Changes

“Nanny? Can I ask you a question?” asked the blonde haired ten-year-old stretched out in front of the fire, idly flipping the pages of a photo album.

“What do you want to know sweetie?” asked her grandmother looking up from her knitting.

“Why’s lots of these pictures black ‘n’ white?”

The woman looked to her husband for the explanation.

“That’s because we didn’t have the sort of cameras that we have today and while you could take colour photographs on them, the films were expensive and so was the processing,” her grandfather explained.

“Oh!” said the girl doubtfully. “What’s pro…sus…sing??

“Processing, it’s what makes the picture appear on the paper, it used chemicals and was done in a darkroom.”

“Darkroom?” said the little girl frowning.

“It was a special room with all of the equipment and chemicals to make the pictures appear only you had to do it in the dark or it wouldn’t work.”

“How did you see what you were doing then?” asked the girl, clearly confused.

“Well, some of it you had to do by feel. You had to keep light away from the film and the special paper at the start. Then you could switch on a red light to work by. The red light didn’t hurt the film and paper.”

“Sounds pretty difcult to me!” the girl announced. “All I has to do is send my pics to the printer,” she declared.

Her grandmother smiled at her and explained, “We didn’t have things like that then Mandy.”

“Cos it was the old days?” Mandy said with all the assurance of her ten years.

“Well not old, old days,” her grandfather said wryly.

“Well, you ‘n’ Nanny’s pretty old,” Mandy said slowly looking between the two of them.

“Thank you so much!” laughed her grandmother with mock indignation.

The girl sat up and mused for a moment before she closed the photo album and turned to her grandmother.

“Nanny, what year was you born? she asked.

Her grandmother looked at her husband who just raised an eyebrow, then back to her granddaughter before replying.

“Nineteen fifty,” she said with some reluctance. “Your grandfather was the year before.”

“Wow!” Mandy said eyes wide. “That’s old! That’s…” you screwed up her face as she tried to work out how old her grandparents were.

Her grandfather snorted in amusement earning a glare from his wife.

“That’s was seventy years ago,” her grandmother informed her.

Mandy pondered this for a moment.

“So, you’ve seen lots of new things then? Lots of changes since you was as old as me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you saids you had cameras that tooks black ‘n’ white but nows they takes colour, that sorts of things.”

Her grandparents shared a long thoughtful look, then her grandfather agreed they had seen a lot of changes since they were her age.

“Like what?” Mandy asked.

“When we were your age, lots of things were different or hadn’t been invented,” her grandmother said. “There weren’t supermarkets or shopping malls but lots of small shops where you went to buy what you needed.”

Mandy looked puzzled.

“Bakers were where you got your bread, butchers your meat, greengrocers your fruit and vegetables, a fishmonger for fish. You know, I think I was seven when fish fingers were invented,” Mandy looked at her in disbelief with her mouth wide open and her grandmother nodded and smiled before continuing.

“The dairy had milk, butter and eggs and you went to the chemists for medicines…”

“You went to the hardware store for tools and screws and such,” broke in her grandfather.

“If you had your milk delivered the milkman had a horse to pull his milk float which had crates filled with glass bottles with foil caps which he’d leave on the doorstep. In the winter it would sometimes freeze the cream in the milk and it would push the lid off. In the summer the bluetits would peck through the foil to get to the cream,” her grandmother said with a chuckle.

“Lots of things were delivered by horse and cart not just milk,” said her grandfather. “The coalman used to have a sooty cart filled with sacks of coal that he’d bring to the house and fill the bunker. Some homes they had to carry it through the house to get to the back yard.”

“Coal’s bad though, isn’t it?” asked Mandy.

“Well so they say now,” agreed her grandfather. “Back then it was all we had to keep us warm.”

“Oh! Right,” Mandy didn’t sound convinced by the explanation.

“We didn’t have central heating in the houses like we do now Mandy, so everyone had fires to stay warm. We didn’t have carpets like this either, it was linoleum which was always freezing in the winter, with a rug on top,” her grandmother said.

“That’s right, when you went to bed you ran across the lino and jumped into bed and put your feet on your hot water bottle to warm them up,” her grandfather said. “In the mornings you had to rub the frost off the inside of the window to see out.”

“Lots of people didn’t have a bathroom or toilet inside,” said her grandmother.

“What!” exclaimed Mandy. “No toilet, I don’t believe you! How dids you… well… you knows?”

“We had toilets, it was just that they weren’t indoors, they were outside. If you were unlucky your house’s toilet was down the bottom of the garden,” said her grandfather with a broad smile. “It was really cold if it was snowing!”

“People had a tin bath in front of the fire when they had a bath or you boiled a kettle and washed in the kitchen sink,” said her grandmother.

“Ugh!” Mandy showed her disgust. Her grandfather shrugged.

“That’s just how houses were for most people in those days, unless you had lots and lots of money,” said her grandfather.

“You do have lots of money now though, don’t you?” Mandy was confident in her knowledge.

“Well not lots and lots, but we have enough for what we need, but back then it was different, most people didn’t earn very much and usually just your dad went to work. If you got pocket money you were quite lucky and you had to do jobs at home to earn it,” said her grandfather.

Mandy pulled a face at that.

“We didn’t have big fridge freezers like now,” said her grandmother. “No microwaves. TVs had small screens and were very expensive for a long time and programs were in black and white. The picture would roll up and down or go fuzzy and you’d hit the top of the set to stop it or twiddle with the aerial. Radios with the names of cities on the dial that tuned the radio. Places like Brussels, Luxembourg, Berlin, Paris, London. We listened to the BBC Light Program, the Home Service. Things like Mrs Dales Diary, The Archers, Family Favourites,” she said smiling fondly.

“No gizmos like computers or mobile phones or e-books,” added her grandfather. “If you wanted to read a book you usually went to the library and borrowed one, when you had read it, you took it back and got another one.”

“Record players that played three types of records, 45’s, 33’s and 78’s. No CD’s or MP3 players, iTunes and the like,” said her grandmother. “Not many people had phones in their houses then, but if they did and you wanted to speak to them you went to the phone box and called them. You put your two pennies into the slot and pushed button A and if they answered then the money fell down and you had three minutes to talk to them.”

“That’s right,” said her grandfather. “If they didn’t answer then you pressed button B to get your money back!” He laughed. “We always used to check that when we went by a phone box. Sometimes people forgot to get their money back and you then had tuppence to buy sweets. Lot of sweets for tuppence if you bought four for a penny chews! You went to the sweet shop for your sweets and the newsagents for papers and comics.”

“No push buttons on phones then, you had to dial the number using the wheel on the telephone. It used to click round to the number then it would click, clack back and you’d do the same for the next number.”

Mandy looked between them, her face a mixture of disbelief and fascination.

“Not many people had cars either,” said her grandfather. There wasn’t the traffic like there is now. “If you could afford to buy a car you could have any colour you liked as long as it was black!” he laughed again. “Now you pay extra for black. There weren’t as many types of cars for quite a while after the war.”

“People didn’t go abroad for holidays like they do now, flying was expensive, the planes were smaller and there weren’t lots of them and there weren’t the places to go to. ‘Tourism’ hadn’t really got going again because of the war you see. Lots of places still had damage and open sites where bombs had fallen.”

“No rockets or men walking on the moon, satellites and pictures from space when we were your age,” said her grandmother. “That was all science fiction.”

“Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials at Saturday morning pictures, sixpence to get in,” said her grandfather. “Journey into Space on the radio,” he smiled in remembrance.

“Zorro, the Lone Ranger and Roy Roger westerns,” her grandmother said.

“Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton,” said her grandfather. “Boris Karloff as Frankenstein, Lon Chaney Junior as the Wolfman, Bela Lugosi as Dracula.”

“Will Hay, Billy Bunter, Old Mother Reilly, Abbot and Costello,” said her grandmother.

Mandy looked back and forth between the pair as they reminisced on their childhoods, unsure how much she should believe of what they were telling her. To her this all sounded fantastic, totally unbelievable. How on earth did they ever manage? What had they done after school? How had they talked to their friends? Looked things up without Google? Done their sums without their phones to calculate things. How had they got to school without a car? Did their homework with no ‘puter? She sat there staring at them, confused and at a loss what to believe.

She watched them as they laughed and chuckled at the memories they passed back and forth between them. She could see from their faces; those memories were of happy times even if she could not understand why when they had none of life’s necessities. She opened the photo album then laid back down on the rug, flicking through its pages letting their voices and laughter wash over her.

She didn’t understand old people. She loved her grandparents and her parents, but she didn’t understand them. She wondered if it was because they had been stunted in some way without mobiles ‘n’ ‘puters. No Netflix ‘n’ Disney on the TV as they were growing up. Not going to places like Disneyworld, Greece or Spain for holidays until they were old, probably didn’t help matters.

She smiled at the pictures in front of her, these ones were in colour and showed people in bright cheerful clothes. The girls in mini-skirts and white boots, the boys in bright coloured shirts and trousers with long hair. She sighed and turned the page.

The old days were definitely very, very, strange.