The essence of my 1950s
I was young and fit, had fun, first holidays without parents. Left school one Friday and walked straight into a job on the Monday.
I picture a lovely sunny day in 1954 with three of us going to Southampton in an open top Triumph Roadster which had 3 front seats and two 'dickey' seats in the boot. We drove across Salisbury Plains listening to Guy Mitchell singing '
with a whoop and a holler and a dime and a dollar' ... no cares, no worries …
Sunday Jazz nights at the Dudley Hippodrome, Ted Heath with Lita Rosa and Dennis Lotus - Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Laine, - Ronny Scott - and lots more which many would not have heard of these days.
Sunday mornings were a bit of a drag with Billy Cotton and Family Favourites on the radio but afternoons came and off to town with a large crowd at the Gaumont Cinema.
Frankie Laine at the Theatre Royal, he was fabulous, and Frank Sinatra at the Birmingham Hippodrome when his career was a bit down.
Four or five nights a week ice skating ...
When I got home very late at night, I just walked in the unlocked back door, we only had one key.
Most young men had to do two years National Service, and that interrupted my 1950s but it was mostly good, the comradeship etc as we coped with service life.
It was not all good, I remember..
Terrible damaging floods in Lynmouth.
Devastating floods from the North Sea on the east coast.
First Hydrogen bomb test in 1952 ... some papers said it might 'ignite' the atmosphere..
Standing in a long queue after work in town for a Polio Jab ...panic very worried at the time … I knew someone who died from it.
A barber at Lewis's told me I was going bald and I needed 'electro treatment' … today I can prove he was wrong!
Suez Crisis … I was in the RAF at the time but it was all over in a week.
Serious radioactive leak into atmosphere at Seascale Nuclear Power Station.
Asian Flu Pandemic 1957 ... 30,000 deaths in UK ... no panic I can't remember being worried.
At the end of the 1950's the Prime Minister of the time said '
We had never had it so good'.