Tin baths
Coal Fires
Outside Toilets
Being sent down T'pit aged 14
Manually Tuning televisions
AM radio
Vinyl Records
Tiny choice of international cuisine
Poor Contraception
Large Families
Early, pioneering, heart surgery.

TB
Polio

one was a ships surveyor / draughtsman, wasn't allowed to go fight.

the other a radio operator in in the sahara getting shot at, shrapnel embedded in his back, and having a bullet stopped by his pocket diary in his chest pocket. he still has the bullet, and the diary with the hole in it. then finding out his brother had been held in a POW camp for the majority of the war, and about 7days prior to the war ending, his brother getting killed by shell shock from an allied bomb that landed nearby him whilst he as crouched behind a wall whilst out on a forced march.

its sobering stuff when you spend the time to listen and look into what it was like.

Hiding a dead sheep down the well in the basement (farmers eh…)

Grandad voluteering to fight in WW2 even though he didn't have to as he was a farmer type, then fighting in the desert and losing his leg at El Alamein.

Returning home with one leg still having to support a family of 7 kids doing hard farm work (no countryfile posh cotswold farm lives then).

Losing his eldest son to Leukeamia prior to his teens.

Oh and bankruptcy .

I always remember him as a quiet solid man.

Nowadays we'd all be on endless therapy and group hug sessions.They're generation were certainly made of sterner stuff. We (me included) are softies and spoilt in most aspects of our lives.

Seven years away from his wife serving in India.
Coming back lighter and shorter from the above India.
London smog

Tin baths
Coal Fires
Outside Toilets

That describes the house my wife lived in until she was 3 or 4. Progress came late to Weardale (like me, she was born in '77).

No NHS for a large part of their life.

Paternal Grandfather: Major Noteeth, Indian Army, Royal Artillery. Did his full stretch (and more): North-West Frontier, Burma, Palestine, Larkhill, etc. Twin Brother killed during the African campaign. Lived a quiet life in Somerset. Rarely spoke about the War, but evidently very haunted by his experiences. A lovely, gentle man – who died when I was four. Wish I had known him for longer. 🙁

Maternal Grandfather: Royal Marine. A very troubled man. Met him once.

. . . having me as his brightest grandson.
(Probably made him wonder if emigrating to Canada, having three of his children die before he did, losing everything in the Great Depression and then working as a manual labourer the rest of his life was really worth having a full-time Singletrack forum reader as a testament to his lineage.)

oliverd1981 – Member
Tin baths
Coal Fires
Outside Toilets
Being sent down T'pit aged 14
Manually Tuning televisions
AM radio
Vinyl Records
Tiny choice of international cuisine
Poor Contraception
Large Families
Early, pioneering, heart surgery.

Plus my Grandfather had to apply brylcreem at every available opportunity, HAD to shave every day at least once, and seemed to wear the same grey suit for most of his life.

I feel lucky to be able to wander down to get the papers wearing shorts, holey t-shirt, bedtime hair and three days of stubble, and nobody will comment because that looks fairly normal these days.