Old ways and olden days..................

I am watching a series called The Village. It takes place in early 1900s. It seems that not a lot changed in village life until way into the 1960s. I know my village didn't. I was born in 1946 but it may just as well have been 1926 because life was much the same. It's strange that I know the ways and reasons the people in that village do the things they do. I wonder if the knowledge will ever be of use to me now haha.
watching how things were done back in those days were the same as how my Grandmother did things. I remember watching her do laundry in the sink and running sheets through the "mangle" onto a large oak table out in the conservatory. She would then hang them up either outside in the garden or in the conservatory. Then iron them on that oak table. Sometimes they had to hang by the fire.
My Granddad worked at Commer Cars during the war, he lost an eye due to a piece of metal that got into it. That reminds me of my friend Dawn when we were visiting, he came home from work and after emptying his pockets out he proceed to take out and polish his eye. No one had thought to mention it to poor Dawn who ran screaming from the room.
The movie show life for women back then. Subservient to their husbands, working fingers to the bone and expected to have supper on the table when they came in from work. It was tough, more than we can imagine because food was rationed or not available. Women had to be creative, it was not a lot different during the 2nd war. Or after into the 1960s. I remember when rationing stopped. I got the coupons to play with. I would go to the corner shop with my Nan and get what she could with her ration book until that day came. She had a "safe" in the kitchen to keep meat in back then and a "copper" to heat the water for washing. Was no different for my mum when we moved into Bidwell Hill.
I don't remember how or why I learned such things. Do you remember the "milk train" one could catch that if lucky very early in the mornings. The Milk churns waited at the station. My Nan's brother worked at Stanbridge Ford station and my Mum lived and grew up in Stanbridge near the station. I was a quiet child and would sit under the table while the adults played cards and talked so maybe that was a part of it. Ray, Mum's youngest brother was in the air force at one point and they seemed to be a close family, the brothers getting together and getting up to mischief, my Dad fit right in.
These movies make me nostalgic. We saw so many changes. Electricity. Coal fires. inside plumbing to name a few. Our kids and grandkids and great grandkids have no clue.
England was not just a country it was an Empire.
Farming was done by hand, back in the 1900a, with scythes and rakes. Loaded onto wagons and made into hay ricks. Later in my day they had the combine harvester, in school I remember seeing pictures of harvesting in the USA with several of them in rows harvesting the fields. Our little farms had one if they were lucky. Us kids would help with the baling and it was just so much fun.
My dad probably taught me a lot but I think I learned most from my friends farm and living when I did. I suppose that and having a deep love of animals helped. How do I know that a sheep can not get up if it falls on it's back, it will die. A cow that is bloated needs to be deflated with a cut into the stomach a straw helps. A new born calf needs to be rubbed down with straw and its nose cleaned out blow in it if you need to. If you get stung with a nettle use a Dock leaf to neutralize it.
I learned to milk a cow but found it takes a different skill to milk a goat.
I think that village life after the war, the first war stayed much the same as before. Many did not come home but the people in English villages stuck together. The second war saw many children come down from London to share the country life, some of the older ones loved it so much they stayed. I found some books written by some of them. I found a lady who I came to love who was a Land Girl who worked on Green's farm down Bidwell. She ended up in Australia. Many from my generation grew up in Australia and South Africa and India.
I am a romantic I think, maybe a dreamer. I believe that as wrong as colonization is, back then the world was different. I think the remnants of Empire turned out to be a good thing in a way. We grew up not having an issue with race unlike it has been in the USA. The biggest thing was the snobbery of social classes but that didn't come into my life at all. We had no association with upper classes haha. Country yokels was us. My Dad did have a run in once with the Duchess of Bedford. He almost got run over by her car, and she got out to see if he was OK. I guess they took him home and came back a couple of times to check on him. I am sure my Grandmother was shaken to the core haha. I bet she kept Burt out of sight.
I am sure I look on things of the past with rose coloured glasses. I know I was naive I always look on the bright side and do not see the shadows. Why would I? I had an idyllic childhood.
Holding new born lambs on our laps by the fire and feeding them bottles. Little hard hoofs and wagging tails.
We complain today about the cattle being vaccinated and then we eat the meat.........I don't know about all that. I do remember though, in my time Anthrax in Scotland or the North and Foot and Mouth at least twice I recall and before my time too, because on Margarets farm was a kind of hill and under it a herd (?) of cows. Next came Fowl pest. I remember walking on and off farms through trenches of disinfectants. Was that better or worse? When farmers lost their livelihoods. I think maybe they just went too far and started to use growth hormones and all that, that is more the problem I think. They have made farming easier in a lot of ways, but at what cost?
In the movie we are watching, they show a man with an injury to his head. It becomes putrid, gangrene I suppose. Well, we know what to do with that don't we?????? Maggots, they eat the dead flesh and clean the would. No antibiotics back then. The old remedies, some of them actually worked. Leaches. Letting blood. All had a purpose in early medicine. We can not afford to forget these things. Vinegar and brown paper. Onions in a poultice. Maybe there are books somewhere with them all written down but that won't help if we don't keep it in our heads and pass it on.