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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: andrewalston on Thursday 30 April 20 10:15 BST (UK)
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I've just been expanding a corner of my tree, and as I filled in the occupation of a 12 year old lad, I realised that his occupation, recently pretty much extinct, has made a huge comeback, although with a different job title.
Grocer's Errand Boy.
The task these days would be described as Supermarket Home Delivery Driver. Same task, slightly higher age requirement.
Any other occupations which have made a comeback?
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Oh I am waiting for all this to be over so I can send my nearly four year old GGrandson up the chimney.
Well any excuse to see him !
It has been ages and he is changing so fast and I won’t be able to see him or give a Happy Birthday kiss next month when he is four.
But there are many many people dealing with more serious situations and my heart goes out to them .
He Goes on FaceTime with my daughter,his Nanny( Grandma) But gets upset.
Now old occupations coming back,?
No cotton mills now to send six year olds to work in, no sooty chimneys,well some from log burners, people cleaning the outside of their windows as window cleaner not calling.
Not heard of any knife grinders , rag and bone men, street sweepers, crossing boys, girls selling ( amongst other things) sweet violets and lavender.
Milkmaids redundant, butchers’ boys may be in business again,no deliveries from bakers that I know of but milkmen still delivering from our local farms ,eggs greens etc.
Dustbin men still soldiering on , Post staff still delivering, and all that makes me very grateful that many people are working hard to keep things going.
But as for old jobs making a comeback?
I just hope those able to patronise their small local shops remember when all this is over and stay loyal,they deserve recognition .
Cheerio,Viktoria.
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There are quite a lot of local firms delivering - butchers; bakers and some pubs and farms have become fruit and veg outlets. Hopefully it is keeping them going until some sort of return.
A co-worker from some years ago, who I had known in his youth, had been a butcher’s boy for his father. He recalled several customers who left the door on the latch and the money on the table or in a tin on the mantelpiece because they were out. He would leave the meat parcel on the table together with any change due. :)
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Yes, like leaving the pre paid milk tokens in the empty washed bottles on the front step overnight,so trusting ,but generally speaking you could in those days.Up to 1965 and further possibly .We went abroad at that point.
When ,generally speaking, no one had very much , to take from those in the same situation as yourself was despicable and seldom happened.
Captain Tom is 100 today, RAF fly past ,including a Spitfire.
As he said, he may be the last person alive to have seen a Spitfire leave” in anger “.
What a different set of circumstances today.
Viktoria.
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Captain Tom and all the other people who are doing various things for charity and then the donors show that there is still much goodness about.
**sorry Andrew, don’t want to hijack your thread re occupations.
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When I was a little lass, ready for going off to school, and waiting, waiting, for the 'big day' I got into huge trouble from my mum, my gran, my aunties, and the visitors having sandwiches and cups of tea on 'MY' verandah ... They were all talking, sitting around posh, ignoring me, on my play area. I had had to tidy up my dolls, my blocks and my things had been put away.
And I had no one to play with, no one to show off to, and NO toys to keep me amused.
Auntie Gloria started talking about Wet Nurses ... Gran kept the conversation on that topic. They forgot I was there. I got huffy.
So I decided to go outside. I remember it very well.
Me standing on back step, and in my best voice I loudly said "When I grow up I will never ever be a Wet Nurse " and Auntie Gloria burst into tears. So Mum told me to 'grow up or else'
Sorry for diverting off topic... but "Or else" has been a life long experience
::)
JM
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Our local shops and councillors are doing a marvellous job with their deliveries, I really look forward to them coming.
I was saying the other day I remember taking my grandmother`s order book to her local co-op when I was a child ( many moons ago, too many) then it was delivered by the errand boy on his bike. I think his name was Stanley !
There was, also from the co-op, a baker`s horsedrawn cart that came round which sticks in my mind because it was the only time we had "bought" cakes. I loved the sponges squares that had pink icing in the top.
They`re still around, millers and in this flour free zone I wish we still had some in the family, although they wouldn`t be able to get it to us !!
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Off topic a bit but on an American site ( SR)All Purpose flourV strong bread flour.Good result from the SR.
Pie shops - great big meat and potato pies with crust baked in huge enamel washing up bowls.
Great bowls of peas and jugs of gravy.
Sheets of ribs and enormous pans of cabbage .
Savoury Ducks and gravy.
Take your own basin!
My Mum never went near them but they were so handy for many families.
The precursors of today’s “Take Away “ shops.
Majm, older women talking in front of children—— ooooh the horrors .
I mean how do you survive when you have had “ everything taken away”!
:o :o :o :o
Viktoria.
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Also "take your own newpaper " on Saturdays at grandma`s going for fish and chips. The chippie was in someone`s front room. Next door but one to that also in someone`s front room, not a corner shop exactly but a semi detached shop !!
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Now then, we could do with a mobile fish and chip shop!
Not just now but always ,by the time you get home often they are cold.
Oooh , I could just eat some now, crispy batter covering white well cooked tasty fish,with crispy chips just a little soft and all swimming in salt and vinegar,with lots of little crispy batter “ scratchings”.
Ah well, again some day .
Keep well everyone.
Going to watch the new version of Great Expectations, wonder if Magwitch will be as scary ?
Viktoria.
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Don’t think you’d get away with advertising a job for one. You'd need to advertise for an “Errand Youff”.
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Now then, we could do with a mobile fish and chip shop!
Not just now but always ,by the time you get home often they are cold.
Victoria
We have a very popular mobile pizza van which visits our village once a week and cooks in a rather quaint van. He has got round the social distancing business by taking orders in advance by phone and payments by BACS. The pizzas are freshly cooked outside your door and you dash out and collect them from a point in between the van and your door. Very tasty and, since other delivery pizza firms don't venture as far as the village, they provide a welcome night off occasion for home cooks. No mobile chip shop, though, unfortunately.
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The last time we had a piza from a mobile van it was excellent. We were spending a few days at Sandringham, as you do, nothing posh, just on the campsite down the road from the junction where people tend to have accidents!
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Hi Billyf,
Your mention of the horse and cart bakers comments reminded me of when I was young (A few years ago now ) coming from a large family plus one or two other families we used to go to our local co-op bakery at teatime and wait for the bakers delivery vans to get back and if there was any cakes or bread/cobs left the lady in the bakery used to share them out to us for a nominal fee.As in them times they could not sell them the next day and were thrown away not like today.
It did us no harm as we are all still here today.
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I imagine that due to the lockdown Knocker Up is coming back into fashion, just not in the original sense.
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When you think of them handling the horse harness ,blocks etc ,nose bag
the breadmen were not at all hygienic by today’s standards were they,but did you ever know anyone killed by that seeming lack of hygiene?
I find it strange that housework has changed so much, hygiene looms large yet some awful things go on.
When washing was done more or less by hand, it was sorted , things like the tea towels and tablecloths were done first,they were never mixed with underclothes and towels etc. The whites were boiled and were very clean.
Now all in together and often at only 30 degrees.
Still I haven’t heard of anyone dying from 30 degree washing.!
But to handle an unwrapped loaf after attending to a horse, mmm-.
Mind you my mother was paranoid ,but then we had a food shop.
Mother’s Pride was the bread I remember delivered by horse and cart.
We could be too clean nowadays.
People don’t develop any immunity.
I was ever so pernickety with my small children,then when my daughter was ill, the Doctor said” Ah, finally she has met a germ!”
Cheerio, my order from Tesco has come ,I am sure they have doubled up on everything I will have to look online, unless——- they know something I don’t know!!
Cheerio.Viktoria.
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It was the co op that came round, I think it was a red cart. Funnily enough, I don`t remember it coming down our road, we lived opposite the police station where my father worked, but what I can remember is the mortuary attendant coming to the police station in his bubble car, it was turqouise.
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It would do us all some good to go back to basics after lockdown is lifted.
The ice-cream man on his three wheeled bike selling ice cream wafers and cornets ringing a hand held bell to signal his arrival in the days before "Mr. Whippy" with his Greensleeves theme tune. The rag and bone man with his balloons and windmills for the kids in exchange for empty jam jars. Then the fruit seller pushing his handcart laden with fresh fruit, tossing the Gammy fruit to the kids that he couldn't sell. Hot cake man selling them warm from the back of his van.
Life then seemed a lot easier then in many ways. A skipping rope, bat and ball or a pocket full marbles gave hours of entertainment until we were called in for tea!!!
Oh well, those days are long gone, the problems were a lot different then but non the less troublesome.
I will now take off my rose tinted glasses ;D
Oh for the day that we regain the freedom that we took for granted before it was taken away from us.
Carol
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We all remember days gone by with nostalgia, even though by comparison they were not always all that good.
The thing is we did not compare, we knew nothing else so what we had was the norm ,and we were secure in that.
Things seemed the same for a long time, all our childhood really .
I heard my parents who were older than the average age ,Mum 41 and Dad 40 when I was born in 1937, so their memories went back to Victorian days, talk about their childhood .
Much had changed but quite a lot was not very different.
There was security, even with the war and evacuation, change generally was slower .
Then all of a sudden things were so different, the swinging sixties ,etc .
Not sure if it was all for the better so I am glad I had the childhood I did.
Simple pleasures, the family being short of money and budgeting carefully was the norm , hence great appreciation of whatever you got ,however modest .
Yes, we could do with going back somewhat to those days.
Who knows, after this is over maybe values will have changed for the better.
Viktoria,