My Victorian 1960s childhood

People say that life is short, but I think they’re wrong. Maybe it’s short compared with the age of the universe (13.8 billion years old apparently), but if you’re lucky I think it’s really quite long. I know this is true because when I look back on my 1960s English childhood it seems like something from a distant and forgotten age. It was a lot like the Victorian era, but with fewer servants and shorter skirts.

Admittedly there were cars in the 1960s, but my family didn’t own one and I hardly knew anyone who did. In fact, the rag-and-bone man still used to come round with his horse and cart collecting old bits of scrap, long before anyone had heard of recycling or the circular economy. Not only did we have a milkman, but bread and soft drinks were also delivered to our door. Tramps still roamed the lanes and knocked at people’s doors asking for a cup of tea and a cigarette. And this wasn’t the remote countryside, it was the edge of a sizeable town.

Children were allowed to roam freely as long as they were back in time for tea. (When I say allowed, in fact I mean that we were almost literally pushed out of the door – adults didn’t want children under foot in those days. They probably don’t now, but don’t dare say it.)  Girls, however, were cautioned not to stray too far from home. We were warned about “bad men” and my Nanna frightened me with cautionary tales of girls who were snatched from right outside their houses. I couldn’t see the point in staying close to home if villains were lurking just outside the door anyway, but adults often didn’t make much sense to us and I don’t think we paid much attention to their advice on the whole. We lived in entirely different worlds.

My father grew all sorts of vegetables, but sadly we didn’t have a pig, which I would have loved. We lived on a housing estate and I don’t think the neighbours would have taken kindly to a resident pig. My mother didn’t work outside the home, but worked incredibly hard inside it. She did the laundry every Monday, cooked all our meals from scratch, baked on a Friday, gardened, sewed many of our clothes (with varying degrees of success) and spent an awful lot of time cleaning. Her world certainly looked a lot less fun than mine. Even though I was denied a pig.

Change was in the air, however, and by the mid-twentieth century technology was starting to spread its tentacles, with most homes having a radio, a record player and sometimes even a phone.  Although we didn’t have a car, we did have a phone and a television, which says something about my parents’ priorities. Our TV screen was tiny with a fuzzy black and white picture, but we still thought it was miraculous. Queen Victoria would have approved of the presenters’ formal attire.

I look back on that distant time with wonder, but not with nostalgia. Tasteless food, cold houses, scratchy woollen clothes, disapproving adults – no thank you.