Enid Blyton & The Summer of 1976

[Boatbuilder]

So you're almost a 'sandgrounder' Bertie.

[IceMaiden]

Is that picture meant to be a hot summer's day? It looks freezing .

Jeremy Vine was running a topic on his radio show recently about indoor swimming pools having to close due to the huge cost of heating them with the current financial problems. One listener suggested not bothering to heat the water at all. Not surprisingly it didn't go down well!

[Boatbuilder]

It's probably the quality of the colour photography, IceMaiden.

Plenty of people swim in the sea in the winter. They have a Christmas Day swim here in Lowestoft each year, as they do in many other parts of the country.

https://www.jme.co.uk/event-lowestoft-c ... -day-swim/

From 2017 (posted by a member on my forum)

[Moonraker]

IOne listener suggested not bothering to heat the water at all. Not surprisingly it didn't go down well!

In the 50s, our school used open-air swimming baths. They weren't heated and no-one complained.

[IceMaiden]

Presumably not in the middle of winter though surely? A non heated pool in July is quite different than a non heated pool in the sub zero temperatures we had last week!

[Boatbuilder]

People weren't nesh in those days, IceMaiden. We even slept in ice-cold bedrooms in winter as there was no central heating for 99% of people, or double glazing. We did have plenty of blankets though.

[timv]

One thing that was very noticeable in the summer of 1976 was the wildlife , at least where we lived in mid-Sussex - some were losing their usual fear of people in the desperate search for water and they were much easier to spot, which I did a lot of as a teenager. We had voles (ie the 'water-rats' which Kenneth Grahame used for 'Ratty' in The Wind In The Willows) in the stream outside our house, and these became a lot less timid than usual and could be seen only about ten yards from the house - next to a footpath, too. There were also a lot more orchids on the South Downs in the heat, and in the evenings we used to drive over to the Downs after school and go up on the hill near Charleston Farm at Firle (previously home of Virginia Woolf's artist sister Vanessa Bell) and watch the rabbits playing.

There were also huge clouds of butterflies on the clifftops by Roedean School near Brighton, arriving from the Continent in a Southerly wind - thousands of them at a time. I've never seen that before or since. But I don't think we were so aware of rare birds then, and there was less material to use in identifying them - no internet, of course, and mostly I used the pocket-size Observers Books (ditto for astronomy in the winter). There was no local fuss about farmers tearing up hedges or using chemicals either - today's teenagers are far more environmentally aware, thank goodness, and at our school I was thought of as 'eccentric'' for being upset about local streams being straightened out and marshy fields drained and deluged with fertiliser rather than thinking it 'exciting and modern' . My ecological interests owed most to Monica Edwards books - if you were 'Green' you were probably self-taught via books or TV, or learnt it from your parents. The farming manuals and journals all regarded pesticides etc as good, and there was far less debate about it then though Rachel Carson had raised the issue of this causing loss of species and habitat in her recent book 'Silent Spring' - nor was there any conservationist messages in the BBC radio farming soap 'The Archers' which I listened to.

We didn't have a lot of the species that you see now, presumably as hot weather was rare - I never saw. an egret by the Solent until the 2000s, for instance, despite bird-watching on the South coast on and off since the early 1970s, and even since 2004 their numbers in Lymington have increased. Ditto the rarer ducks. (We had a flock of over 60 black and white Tufted Ducks sheltering from the gales here a few days ago which is unprecedented.)

[pete9012S]

Thank you Timv that was most interesting.

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember little sweet shops had freezers etc were you could buy ice-pops, iced lollies, ice creams etc.

I don't remember these shops all having fridges to cool cans of Pepsi,Coke, Fanta, Tab etc so if you bought a can or bottle it was already luke-warm!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Newsagents still have those freezers, Pete. Last summer I popped into one to buy a Calippo and was shocked that it cost £1.60 for a (much shrunken in recent years) pole of orange-flavoured ice. A few days later I spotted an ice-cream van also selling Calippos and had an even greater shock as they were priced at £3 each! Goodness knows what they'll be charging by next summer!

A very interesting post, Tim. When going for walks alone during the lockdown of spring 2020, I found that it was a lot easier than usual to spot birds, water voles, etc. They seemed to appreciate a calmer environment.

Going back to 1976, I remember being fascinated by the huge swarms of ladybirds that settled in the garden, covering large areas in a blanket of red.

[Moonraker]

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember little sweet shops had freezers etc were you could buy ice-pops, iced lollies, ice creams etc.
I don't remember these shops all having fridges to cool cans of Pepsi,Coke, Fanta, Tab etc so if you bought a can or bottle it was already luke-warm!

Spending much of my free time up to the age of 7 or 8 in my mother's confectioner's and tobacconist's shop in the 50s, I remember her Lyons Maid Ice Cream fridge - they were never called freezers, strangely. Providing ice cream was bought from the Lyons Maid rep, the 'fridge' was provided free of charge. However, if anything else was discovered in the 'fridge', words would be had and the offending item(s) would be removed!

Fridge was often spelled 'frig'.

I tried to Google a 1950s Lyons ice cream fridge, but I could only find this Wall's one hiding in the left of the picture:



I seem to remember they resembled a twin-tub washing machine with two lift-up lids on top, rather than the plastic sliding top cover seen today. There were also no canned drinks.



This is my mother's shop, immediately to the left of the Gibbs Mew sign. The shop sign says, Dorothy A Rowe with confectioner and tobacconist either side of her name. The pub has now expanded into the former sweet shop.

[Lenoir]

Nice memories. I think I have seen it spelled 'frig' in a book but I can't remember which one. My mother was also called Dorothy. A popular name at one time.

[Boodi 2]

Super photo Moonraker, thanks for sharing!
I remember those 1950s (or in my case early 1960s) ice cream fridges with the two lift-up lids on top, as on one occasion I was so impatient to get my ice cream (a "Golly Bar" I think...does anyone remember them?) that I tried to lift the lid myself and it crashed down on my tiny fingers, causing considerable bruising. My mother and the shopkeeper were not very sympathetic as I should not have touched the fridge and my mother refused to buy me the ice cream as in her opinion I had been naughty. I left the shop in floods of tears, although I don't know if the tears were due to the pain or the fact that I had not had my promised ice cream! As luck would have it, my grandfather was walking down the road at that very moment and he came over and wanted to know why I was crying, so I showed him my bruised fingers. He immediately comforted me and said "I know something that will make your fingers better... an ice cream!" and carried me into the shop in his arms and bought me a large choc ice, which had the desired effect!!! I am surprised that my mother did not object, but in those days even adult children had respect for their parents so she was probably reluctant to tell him not to buy me an ice cream!!!

[Boodi 2]

Having checked I found out that for some reason Golly Bars were exclusive to the Republic of Ireland and were not produced anywhere else! The name was changed in the 1970s (and I assume the wrapper too) and they are now know as "Big Bars".

[Jack400]

Apparently the name change is to remove any reference or image to Gollywog. According to this site. Is it "Big Bar" or "Giant Bar"?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golly_Bar

[Boatbuilder]

I find the whole 'golly' thing amusing. In which case shouldn't the lyrics of Little Richard's song Good Golly Miss Molly be changed?

The dictionary meaning of 'golly' is 'used to express surprise or delight' , which is surely the context in which a child would be using the word when being give a 'golly bar'. Removal of the golliwog image should have sufficed.