Remembering the 50s

Posted By
Annoymous, United Kingdom

I was born in 1943 to a very young mother who got wed because my father was off to the war in Burma the previous year. When he came back in 1945, I was a 2 year old, who had no idea who he was, also living with my paternal grandparents as my maternal family who lived together were killed by a V2 bomb.

I grew up with a Dad, bittered by his war experiences, but who worked to keep my step mother and I in a better life that he had. I remember the 6pence Saturday Morning pictures, which my step mother would slip to me so I could go.

I remember my Christmas presents of an apple, orange, and 6 puppets, which I played with for years, using the back of the chair as a stage.

So many happy memories of this with my cousins as we created our own plays. A doll crib made by an Uncle, with a really nice doll inside, whose eyes closed when you lay her down.

Moving to our first new house and having to change schools when I was 15. Being only a few in my class who stayed at school until they were 17 as they were going to University.

Everyone else left at 15 to go to work. Wearing my brown Duffle coat to University: Marching in Peace rallys;

Watching the Queens Coronation in 1953 on a small black and white television, with all the neighbours; the street party that followed it;

My father picking me up in a new Pink Zephyr car which was his first car and one he was very proud of; (how we made it home I have no idea) and his AA steel yellow badge (which I still have to this day in 2008);

The long walk to school or when my parents had the money, the 1 penny to catch the bus..The Smog in London, when I was stuck for hours on a bus on Holloway Road, London, until my grandfather who had walked the whole length of it to find me; the Polio outbreak, when I spent 2 years in the German Hospital and then convalesent at the Carshalton Hospital..(not happy memories during those years)

My first poodle skirt, which I dropped a bottle of ink all over while trying to fill my ink pen, and cried for days; the Lime Greem skirt and shocking Pink Sweater which my step mother would cringe at, and would even cross the other side of the street, so she did not have to walk with me; my first boyfriend, a sort of Rocker, with the Tony Curtis haircut -Stanley Rudd, wonder if you are still out there?(my parents hated him-)There were good and bad, but I look back with fondness, despite having to be in at 17 years of age at 7.30pm during the week and 8.30pm on Saturdays.