General Chat

I, and I suspect a lot of you were raised in a time when living conditions were a bit more basic than they are today. In my case my parents house where we lived until I was 19 was an end of terrace 3 up, 3 down. It had just a cold water tap, an outside lav with ill fitting door (For ventilation purposes) and the sole fitted way of heating the entire house was a coal fire in the "Living" room. In the depths of winter (Remember 1947, 1961?) my mother would begrudgingly put a portable paraffin (Paraffin cost 2/- (10p) a gallon I seem to recall) heater on the landing but this would still fail to prevent ice forming on the inside of the bedroom windows.

Despite these rather primitive living conditions I cannot recall ever feeling particularly cold. May be in part this was because of the thickness of my underwear or the stoutness of my outer garments during the day and a feather filled mattress and several blankets plus a counterpane/quilt at night. Coupled with the above maybe a diet that included stew and dumplings, bread and dripping sandwiches and jam roly poly pudding also helped build my personal insulation barrier.

Things are very different these days. Now in my dotage I live in a fully insulated, double glazed centrally heated house with indoor facilities. I eat a calorie controlled diet which contains very little fat or sugar. I wear lighter thinner garments produced from man made fabrics and at night a duvet covers me.

So why do I think that I have gorn soft? Basically because yesterday and today my central heating boiler is being replaced and without my heating system working I am really feeling the cold. Yesterday morning was OK because the sun was shining and my lounge faces south thus catching the sun's heat. By lunchtime the sunshine had been replaced first by cloud and then by rain. By teatime despite putting on an extra jumper I was shivering and by bedtime I was chilled right through. I wore pyjamas to bed which is something I haven't done for years and when I woke this morning my nose, which would have been the only part of me not underneath my duvet, was ice cold to the touch.

What do you think? Have I gorn soft through my change of living conditions/lifestyle or is it just another inevitable effect of growing old? :-S

I can identify with all you say!Jonesy....think it's both these things...yes we have gone soft,but also older and blood a lot thinner,so feel the cold more.
Saw something on TV about a couple who only heat their home to 15 degrees as say it is more healthy!but doctors say it should be 21 as older people need the heat to stop heart attacks and strokes...suppose people are living longer nowadays and could be to do with life style as well as meds.
Keep warm!! :-) :-)

Similar story here Jonesey - Up to the age of nine I was brought up in the miners rows in a small village in Fife in Scotland. The house we lived in only had one room, no kitchen, the fireplace was a range on which you heated water and cooked, it also provided the only source of heat. No inside toilet you had to hold it in and hope you made it to the bottom of the garden path.

We did not have electricity, the radio was one of those crystal receiver things and light came from gas mantles, we had no running water inside the house, the tap was outside and oly provided cold water, no bedrooms as such, what you had were three alcoves of the one room with curtains and the alcoves were where you slept, there were 5 of us, my grand father, my mother, my father, my brother and myself.

You washed your hands and face in a basin on a wash stand and when you had a bath it was in a galvanised bath tub that sat in the middle of the floor, when it was not being used it hung on a nail on the wall outside.

In this modern day, with all the appliances and gadgets that we have now, some of which have made life a bit more comfortable and bearable, does not mean that as we have got older we have gone soft - anything that affects me in my old age I put it down to, as you put it, one of the inevitable effects of growing old - welcome to the club :-D

Probably not so much as soft as acclimatised.

My memories of temperatures don’t really start until we moved to a new build bungalow in 1958. That had cavity walls which probably helped with insulation. CH was installed 1965ish.

Up until then, heat was provided by a ‘modern’ open fire in the through lounge/diner which apparently was chosen as it projected the heat in to the room better than the previous traditional fires. At some point, portable electric fires appeared either to take the chill off in the living rooms if it was too mild for the fire to be lit, or moved to the bedrooms just before bedtime. I seem to remember a coke boiler in the kitchen for hot water??

The previous mid terraced house had separate lounge and living rooms both of which had open fires. The lounge was used on special occasions, the fire only being lit then.

The youngsters of today, and maybe our selves, expect their homes to be heated to a point where they can wear short sleeved T-shirts all year round.

Having suffered boiler breakdowns over the Christmas/New year period for the last couple of years (next time it will get replaced!) I can sympathise with Jonesey’s plight. When ever we’ve moved, one of our requirements has been to have a secondary form of heating – electricity/coal fuelled CH or gas CH/gas fire. All our homes have had an immersion heater for hot water which only tends to be used then.

We acquired what is now an ancient oil filed radiator. When the CH goes on strike, we plug that into a socket in the hall so that the heat rises to take the chill off in the bedrooms. Hot water bottles get dusted off and placed into the beds.

Last winter we were without CH for about 3 weeks in January (it was perishing outside!). It took the house about 3 days to warm up again. Hopefully, as it has been relatively mild, yours won’t take so long.

Makes interesting reading all this does and brings back so many memories of when I was a nipper living in a little mining village in S/Yks early 40s.

Made me think of this Monty Python Sketch....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

Thanks for the link to the Monty Python Sketch Budgie Rustler :-D

We aspired to a council house. Until I was ten, we lived in the farm cottage where I and my grandfather were born.

It was thatched, had a well across the road where you, no, not me, drew the water up in a bucket on a long stick with a hook on it. The neighbours, who aspired to higher things, had a windlass.

Once we moved here we had the luxury of a flush lavatory attached to the house, the other one had had a bucket and was down the garden although it had been moved closer to the house.

There was no insulation here and the windows had wooden frames which would freeze up in the winter. It was not as warm a tiles do not have the insulating qualities of thatch.

The wind blows directly on to our front door so we were going through them like knives until the modern one was fitted and we always had to have a wedge in to stop it blowing open.

In 1971 we had insulation put in the loft, not much but it did stop snow coming into the loft and a Parkray was fitted downstairs in place of the coal fire. Some of the neighbours decided that the fuel for them was too expensive so they took them out but we would use one scuttle of fuel a night while we listened to them going out three times to the bunker. Boy, did it poke out some heat too! The upstairs chimney breast was hot at night so it heated the rooms.

Now we are double glazed and have more insulation, the Parkray has had to go. It was too hot. For the same reason I will not have central heating.One heater, I think it is a convector, does downstairs where Fred is but it doesn't go on until the sun goes in and a radiator on wheels does upstairs, al three rooms. That is not usually on for more than three hours of an evening.

I am quite cold body I think so,if I am sitting in the kitchen, I will put a blanket over my shoulders and I can't imagine why there should be a radiator to heat the stairs but the houses that have been centrally heated have one.

The biggest luxury to me is the bath and the hot water.

I live in a 3 bed house in Sth London (my own) we have NO central heating.

A gas fire in Front Room/Kitchen and main bedroom (rarely if ever used).

House rarely gets that cold. And we only have partial double glazing.

But houses on both sides have central heating, which I think they must have on full all winter as we get the benefit of their heat!!!!

We only buy foodwise what we know we will eat for the following week. We will buy the odd buy 1 get 1 free to put in the freezer for emergencies.

I am 60 he is 54, we are both reasonably well and I have not had even a sniffle for at least 3 years. He is a postie and gets colds all the time, which he thinks he catches from the sheltered housing he delivers too!!!

:-D :-D

BR, My father was a Yorkshireman who used to tell me just such stories as those but I suspected that he may have exaggerated just a wee bit. ;-)

I think some of the problem is overheated work places and shops. People then feel the cold when they go home. I can't dress for the outdoors when I go shopping or I end up sweltering and have to leave.

When hubby first retired he was always wanting heating on at home as he was used to a boiling hot office and it made it worse for me as I just couldn't do housework with it so hot. Now over the last 3 years he has gradually got used to home being cooler and often switches the heating off himself!! We rarely have it on till later in the day as the bungalow retains the heat well overnight.

Annx,

You may well be correct but strangely the opposite would have applied to me. The last 20 years of my working life were spent in retail shops with the doors wide open no matter what the weather or time of year. The only heating ever provided was a single portable gas heater (We sold them so had to use one) which was for members of the public rather than the staff to benefit from.

The good news is that the installation engineer has just finished his work and the house radiators are now starting to warm up. Hopefully I will be back dressed in just my skivvies by the end of the day. :-D

Born in 1930, from the age of 2 lived in a house in Edinburgh owned by a Charity living off my Father's meagre War (WW1) pension, then WW2 came along which didn't help. Have certainly been through the mill but still going strong.

my circumstances were similar to yours Jonesey - no indoor toilet - outside with no flush, Dad had to empty it periodically into a big hole in the garden

no electricity until I was in grammar school - gas lamps downstairs and candles upstairs

only cold water through a tap - it came from a spring across the road - in summer when the spring was low we had to go directly to the spring with a bucket to collect water

water for bathing and other household uses came off the roof into a galvanised tank at the side of the house

bath night was Friday - tin bath brought i from the nail on the outside of the house - water boiled up in the gas boiler and transferred to the bath in the kitchen - kitchen had a corrugated iron roof so the steam condensed and then dripped back on you icy cold in the bath

just before Christmas my central heating boiler packed in and had to have a new one - I was without heating and hot water for nearly four weeks - did have a gas fire in each downstairs room though

however, I managed reasonably well, telling myself I'd managed when I was a kid - showering was a problem - filled a bucket with hot water - stood it in the bath and stepped in - in the buff - washed hair and face, then all over body and threw remainder over myself - took some courage but I did it every other day

In the tone of the Monty Python sketch.

You had a house???? You don't know you were born!! Pure luxury.

When I was 4/5 we moved from Malta to the north of Scotland. In the middle of winter.
Not to a house, not to a bungalow, not even to a caravan.

We lived in a converted bus in the middle of a field. Honest!!

After a while, we went up in the world - to a caravan.
The caravan was divided into 4. A bedroom at one end, (where my parents slept) next section housed bunk beds one side, a bath the other, then came the 'kitchen' area, then the 'living' area. There were 4 children, so eldest brother, aged 12 was sent to a free service boarding school, brother & sister slept in bunk beds, and I (the youngest) slept on the (unplumbed) bath!
The toilet was, (as with the bus) a bucket in a shed outside. The experience was made more interesting when we had a hornet's nest above the door.
'Fun' really knew no bounds in 1962/3 when we got snowed in.
The caravan was cocooned in about 3ft of snow - which was good insulation - but caravan doors open outwards, and the toilet was outside....
I wasn't particularly warm in the caravan, not only did I have sheets, blankets and a quilt on the bed, I had coats too, and the cat didn't sleep IN my bed because she loved me..........she was after the hot water bottle.
We did the 'take it in turns' tin bath in front of the small stove too!!!!

...and I'm not 60 yet
:-( :-(