We didn't do green when I were a lad

This is a bit of a riposte to those younger ones who think 'reduce, reuse and recycle' has just been invented. Us oldies got there first!

We didn’t do green when I were a lad.

We didn’t do green when I were a lad.

         Yes, we collected milk bottle tops and handed them in to ‘help the blind’

We washed out milk bottles and returned them so they were used at least ten times. The milk was delivered by a horse and cart. There was a always a competition to see who could get out with a shovel to collect the horses leavings for the compost heap.

No food was wasted, any scraps the chickens didn’t eat were put on the compost heap.

As children you had to eat what you were given and clean your plate,

             ‘There are starving children in Africa who would be delighted to have what you want to leave’ was the parental refrain. I never had the nerve to say,

            ‘Why don’t you send it out to them then?’ That would have resulted in sore ears and a very early night.

We didn’t do green when I were a lad.

            Yes, presents were wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. The string and brown paper were kept and used the following year.

We didn’t have a fridge.

Milk bottles were kept in a bowl of water with a damp cloth over them.

The meat was hung outside on the cool side of the house in a meat safe made of zinc with lots of little holes in it to keep it cool and the flies out.

A man came round each week collecting almost anything we didn’t want – he was called the rag and bone man and used to shout out so that we knew he was coming. We could hear him because there was very little traffic because of so few cars being on the road. He loved scrap metal and would check it all with a magnet he kept in the pocket of his tweed jacket. He would only pay for ‘non ferrous’ scrap. And then only pennies.

 Another  man came round on a bike which he would prop up on a stand and then, sitting up on the saddle and pedaling would turn the grinding wheel he used to sharpen all our knives, garden shears, lawn mower blades and scissors. He used to sing as he ground the sharps back into our tools.

A French man came around about once a month with strings of onions and garlic hanging from the handlebars of his bike. No one ever bought any garlic.

             ‘That smelly stuff is only for foreigners’.

We didn’t do green when I were a lad.

            Yes, the dustcart had a trailer for ‘salvage’, any cardboard or scrap metal was welcome. The dustbin was small, very little was thrown out.

We had one open fire to heat the house, the ash from it went out to fill the pot holes in the road.

When it was very cold, I would be dispatched to get a gallon of paraffin from the hardware shop, in old jerry cans left over from the war. There was a choice of pink or blue. This was burnt in a Valor stove with a flat top which always had a kettle heating on it.

We sometimes had to use the paraffin in the oil lamps as there were often long power cuts in the winter evenings after school. Doing homework was difficult as we only had two oil lamps.

I used to wake up on winter mornings and see the ice flowers on the insides of the bedroom windows.

On cold nights we were allowed to take a hot water bottle to bed, otherwise it was shivery to push your feet down into the cold sheets.

We didn’t do green when I were a lad.

            Yes, when the sheets were worn out they were cut down the middle and the sides turned in and then sewn up up again so the thinnest parts were on the outside. This procedure was called ‘ sides to the middle’. The sewing machine was a foot treadle Singer. Everything you used was ‘Made in England’ except for cheap rubbish stuff that was ‘Empire made’ which meant it probably came from Hong Kong.

When the collars on our shirts wore thin on the inside, they were taken off the shirt by unpicking the seams and then turned and sewn back on again. When the cuffs went threadbare the shirts were converted to short sleeves and worn in the summer.

In the summer me and my mates used to go around the beach area picking up discarded glass drink bottles left by the ‘trippers’ and take them back to a shop to get a penny back on each one – which we quickly spent on toffees.

We didn’t have a car so cycled everywhere except for long holiday journeys which were taken on the train.

We didn’t do green when I were a lad.

            Yes, we grew all our own vegetables in the garden and only bought local fruit when it was in season. The imported fruit was very expensive although we always bought some of the bitter Seville oranges when they came in to make our annual supply of marmalade.

The summer gluts from the garden were processed and stored for the winter. Runner beans were salted in big china pots. I used to get the job of grinding the salt to a powder from the loaf sized bars of cooking salt. Apples were carefully harvested, wrapped in newspaper, put into cardboard boxes and stored in the roof.

Bruised apples were used for making jams, apple jelly or mint jelly. Mint picked from the garden of course.

Fruit was bottled in Kilner jars, preserving greengage and Victoria plums and gooseberries to eat in the winter with ‘top of the milk’ for cream.

Shallots were grown, peeled, salted and stored in vinegar for pickled onions.

Jam jars were kept and re-used year after year.

Each autumn we would dig trenches in the garden and empty the years compost crop into them, ready for the spring planting – only the hardy brassicas overwintered. ‘Sprouts are no good without a lick of frost’ went the local folk lore.

We didn’t do green when I were a lad.

         Yes, washing was a chore, we had to heat a kettle on the kitchen gas stove and then carry it along to the bathroom for a wash. There was an old geyser over the bath which had to be operated with great care to get the balance between water temperature and flow just right to keep the flame alight. We were only allowed a couple of inches of hot water in the bath.

We didn’t do green when I were a lad.

         Yes, everything was either saved, used again, used for something else  or composted.

Clothes were handed down and altered to fit.

Shoes were fitted with steel tips, called ‘Blakeys’, on the sole and heel, when they wore out they were taken to the village cobblers for repair.

We didn’t have television. We had a radio though and used to cluster around it in the evenings, near the fire in the one heated room, to listen to ‘Journey into Space’, ‘Round the Horne’, ‘Hancock’s half hour’ and incredibly, a ventriloquist show called ‘Educating Archie’ – on the radio - easily pleased or what?

The telephone was quite handy, only a five minute walk down to the post office.

The internet equivalent was a good gossip in the veg shop while waiting to be served. Mrs Jones from around the corner knew more than Google ever will.

         I don’t know what our carbon footprint was then but I am sure it was less than it is now.

Yes, I know we grew stuff, recycled stuff, ate frugally whatever was in season or stored from our garden, used very little energy, walked and cycled nearly everywhere and mended and repaired things rather than throwing them out and buying new but;

We didn’t do green when I were a lad.