# Sixty years of change



## Divus (Dec 3, 2012)

*60 YEARS OF CHANGE*​
Being a pre war baby  I spent my early boyhood days in the 1940s  living with my Grandma in a nineteenth century terraced house in Ramsgate.    I remember that electricity was not supplied to the house.   The cooking stove was gas fired as was the lighting to the rooms on the ground floor only.      There was no bathroom or running hot water but a large tin bath hung on a hook outside on the scullery wall.   This bath was once a week filled with warm water which had been boiled on the coal fired stove in the back room.   A bar of soap was the only shampoo or deodorant.      There was  one sink in the scullery which was used for everything including washing oneself.   Around 8.00 pm each evening, wearing my pyjamas, I climbed upstairs to bed carrying a candle in a holder.   

I wore my school uniform for at least a term; my socks and cardigans for a week; my shirt, vest and underpants for three days at least.  My school tie and cap I wore for the length of time I stayed at the school.      I was still wearing short trousers, held up by braces, over long socks with garters, at the age of 12.    I did not possess leisure wear. What I wore for school I also wore on Saturday or on holidays although on Sunday I was allowed to wear for church or Sunday school  a full set of clean clothes and my best outfit - whatever that might be.  

My family was not especially poor because Grandpa had a good safe job as a stoker in St Peters’ town gas works.  He was paid weekly wages by cash in a pay packet.     There was no paid work for Grandma, unless she wanted to take in rich folk’s washing.     There was just enough income to feed us and to satisfy our basic everyday needs.     The family’s lifetime savings, perhaps a few pounds, were kept in a cup on the dresser in the front room.

However Grandma insisted every night that when I went  to bed I said, without fail, my prayers.  As a family we went to church on Sundays and more often at Easter or on any of the other festive occasions.   We said grace together before each major meal which was always eaten at the dinner table.   We stood quietly to attention  whenever the National Anthem was played which could be several times a day but especially at the end of any public performance.     Swearing was absolutely forbidden and even minor words like “bloody” were banned.   If one travelled far from home it could only be by public transport  but it was too expensive to travel far.    As a polite young boy, I touched the peak of my cap if I passed by a lady whom I knew.      Sex was a taboo subject, never actually spoken about.      There was one battery powered radio, mostly tuned to the Home service.

Now a mere 60 years later, my life style is so so different.   The changes are just too many to list.    But it is not the inventions or the change in the meaning of words,  which makes for me the difference.      Nowadays it is not the family, the church or the school master who leads most of us to  have values or make judgements.      The major influence on thought is the constant barrage, almost hourly, from the “media”.      The amazing thing is that a certain Mr Eric Arthur Blair who died in 1950 had predicted it all and he had even written a book on the subject of brain washing.        I do wonder sometimes what Grandma might have thought about  the way in which we live our lives today and how we form our judgements.    She might well have approved of some of the changes over 60 years but I am positive some would have made her feel very uncomfortable even distressed.

Sadly, she is not around to ask.


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## Ethan (Dec 5, 2012)

This reads like 'My' life story, so many similarities it made me smile with each recollection. There is much to be said about nostalgic pieces like this, I love the personal observational point of view, however, if I were to critique it would be to suggest a little more detail of your thoughts and reactions to your Grandma's rules and your feelings about what was happening. Emotions are easily stirred when the writer touches the empathy nerve.

I enjoyed this trip down memory lane, but would have enjoyed it more with a bit more'inside' information.


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## Gershon (Dec 5, 2012)

Divus,

I am 59. The story fits my life as I remember how it used to be and how it could be now.  The hardest part is done. You have the thread of a great story. Editing comes next.

I would suggest doing a spell check. There are 5 or 6 spelling mistakes. 

You wrote about 25% of your sentences in the passive voice.  Convention says a story is more interesting in the active voice.

For example:

 Swearing was absolutely forbidden and even minor words like “bloody” were banned.
Our parents forbid use to swear. They even banned words like "bloody!"

Now I picture your father standing over you with a switch ready to whip your backside.

Active voice creates room in the readers mind to imagine details.  Passive voice tends to discourage the reader's imagination.

Here is another example: "The major influence on thought is the constant barrage, almost hourly, from the “media”"

"The media constantly bombards us with their message. We can hardly think for ourselves."

I hope this helps. You have a lot of potential.

Gershon


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## Divus (Dec 5, 2012)

Ethan and Gershon.    Thank you both for commenting on this article.      I seek your criticism to help me direct my writing at a receptive audience. 

My fundamental aim when posting articles of this type on this particular forum is to asses the likely interest in the genre.     Once I can 'feel' the nature of the audience then it will be time to play with the article.

My overall idea is that this piece can be bundled together with other articles which have a theme of social history.   

Gershon, my editor is presently ill - so I lack the discipline of his all seeing eye.   Personally I can't find the spelling mistakes.     

I shall have to reconsider 'active' versus 'passive' but my initial, repeat initial, reaction is that if I am to write about the old days in Britain - then maybe I should write in an old fashioned British style of writing.          

Usually my problem is that at the age of 74 my mindset is at odds with not just one but several of the  generations which are following on.

PS Welcome to WF.com


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## Gershon (Dec 5, 2012)

Divus,

I think pajamas was spelled incorrectly. Maybe you spell it differently there.  There were some other little ones. If you are still editing it is not a big deal.

If people spoke in the passive voice then you should use passive voice.

Thanks for the welcome, 

Gershon


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## Divus (Dec 6, 2012)

Microsoft likes that we Brits to spell the American way.   The Brit version is 'py' rather than 'pa'.

I've never seen the British to be a 'passive' race but in the era of this article the class system was still very much in force.   It only fell away with loss of Empire, the advent of TV and the rise of Socialism.    As the media became dominated by more and more American influence so the  class divides weakened.      Class is not really an issue over here these days except perhaps at the very top of society - you'll notice that our leaders are mostly 'public' school boys.   Remember 'public UK equates' to 'Ivy league'.

As a young woman before she married my Grandma worked as a kitchen maid in a richer household.   Grandpa initially worked in a dock yard and later in life he shovelled coal in a town gas works.   Notice 'Ma' & 'Pa' rather than 'mother' and 'father'.

They were of 'common' stock and at 'the bottom of the heap'.     I suppose thinking back they 'knew their place' and Grandpa wore his flat cap as the badge of a working class man.

The young these days do not understand how life in Britain  once  was.  Maybe the break down of the old social regime and its practices started when Churchill had to resign as Premier - remember he was deposed just before WW2 ended.

There has been a massive change 'over here' in attitudes and values during my lifetime.   Grandma would not recognise the place.

The subject of the 'class society' is a fascinating one.


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## Don V Standeford (Dec 6, 2012)

Very interesting. Nice walk down memory lane. I like the details.

Don V Standeford


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## Burlesk (Dec 6, 2012)

This is an interesting piece of life-writing. I have a few comments; I hope you don't mind.

First, in my opinion, there is no problem with passive/active voice usage in your piece. The style of writing perfectly suits the mood of the piece.

Regarding the technical aspects of the writing, my only criticism is that the syntax sometimes seems a bit odd. Take the first sentence, for instance:

_"__Being a pre war baby I spent my spent my early boyhood days living in the 1940s with my Grandma..."_

(I'll ignore the "spent my" repetition, since it's just a typo.) The oddity in the sentence is the phrase "living in the 1940s". Putting it in the same clause as "with my Grandma" makes it sound as if the time period is a circumstantial detail rather than part of the foundation of your life. It sounds as if you could add, "... but I occasionally spent weekends living in the 1960s with my Auntie". You could repair this problem simply by moving the word "living", like so:

_"__... spent my early boyhood days in the 1940s__ living w__ith my Grandma..."_

Regarding the story itself, I see two issues. One is a sin of omission. You don't mention your parents, or the reason you lived with your grandparents. Were you orphaned? If so, that's a key part of your story.

The second issue, I feel, is one of balance. Your closing paragraph, which is the "change" part of the piece, refers only to the source of values (the media). You should probably say a bit about what the changed values are. Also, as the main part of the piece is about the factual circumstances of your childhood, you should probably say something about the lives of subsequent generations of children, and how they've changed.

Anyway, that's my critique, for what it's worth. I hope it helps.


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## Divus (Dec 6, 2012)

Burlesk, thank you.  I have made some adjustments as a result.

There is another article already written which tell how I came to be living in a town lying just 25 miles across the Channel from Hitler's occupied France.     For your info, Mother was living as a single girl in London whilst Father was learning to fly in North America for the RAF.

Yes the theme can continue but in this short piece I am checking to see if there is any interest by Forum readers in the subject matter and it appears that there may be.

My admitted personal weakness is re-reading my own compositions.    My usual 'editor' is presently ill and I miss his sharpened pencil.


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## Divus (Dec 6, 2012)

To those readers kind enough to form a critique,

My usual technique is to put a book together by writing a series of related articles.    Those of you who have read this one might be interested to read 
'Grandma's cooking' posted in non-fiction 7-20-2011  & 'Tempus Fugit' posted 11-18-2012.    

My idea is, at a later stage,  to pull them all together as one book, the contents of which will span much of my life and which will compare life now in the twenty first century with day to day living in the mid twentieth century.

There seems to be a lot of interest in historical novels about how the toffs used to live (ie Downton Abbey) but life amongst the working classes was in reality a lot different from how it is portrayed by the media of today.


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## Burlesk (Dec 7, 2012)

Divus said:


> My usual technique is to put a book together by writing a series of related articles.



Ah, I see, that clarifies the reason for the gaps in the information.

I used to know a professor of archaeology who produced books by that method. I've never heard of anyone doing it with memoirs or fiction.


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## Divus (Dec 7, 2012)

Burlesk -I write as my mood takes me.   I can usually manage about  a 1000 words a day.     

At this moment I've been prodded to write about my attitude as a child towards my Grandmother  who had a very strong influence upon me during the war and immediately after it had finished in the 1940s.    Those were tough times for the British who suddenly had to come to terms with the fact that we had not 'won the war' as our masters were at pains to tells us regularly and persistently.   But we had been on the winning side of the Americans from the West and the Russians from the East.

I had not thought that my system of  writing linked articles was not the method adopted by writers - perhaps because I was never formally taught to write prose. 

Thank you for the comment - Interesting!     I write as my mood and memory determines.   Often I'll switch between subjects, maybe one day horses, another day dogs.      Generally I'll follow a theme  as my inspiration wanders. 

Your comment may account for why I rarely attempt pure fiction.


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## Burlesk (Dec 8, 2012)

Glad to have been of some help, Divus. Good luck with your writing. The important thing is to keep plugging away at it.


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