Private Eye once called her a "pillock". They were quite correct.
- posted
6 years ago
Private Eye once called her a "pillock". They were quite correct.
Its a cultural thing though , is it not? we have a tradition of the washing machine being in the kitchen, and other countries tend to have utility rooms for this sort of thing. Indeed we used to build houses with a scullery for all sorts of things, including the water boiling copper and the tin bath. grin.
Brian
And the mangle. Don't forget the mangle. Apart from the gas cooker, it was the only kitchen appliance that we had when I was a child.
Show-off.
michael adams
...
Tim Streater was thinking very hard :
Wasn't the mangle something which was normally used in a backyard?
My parents first washing machine, a single tub English Electric, had a powered mangle on top.
In message , Harry Bloomfield writes
So did ours - powered by my mum. That was a Goblin (the machine, not mum).
Ours was usually powered by me. And was used in the kitchen. IIRC, it folded away under the kitchen table.
In message , Tim Streater writes
Yes, ours was a hellava palaver. The thing had to be pulled out to the middle of the kitchen floor, then filled via a length of pipe which was (partially) attached to a sink tap, with the other end in the upright drum. Pipe removed, powder and clothes added, agitator agitated. No heating of water. Clothes then transferred to sink for rinsing, then back to the Goblin, to use the mangle which folded flat when not in use.
Water reused, process repeated, then came the exciting part - emptying the drum. Pipe on the side of the machine, which was lowered to drain into a washing up bowl on the floor, by gravity. The kitchen was
*always* flooded, every Monday. The lid was placed behind the machine, below the mangle, to catch the washing as it was fed through. Washing then taken out to the line, pegged and propped, job done. Unless the line snapped, of course.
Indeed, Because your parents couldn't afford a fridge, could they Tim ?
And all this despite the Conservative Prime Minister of the time Harold MacMillan claiming in July 1957 that
"most of our people have never had it so good"
Despite the fact that by 1959, after 8 years of Conservative government
"But even in 1959, as we bounced back to prosperity, only 13 per cent of homes had a refrigerator"
Telegraph again. No socialist propaganda here,
So maybe what the Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan really meant to say back in 1957 was
"Most of out people have never had folding mangles before"
What do you think ?
michael adams
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Sorry I was referring to the mangle being powered by me. Clothes washing was done by hand.
IIRC we did rinsing in the machine, though perhaps having its own emptying pump made this option more attractive.
The mangle was stored in a cubby hole under the drum, and when mounted could pivot between positions 90 deg apart. There was a little see-saw metal tray which made sure that, so long as you selected the right roller direction, water drained back into the tub. Otherwise...
We did still have the manual mangle, and kept the gas boiler for occasional use - still had it when North Sea Gas came in.
The arrival of a spin drier was a big advance.
Chris
My parents moved into their first house, newly built, in 1947. It was a 2 bed semi. The dining kitchen had a coal fire with attached oven. In the alcove to one side, with doors over it, was the kitchen sink. On the drainer sat a two burner gas hob, levelled with an offcut of timber.
The work surface was an old marble-topped dresser, and the larder contained a wooden food safe with perforated metal sides.
In the garden sat what was allowed to have been built as a "wash house" where the gas boiler and mangle stood, but also became my dad's workshop.
Looks like the property has moved with the times:
From memory we got TV in 54, and moved house in 56.
Gas cooker probably 57, washing machine 58, fridge 59, spin dryer
61, car 62, phone 63.Chris
Likewise and , I remember Mother actually buying it. It was an Acme just like this one
See quite a few of the much older iron framed ones as garden ornaments though the wooden rollers are usually well past it. The more modern ones like the Acme with steel construction and rubber rollers will have disintegrated far more and even if they hadn't would look like junk rather than old and interesting.
We don't have a large kitchen and I felt that the space could be better utilised than having a washing machine in it. The easiest option was one of those Plastic Keter garden storage units,they call them a Store it Out now , located outside the bathroom window with water and electric fed inside it. Rain has never penetrated but just in case I used a weatherproof RCD socket making it a double should we ever want to put a drier alongside. That was over ten years ago and the Hotpoint washing machine is still reliable, had a bit of case corrosion at the very bottom which dealt with this spring with the usual wire brush and Kurust treatment. Washing goes straight onto the line about 6ft away , it's rare even in Winter that there isn't a day or two in the week that you can't dry things and I have never got around to purchasing a dryer. Only two of us at home though, a family may struggle.
G.Harman
Is that a brass band I hear, starting up in background ?
michael adams
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So do you agree with Harold Macmillan, the Conservative Prime Minister who in 1957 claimed that, "our people have never had it so good"
In your case your parents got the TV, but do you really think Harold Macmillan really had a clue what he was taking about ? When it turns out, that Conservative supporting Tim Straeter's mum was stil doing the washing in the sink ?
There's a lot of fuss today about this leader of K&C Council never having visited a tower block. Now as it happens, I've got a lot of time for old Mac. He really did get wounded in WW1 more than once, and really did sit reading the small copy of Aeschylus he carried everywhere, while stuck in a shell hole waiting to rescued, he hoped, that night. And he did have to keep a stiff upper lip while Boothby carried on with his wife for years. Which everybody knew about. She was higher born than him with no crofters in her background so that was it.
However it was only reading of Tims inpoverished background that the full import of his fellow Conservative's remark really struck home. Did he really think people with folding mangles who were still doing their washing in the sink "had never had it so good ?".
michael adams
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I still, but only just remember the tin bath in the garden.
That's more brass bands starting up.
michael adams
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Yes.
For most of us it was true. We had a house. It had a fire and we could sometimes afford to light it. We had decent radio with the BBC. far better than it is now.
The library was free and full of books.
We didnt die from polio diptheria cholera or TB any more.
Or buzz bombs or V1s.
School actually taught us something.
We didnt have to go outside for a shit.
WE mostly had three meals a day. They might not have been great, but we had them.
Sometimes we even got new clothes to wear.
We knew our neighbours. They even talked English.
Some people even had Cars.
It got even better with decent meals three times a day and Central Heating.
And then Labour got in and it was crap for the next 50 years aprt from a brief interlude around Thatchers time.
But according to a 2010 article in The Guardian, it is estimated by the Halifax that
40,000 homes in the UK still have an outside loo: and attitudes are changing.Except that 53 years after "Our people have never had it so good", and 11 years of Thatcher it seems there are still 40,000 people having to go outside for a shit.
That fact alone shows how much you really know about how some people still have to live in this country, which is supposedly the 5th richest the world.
michael adams
...
They still exist.
We don't now.
well no, it's all terror now.
Maybe, there's a madness song about that.
amazing.
Mine can talk English too, and they can speak other languages.
I bet some had bikes too.
What year was this ?
1945-1951: Clement Atlee (Labour)1951-1955: Winston Churchill (Conservative)
1955-1957: Anthony Eden (Conservative)1957-1963: Harold Macmillan (Conservative)
1963-1964: Alec Douglas-Home (Conservative)1964-1970: Harold Wilson (Labour)
1970-1974: Edward Heath (Conservative)1974-1976: Harold Wilson (Labour)
1976-1979: James Callaghan (Labour)1979-1990: Margaret Thatcher (Conservative)
1990-1997: John Major (Conservative)1997-2007: Tony Blair (Labour)
2007-2010: Gordon Brown (Labour)2010-2016: David Cameron (Conservative)
Remind me who and when the NHS started and which party was in power.
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