My Life My Laindon
What we did and didn't have
By Gloria Sewell
After reading the many stories of peoples lives in Laindon and reading something on the internet today made me put this little piece together, I hope you enjoy it.
First I must tell you I have three fantastic children, four wonderful grandchildren ,and two super duper little great grandaughters, but how I achieved this is a miracle. I think, I know what you are thinking, daft women! but please read on and you will see where I am coming from. This applies to all you kids born in the 30s to 50s
First your mums smoked all they wanted and drunk plenty of gin on Saturday nights and for some the odd kick down the stairs was the norm. Nobody knew or even cared if she was anaemic or breech, on time, or multiple or whatever, she just got on with it.
Once you were born what bottle sterilisers, no, a teat on an old medicine bottle washed up with the rest of the pots. Baby food, no, mashed up whatever the rest had mutton stew, chicken giblet soup and of course porridge for brekky.
Holidays were always fun, off to Leysdown to stay in an asbestos holiday chalets or hop picking, camping with all the kids from goodness knows where to take care of you all day. But most of us made it from baby to childhood then the fun began of course we ate things like fatty bacon rind (dad always got the best bit) processed spam, real butter, white bread and soft boiled eggs.
Our walls doors and often our cots prams and mostly our toys were painted with good old lead based paint. Often we all drunk from the same bottle and chewed on the same piece of bread and a good drink from the hose was always welcome on a hot day.
The shops opened daily from 9.00 till 5.00 and never on a Sunday, but larders were never empty (no fridges at least not till 50s).
We ate gob stoppers, home made toffee apples, sugar coated pear drops and mouth curling lemon sherbets. Did we put on loads of weight, no, because we were always out playing and running around. You biked or walked to your pals and yelled for them to come out to play.
Oh dear no safety helmets or seat belts, you stayed out all day and as long as you got home before the street lamps came on nobody worried.
We built go carts out of old prams which we realised had no brakes when we went downhill. We built tree houses played in river beds and dens, no Playstations, Wiis, video games, mobile phones, X.Boxes, Sky T.V., P.Cs, Nintendos or chat rooms. But we had friends, who we went out and found.
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and sometimes teeth no expensive lawsuits then. We made mud pies ate worms and didn’t get worms as they say!
The shops only sold Easter eggs and hot cross buns at Easter. Mum did not HAVE to go to work to make ends meet.
Sports had tryouts getting in the team was by your merits, if you did not make it too bad you dealt with it.
The idea of mum and dad bailing you out if you broke the law unheard of, no way, they would be on the laws side.
We had freedom, responsibility, success and failure, we learnt HOW TO DEAL WITH IT!!!!!
So if you were born during this time congratulations you had the luck to grow up a kid before the lawyers and government regulated our lives for our own good ?????.
I have written this little piece for fun not to be taken too seriously a lot of good things have been done in the latter part of the century for children but I also hope any young Laindoners reading it will get an insight into your mum and dad’s life in Laindon mid 1900s.