Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend/School

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floragord
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by floragord »

Tonight's the night... a friend's kindly asked us round for potluck so it'll be "ketchup" for us :D
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by Julie2owlsdene »

I'm recording it, so I can watch it later. :)

8)
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by pete9012S »

We watched it.The young lad seems an incredibly intelligent chap.The young ones seem to have a lot to say on all matters.
I don't remember being younger hearing children and youths being as outspoken,but maybe my memory is incorrect.
The wife seems to have had one of the biggest shocks,going from being an I.T.working breadwinner of the family to being chained to the kitchen and then made to go to church.(she walked out).

The hubby is bravely having a go at DIY, making a bell and a table and seems quite a calm and easy going chap.

The most fun I saw was when the little fellow was taken camping in the woods with other children and allowed to roast slices of spam over their open fire. Very Famous Five moment I thought!

I think the move from the 1950's to the 1960's will release a lot of domestic and social tension in the family and look forward to next week's episode.
I hope everyone else enjoyed something about last night's show - it's a brilliant concept to watch on TV.
Last edited by pete9012S on 04 Feb 2016, 17:03, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by Julie2owlsdene »

I watched it about 10pm and thought it was very good. The family are much more switched on than the last lot were. The man said that he had never done any D.I.Y. I guess younger people don't these days! My hubby and my father were always fixing something or making something in the shed.

I love the clothes of the 50's, the women looked elegant but it must have been hard work being almost chained to the kitchen. I was a kid in the 50's and so played out a lot and never really noticed.

The young boy seemed to love the freedom of the camping in the woods. Pity children these days don't experience that kind of childhood.

All in all I enjoyed it. Next week will be fab with the swinging 60's. :)

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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I've modified the thread title to include the new programme.

Like others, I enjoyed watching the Ashby-Hawkins family go back to the 1950s. The Survey of Expenditure sounds fascinating - it's a pity it was brought to an end in 1999. I recall the Robshaws in Back in Time for Dinner consulting a Food Survey which had also been stopped after being kept for several decades.

Seeing the dad making a table in his shed made me think of my grandad (dad's dad). In a corner of their bedroom, my son and daughter have got a little wooden table which my grandad made in the 1950s or 60s. We've also got a dolls'-house which he made in the early 1970s for my sister and me. My own children played with it too when they were small.

I remember the shops being closed on Sundays in the 1970s and 80s but I certainly didn't see any swings tied up in parks on a Sunday! When my sister and I were little, our dad would take us to the park or for a walk in the woods or hills on a Sunday while our mum cooked a roast dinner.

I thought the 16-year-old girl, Daisy, looked pretty in her frocks and ballgown. Cotton frocks aren't always very practical but they're fine for going to church or sitting at home sewing and knitting!

The advert for the washing-machine suggested that people leave the machine on to do the washing while they were out. I stopped doing that after our washer-dryer went on fire one day (luckily, on that particular day I was in).

A very enjoyable programme. The scenes of carpentry in the shed, camping in the woods and going shopping with hats and wicker baskets looked like vintage Ladybird books come to life!
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by Moonraker »

We have yet to watch it. I am pleased that the Ashby Hawkins family seems to be better than the last lot!
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by Jack400 »

I remember seeing a tv program that mentioned some Scottish islands that chained the swings together and padlocked chains across the slides to prevent children playing on Sundays. (This was back in the 1980s).
Part of me thinks that it might be more of a "like for like" comparison if they had chosen a 'stay at home mum' and a working (outside the home) father to compare their respective rolls. In the 1950s a 'house husband' would, I imagine, have been incredibly rare- and to many probably quite incredible.
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by floragord »

Eventually watched the first episode and ooops, thought it was ghastly - apart from the brilliant boy, who at least got some delight out of the new experiences, the rest was what Dr Mario Martinez calls day to day "ordinary misery"... The mother's silken put-downs, ongoing complaints and flouncing out of church, the whingeing daughter, a real chip off the old block and the sad, kind husband made us fully appreciate why this family was selected for the experiment when their everyday life is all about isolation through technology. Our final conclusion was if they were sitting at the next table in a restaurant we'd run like thieves :?
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by Moonraker »

Mrs Ashby Hawkins should have been thrown off the programme. I'm pretty sure no woman in 1950 would have walked out of church. She was meant to act as if the family were in the 50s, not stroppy feminist of the 90s.
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

What did people think of episode 2, about the 1960s? I was quite shocked by the piano-smashing! Surely that wasn't widespread?!

I smiled when I saw the family's crockery. We used to have exactly that design of cups, saucers and plates when I was growing up in the 1970s, with the patterns of squares and circles in brown, yellow and green!

I loved the Mini! Cars with a lot of chrome trimming always look fabulous. We had a Mini Van for a few years in the 70s.

It was still common to rent your TV in the 1970s-80s - we rented ours from Radio Rentals.

I hadn't realised how alien dial phones, phone boxes and even phone books seem to modern youngsters, with technology changing at such a rapid rate!

According to the programme, 80% of teenagers left school at 15 in 1963. If that was the case, wouldn't most of them have had no qualifications - or was the system different at that time? I thought only those with birthdays in July or August would have sat their 'O' Levels (or equivalent) by that age.

Fancy trying to keep the Post Office Tower (which was the tallest building in the United Kingdom when it was completed in 1965) an "official secret", and deliberately missing it off Ordnance Survey maps! :lol:
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by pete9012S »

I enjoyed the program,although not the piano destruction.
I thought more emphasis might have been placed on the 'Swinging '60's' especially the Summer of Love in 1967 etc.

The 70's should really bring back some reminders for me personally as I was born in 1967 and remember that decade so well.

All in all still a very good TV show.
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by Jack400 »

I assume that if they left school at age 15 the exam timetable must have been set up to suit. The leaving age being changed (to 16) would have needed a review of examination ages. The youngsters regarding phone boxes as 'alien' puzzles me as I have seen many such 'alien' devices hidden in plain site in high streets and busy areas across Britain as recently as today!
The Post Office Tower, as it used to be called (now BT Tower), being an official secret amused me. In the 1970s it was open to the public- I remember going up it.The memory is rather limited, as I was very young at the time, mostly looking in the door of the revolving* restaurant and waiting an age for a lift to arrive.

* The floor of the restaurant revolves so that diners get to see the view across London during their meal.
BT = British Telecom
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by Daisy »

Exams were taken at the end of the fifth year in high school. Those who were not academically inclined were able to leave before then, once they were fifteen. Jobs were easily come by and children did not leave school just to sign on. I'm not sure how old you had to be to do that. The Secondary Modern schools were geared to be appropriate for such youngsters, catering for them for just 4 years. Promising pupils got a chance of a transfer to another school - either a Grammar school or a Technical school where they could take external exams.
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Thanks, Daisy. My parents both finished their education at the age of 16, one in the 50s and one in the 60s, and they sat their 'O' Levels just before leaving school. I was surprised to hear that such a high percentage left at 15 in 1963. As jobs were easy to come by, that was probably the reason.

I don't think it's too surprising that the Ashby-Hawkins children didn't know how to phone from a phone box. Even though there are still quite a few around, people their age wouldn't have grown up using them.
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Re: Back in Time for Dinner/the Weekend

Post by Fiona1986 »

I missed the 50s ep but I did see the 60s one. I thought it was great. I thought the daughter did particularly over the show, as she really seemed to 'get' the amazing new things as they were revealed year by year. A record player in her room and dancing in a telephone box for example. The piano smashing was a bit much, though. Rather wasteful I thought. Seemed from the film footage that it would more likely be young men, political or otherwise activist types rather than middle class families doing the destroying.
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