Newhouse Farm

rue_d_etropal · Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:23 pm Post subject: Electric Dreams

Just caught this new series on BBC iPlayer, which takes a family back to 1970s and lets them experience life with only the tools and gagdets of the time. Each day is a new year so it is a bit rushed, and like many people it is not always as you remember.
Some interesting points and observations but could have been done in more episodes. The next episode covers the 1980s, and I presume the 3rd and final takes the family up to the millenium.
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happymama · Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:55 pm Post subject:

I watched it and felt free to reminisce about seeing Casio calculators for sale in Jewellers shops, so valuable were they, and the day the DER rental sent the repair man out because our tube went in our b/w telly and he was in a rush to sign off his sheet and left us with the delights of a sepia tube until he came back in less of a rush and gave us the right spare part. About 1975.

My friend had Pong, too. I was very good at it, I remember, they wouldn't let me play with it, her brother and her, in the end.

Roller skates, hoops and space hoppers came and went, Harrington Jackets, Lief Garret, David Essex, the Bay City Roller trews were the order of the day, and Blue Movies were all the rage in the 1968 housing estate I grew up, in with car keys in the bowl on the coffee table for post film entertainment.

In the Winters of Discontent we were sitting pretty. Our housing estate was the first newbuild to have North Sea Gas piped direct to it, and my parents had taken a gas fridge, cooker and fire, so when the rest of the street ate corned beef sarnies over the primus, we had frozen stuff cooked in the oven, tea by the fire, and candles to bed.

Dad was in textiles so didn't strike - didn't have to, then - and the rest were on strike (shunters from Healey MIlls, the biggest shunting yards in Europe at the time, just down't road, tappers and shunters they were, plus t'Normanton Pit wukkers) - my best friend's mum got beaten up by her sadly embarrassed hubby because she put her three kids on school dinners because it was the only food they got in a day, Another kid in my class didn't turn up one day because his dad had hung himself because he couldn't feed his family, and things like that carried on for some time. I kid you not, the family over the road ate HP sauce sandwiches for tea for months.

Ah, nostalgia.

The 80's won't be any better, I ended up 6400 miles away because of closures in the textile industry.
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Ecocentric · Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 11:02 pm Post subject:

compostwoman · Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 12:10 am Post subject:

As I posted in the tea room, Compostgirl watched the first ep with Cm and I, ( as she was poorly and couldn't sleep) and she was facinated by it and our reaction to the items featured on the programme

She can't wait for Ep 2...
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Environmental Educator, Forest School Leader, Master Composter, Holistic Therapist. Smallholder.

rue_d_etropal · Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 11:37 pm Post subject:

pity there was no mention of the fuel crisis and the (almost) introduction of petrol rationing.
_________________
Simon D
SOW a Seed,

Save
Our
World

GREEN not GREED
www.rue-d-etropal.com

compostwoman · Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 11:47 pm Post subject:

Mike&Penny · Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 1:39 am Post subject: The 70's

The 70's, "ancient history"? Not to us.

Good grief, about the only technology we use now that we didn't have then is the microwave and the computer and recorded movies. And oh yes, the relatively slight change in recorded music (CD instead of magnetic tape; and of course we still had vinyl recordings)

That decade was the midpoint of our lives so far.

By the beginning of the 70's I was back working with computers (that had turned me off in the 60's because of ridiculously short "mean time between failure"). Humorously, in the early 90's a box of punch cards (Holerinth cards) turned up and to see what would happen I put one in each person's pigeonhole. Amusing to see some of the young programmers turning it over and over in their hands with puzzled "what is this thing?" looks on their faces.
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There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.