Diamond Jubilee

On this day 59 years ago the Coronation of our Queen took place - she acceded to the throne the year before on 6th February 1952 hence the Diamond Jubilee takes place this year but we are to celebrate it on the date of the Coronation rather than in February (hardly conducive to street parties in the UK!)

I still have the local paper from back then and thought you might be interested to see bits of it.  I was living at my grandfather's in the Forest of Dean when the coronation took place and if you click on Childhood in my list of post headings you will see more about life back in the 50s should you be interested.

The weather forecast for this weekend is for cloudy weather with the possibility of showers and not as warm as it has been this past week - not so different to how it was on Coronation day - nothing much changes and here in the UK we are used to having "rain on our parades"!!! (If you click on the photo you should be able to read the little article)

I couldn't help but notice how different this paper is to the local paper (The Western Gazette) this week which I show below.

How different it looks for a start we now have colour photography - it's odd how little colour we had in our lives back then even our homes seemed to be furnished in shades of beige and brown, paintwork was often brown or dark green and if not then a deep cream and things got so dirty too what with coal fires and so on.

The layouts in our magazines and papers are now so different and far less formal. We have different typefonts and are much more creative.

This article interested me and brought back many memories.  It speaks about living conditions back in 1952 and reminds us that Britain was still recovering from the war - I remember how much bomb damage was still in evidence then.  We still had food rationing and tea didn't come off ration till October that year - imagine us not having unlimited tea!  We Brits to whom tea is a national drink and the answer to all life's problems having only limited supplies!  The paper says that our standard of living back then was what would now be regarded as Third World - only 1 in 3 households had a bath, 1 in 20 had no piped water - young people today probably cannot imagine it.  Only 10 percent of homes had a telephone installed (and those were often a shared line) Who remembers having to go to the telephone box and put your coins in and then press button A to speak to anyone - remember too always pressing button B just in case the previous caller hadn't got through and had forgotten to get their money back?

Notice the price of a day trip to London by train - only 26/3 which would be about £1.32 in decimal coinage.  Now you'd be lucky to do it for less than about £40!  This brought back memories of travelling by train though and how filthy it always was.  Trains being steam driven in those days one always arrived feeling dirty.  London was a dirty place too what with all the smoke belched out by factories and homes whose only form of heating was probably a coal fire.  I remember as a teenager in the early 60's visiting my aunt who lived in London and how dirty I got after a day on Oxford Street - if you used a hanky you could see just how much black dirt was breathed in!  The lace on my petticoat (yes we all wore one then) was grubby and cuffs always got grimy too!  I was a country child though so the smog and dirt of the city was a novelty rather than a constant in my life.

So to anyone who hankers after a vintage lifestyle or talks about the good old days - it wasn't all so wonderful you know.  And the past 60 years have brought many changes some good and some not so good and this weekend will be a time for many of us to reminisce no doubt.  Do take a look at the Diamond Jubilee card on the Jacquie Lawson web site if you can - it made me smile