clean it up at the weekend, and I tried to do this but I couldn't reach the stuff on the ceiling and I left it there and managed to paint the stuff with an old paintbrush on the end of the stick as it seemed to be the easiest thing to do.

 

Many others but will stop here for now,

[ratcatcher]

On 4/11/2019 at 4:32 PM, transam said:

The lady in the background....?.....????

It's not her that caught my eye, but the bearded guy and what he was doing to her.

[allanos]

6 minutes ago, ratcatcher said:

It's not her that caught my eye, but the bearded guy and what he was doing to her.

Good one! Looks like he's a sucker for tits. ????

[sharktooth]

4 hours ago, xylophone said:

Now you have got me started so I'll share a couple of funny stories about my mum's cooking..........

 

First of all, an easy one, and I never knew what gravy was in my younger years because my mother's recipe was to boil cabbage for a couple of hours and drain out the greenish coloured water into the pan which she had cooked a piece of grisly old fatty meat, so it mixed with the fat, and that was gravy as far as she was concerned.

 

Imagine my surprise when I first tasted school dinners and the gravy was thick and although it had lumps in it, it was a damn sight better than my mums and I revelled in school dinners!!!!

 

Everything had to be boiled or cooked for many hours at a time and I really didn't like her cooking at all apart from the blackberry and apple pie.

 

Sometime later on in the piece when she got a job as a cleaner at a local mental hospital, she would smuggle things home in various containers from this place and in a cupboard under our sink were various bottles and things of liquids.

 

Now suffice it to say that my mother had absolutely no sense of smell having worked in a munitions factory since the age of 12 (poor girl) and at one time my younger sister tried to earn a couple of bob by cleaning the toilet and bathroom, such as they were in those days, so she put some Dettol into a bowl and added the water and got to work, leaving the bowl with the milky coloured Dettol liquid in it laying around the place.

 

My mother had decided to try and cook a cake (and one that hopefully didn't collapse in the middle like all of her others) so she bought some Mary Baker cake mix and mixed the ingredients, and put it in the oven and lo and behold at the given time out came a very good looking sponge, which was iced according to the recipe, so I started ripping into it, only to spit it out in disgust telling her that it tasted of Dettol, of course she couldn't taste it but sure enough she had used the bowl of milky coloured Dettol in the sink as her container of what she thought was milk. Absolutely true and it was disgusting.

 

This one is a cracker because I'd come home from my apprenticeship and had to go football training so a fried egg was on the menu along with a slice of bread, so she plonked the egg on my plate and I started ripping into it, and suggested that there might be some soap powder or something on the knife and fork because it tasted soapy. Anyway to cut a long story short she had managed to fry me an egg in the equivalent of industrial washing up liquid which she had spirited home from the hospital she worked in – – yes you can fry an egg in washing-up liquid, because I am living proof that it can be done and that it's not poisonous.

 

Quite a few others like this, but I must tell you this one because not only is it extremely funny it was dangerous at the time. Good old mum decided to buy a small fray benthos steak and kidney pudding, this for me to have again before I went training and it was the flat circular tin type that you can see these days, however she hadn't seen one before wasn't used to this, so when I sat down, she opened the oven door and with a pair of oven gloves put this container on the sink and I looked at it and it didn't look right – – far from being flat it now had a big hump in the middle and just as she was about to plunge in the old-fashioned tin opener, I shouted for her to stop, but it was too late and the pointy end went into this heat expanded tin and all hell let loose, because the pressure was so much it blew a big hole in the thing and it went spinning round like a Catherine wheel, covering us in hot gravy and shredded meat and it was very lucky neither of us was seriously injured or even blinded.

 

Anyway this stuff was all over us and up the wall and on the ceiling, but I had to go football training so I said to my mum that I would clean it up at the weekend, and I tried to do this but I couldn't reach the stuff on the ceiling and I left it there and managed to paint the stuff with an old paintbrush on the end of the stick as it seemed to be the easiest thing to do.

 

Many others but will stop here for now,

 

Brilliant. Reminds me of my mum. She was a murder cook as well.

[Lacessit]

6 hours ago, sharktooth said:

 

Brilliant. Reminds me of my mum. She was a murder cook as well.

I once had a meal with a guy from Scotland at an upmarket French restaurant. He proceeded to cover a beautifully-cooked filet mignon with about half an inch of salt. When I asked him why he needed so much salt, he replied his mother was such a terrible cook everyone in the household used salt to kill the taste. I occasionally wonder what that did for their blood pressure.

[sharktooth]

4 hours ago, Lacessit said:

I once had a meal with a guy from Scotland at an upmarket French restaurant. He proceeded to cover a beautifully-cooked filet mignon with about half an inch of salt. When I asked him why he needed so much salt, he replied his mother was such a terrible cook everyone in the household used salt to kill the taste. I occasionally wonder what that did for their blood pressure.

Oo la la...

[murraynz]

On 4/11/2019 at 6:56 PM, Lacessit said:

I have to agree with the OP. In Australia, part-time employment, massive student debt and housing which will need a 40 -year mortgage seems to be what the young have to face up to.

When I started work, I applied for five jobs and had job offers from three companies. My part-time study for a tertiary qualification was paid by the company I worked for. In my twenties, I went to a remote part of Australia to work, bought a house in Melbourne, and had the mortgage paid off in eighteen months. My knowledge in my chosen field of work is obsolete now, however, it paid very well when I was working.

I consider I worked in a golden age. Owning your home outright and achieving financial independence is just a dream for many now. Perhaps social media is the modern escapism.

 

paid mortgage off in 18months..wow...  i also feel sorry for young people these days..there are so many pressures on them..you are correct ,also-- many will NOT  have a freehold house by retirement age...