Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History The "Old Days"?

Just posted in a topic about the price of fish and it got me thinking about the past. We were not a big family (7) but my Dad struggled to make ends meet. We used to go lay line fishing almost every day from around Easter until the end of September or until the dark and weather prevented us. We would go and dig bait as the tide went out and then take the fish off the lay line and re-bait the hooks and leave them for the incoming tide. We did this twice a day (for each high tide).

We ate the fish we caught and this formed a staple part of our diet for a large part of the year. My Dad turned the garden over to cultivation and grew onions, potatoes, carrots, cabbages, and tomatoes in a green house. Do any other WikiWirral members have similar memories of hard times in the 60's and 70's or even before or after?

Many a cold night my Dad would suck on a hot mint and us kids would gather round and get a warm off his tongue, always enjoyed my mums scouse until one day i bit on a flea collar with a bell on it, and she always put us in the dolly tub with the washing to save water.
No not really, i have to say i was lucky as a child growing up, my father was always in employment and though we went without many things, never the essentials, always fed well, clothed and warm.

We lived in a two-up/two-down terrace and we were the first family in our road to get a proper bath. The problem was it was fitted in my bedroom so I had to sleep in it. When I got too big for it I moved downstairs to sleep on the sofa but I needed to wait for everyone else to go to bed before I could get my head down.

I feel a Monty Python sketch coming on..

We always seemed to live like paupers in the 60s/70s although we couldn't have been that badly off because we had a car and the mortgage was being paid off within 15 years. It was like living in the 40s whereas anyone who had a dad who worked in Cammell Lairds seemed to have loads of money and lived a very modern lifestyle!