How Did You Manage Grandad

[malagabob]

Subject of how we kept in touch in the 60s. Our granddaughter asked how we kept in touch before mobile phones.
She was dumbfounded when we explained we sometimes had to queue outside a phone box with pennies. chat for as long as our money lasted , looking over shoulder to see if anyone else was waiting to make phone call. And arranging where when to meet.

[stuey]

What a bunch of malarkey from a bunch of old fogies! Now, now, there be no point in getting all outraged and a yelling at me...I just hid me hearing trumpet in the chamber pot.

[janbee]

We did semaphore and morse code and smoke signals. When we had a spare 4d, we would queue at the phonebox in the street, pressed button A to make the call and if no answer, pressed button B to get our money back. Like a cheap slot machine win !

[Peaspeculiars]

Stuey, I'm 35 and hardly an old fogie ;-) It's just nice to reminisce sometimes about the way life was, Get yer hearing horn outta the chamber pot lol!

[stuey]

Half a mo, Peaspeculiars. I have to summon Nurse by banging three times on ceiling.

[Canary42]

No dial on our first telephone - had to go through manual exchange (who often listened in although strictly banned). And our telephone number only had three digits.

[tamborine]

Wendilla did you hit your head on the cash box ;)

[stuey]

And remember back then, people weren't so time conscious. It was "time for school"; "time for lunch"; "tea-time"; and "bed-time". Nowadays, radios and TVs are always giving time checks, and if you ask someone the time it's always something like "It's eleven fifty-seven and thirty seconds." How many of you wore watches as a kid?...I certainly never did.

[Canary42]

I had a "Dan Dare" pocket watch - didn't often wear it away from home however.

[stuey]

Canary42, if you still have that Ingersoll "Dan Dare" pocket watch you might have a little money on your hand, so to speak. They're quite collectible.

[trt]

You could be dead if you needed an ambulance, having to find a phone box with no queue, and do you remember the police boxes on the corners that cops had to let the cop shop know where they were etc.

[stuey]

I remember those call boxes. However, back then they actually walked a beat. Do you still have cops walking the beat in the UK?

[Sammy48]

This was days of no anti bac spray and using those phone boxes was horrible, if you could find one that wasn't vandalised.

I find it funny when watching old programmes like The Sweeney or The Professionals etc etc when they swing out of a car chase to use the phone box lol lol to phone for back up.

[mikey4444]

I have been giving this some thought.

In the late 50's and early 60's, when I was a boy, we didn't have a phone and I didn't know many people who did. And yet my friends and I always managed to meet up on the Harbour or the Park, where we lived in Watchet, Somerset, every day after school and at weekends, without making any prior arrangements at all !

Tea parties, for birthdays, etc. were arranged and invitations were sent out by postcard, and everybody seem to turn up on time.

Important telephone calls were made from my Grandmother's phone ( she was quite posh ! ) but all others were made from the telephone box on the corner.

Don't get me wrong....I wouldn't go without my Mobile and PC these days
( and the loss of my Broadband today is driving me nuts ! ) But we seemed to manage OK years ago. But there again, our lives were so much simpler then !