Connie Onnie Butties ... and Other Memories

 

My brother, my Dad and me, around 1971 or 72

It's hard to date some photos isn't it, I tend to look at what I'm wearing, how old my brother looks as he's four years younger than me and then where we are.  This was taken at Pontins, the Middleton Towers camp I think, we only ever went to two of their camps, but this was my parents favourite one.

I went down a rabbit hole of thinking about the past yesterday after watching the YouTube channel British Nostalgia while I ate my breakfast.  They are good videos if you can get over the AI voiceover that occasionally gets his words wrong and puts emphasis in the wrong places, and if you just laugh at the photos not always matching the commentary.

This is the video that I watched.

https://youtu.be/bKSB3X1kXWU?si=rwyhxygZ_By1xL9c

It was very true of a lot of the meals we ate back in the 60s and 70s in Manchester, England.

It's funny, as children we never thought of ourselves as poor, although we lived in just three rooms.  They were the downstairs rooms of my Nana's house.  We shared the bathroom that was upstairs and had to be quiet so as not to disturb her whenever we used it, but I never minded that. When I was thirteen in 1973 we got a brand new council house and moved out ... much to my Mum's relief.

We ate simply and cheaply, and I could cope with most foods, although even then I hated meat.  But I was forced to eat it, we always had to clear our plates ... 'or the starving children in Africa would be upset'.  Even as a child I thought that Mum's statement was ridiculous.  Mum was not a good cook, which was slightly ironic as she was a school dinner lady!  We ate the most basic foods, overcooked to within an inch of their lives, hence my hatred of Brussels sprouts to this day ... and my brother's pea phobia .

So watching this YouTube video brought back a lot of memories, good ones and bad ones ... liver and onions when overcooked would be useful for a cobbler, he would be able to resole leather shoes with the liver glued on with the gloopy onions.  Well my Mum's version anyway. 😖

But one thing we never had, but my ex-husband did, was Connie Onnie butties, or sandwiches if you from the posh end of the street. 

 It was simply condensed milk spread on white bread and topped with another slice, and eaten over a plate or at the very least away from your clothes as they dripped.  My ex also regularly lived on 'sugar butties' as a child, just as it sounds they were simply buttered white bread with a spoonful of sugar sprinkled over the butter, then the two slices pressed together, usually taken outside to be eaten while you played or just sat on the front doorstep.  No wonder he had so many missing teeth even when we first met!  My cheap sandwich of choice was a salad cream butty, just that bread and salad cream, they were very tasty, but Mum didn't really approve.

Of course it was the days of corner shops and very small 'supermarkets' when they first arrived.  Our local corner shop had illusions of grandeur when it purchased two shopping trollies.  With only two narrow aisles and the meat and cheese counter at the end of the shop, if someone had a trolley in use anyone else shopping with the more usual wire basket, had to follow the trolley pusher around until they finally reached the till, or else try and squeeze past if the person stopped at the meat counter.  Luckily I think we were a lot more patient back in the day. 😄

What 'poor food' did you have as a child, or were you 'proper posh'?

Sue xx

The Food Comes in Two by Two

 

14th Aldi - £34.83

This is the post I was going to do on Monday, but I simply did not have the energy and needed to decompress after Sunday ... and then I needed to get it all out of my system yesterday. 

We called to Aldi on the way home from visiting Mum, and I think you can tell that I needed some treats as well as a few necessary bits.  Two bottles of wine, chocolate, two packs of cheese and pasta, two of so many of the items in my trolley.  I think I just get in the habit of picking up twos when I am running out of something, which is no bad thing really.

I did limit myself to one block of chocolate ... but only because I already had some at home.  😁

The receipt for posterity.  

The wine and fish definitely bumped the cost of this shopping up, but I was still happily surprised that this was all I spent, I was expecting it to be more.

When I got home I realised that I had taken the photo of the shopping in the trolley before I had added the eggs to it.  So I laid it all out again for your perusal.

I really could have gotten way with not shopping this week, but sometimes your sanity tells you that it needs some wine and chocolate.  

I did sort of need more pasta though, as I had tipped the last of my smaller sized bags of penne into my large pasta jar on Friday.  It used to come in 500g bags, now it seems to be only available in 1kg size. I seem to have lots of spaghetti in my store cupboard but I was down to no replacements of penne, which is obviously my favourite.

So, that's the rice jar and the pasta jar freshly filled, and the shelf is looking very healthy at the moment.

Sue xx

Not Normal Service

Morning Coffee    by Mary Bradish Titcomb 1858-1927

Mum was rushed into hospital once again, in the early hours of Sunday morning this time with breathing difficulties.  We were literally ten minutes away from visiting her at her care home on Sunday morning, at the more respectable time of 10am, luckily we were still on the motorway when my brother phoned to say that a voicemail message had just come through on his phone, it had been left in the middle of the night but he has his phone off then.  My phone is always on, but for some reason this time they didn't call me. 😕

Anyway a quick re-programme of the Satnav and we were headed for the hospital where after a lot of chasing round departments and wards, as she had only just left the A&E department, we finally found Mum looking very frail and very confused.

We are quite confused too, as there is nothing they can do for her except make her comfortable and give her oxygen, something they could very easily have done at her care home, especially since she has instructions on her paperwork not to send her to hospital except in a real health emergency.  Which happened a few weeks ago when she had yet another bowel blockage.  They are a nursing and hospice type care home as well as residential, so they have a lot of very qualified staff.  

We were most concerned that the hospital seemed to know nothing about her.  Luckily we arrived just as the cutlery was being delivered to the beds ready for lunch, she was about to be given a 'normal meal', something she cannot eat now as she is on a NHS Level Five diet.  They also didn't realise that she is completely bedbound, doubly incontinent and has dementia, so is unreliable to ask any medical questions of, hence them being told by her that yes she can have any sort of food.

I had a good chat with her nurse and then we had to come away as you can't visit during lunch time.  You wouldn't think that this was that stressful really, well I wouldn't have years ago, but when it's been going on in one form or another for over two and half years on a very regular basis it's starting to have a real build up effect.

I sent an email to the care home when I got home, not complaining as such but asking why I wasn't phoned this time, and also suggesting they had some sort of Patient Passport type document, just a photocopy from their file, that could travel to hospital with residents when necessary to give the nursing staff at least a head start.  It would save a lot of stress.  It turns out they have this in place already, although the system keeps letting them down and the document goes missing somewhere between the paramedics and the A&E staff and then never makes it to the ward.  They are now going to be raising this matter urgently.

I needed to get all this down in writing so that I have it for future reference, and my blog seemed as good a place as any. 

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.  😄

Sue xx

'There's a Woman in My Mirror ...'

 

Art by Lisa Asiata

There’s a woman in my mirror

And she looks a lot like me,

Though there’s lines around her eyes,

And her hair is wild and free.

She is plumper than myself,

And she is definitely grey.

Did I miss the day this happened

Has she always been this way?

And this woman in the mirror

Has an air of something calm,

Like a tide that’s going out,

And a beach that’s soft and warm.

She has seen the world in colour,

She has learned to know the truth.

There’s a wisdom in her wrinkles,

There’s a knowledge brought from youth.

And she seems to move more freely,

As though released from earthly binds.

Is she made of something lighter?

Perhaps the weight she left behind.

Like the press of expectation,

And the need to yield and bend.

I like this woman in the mirror,

She’s fast becoming my best friend.

Donna Ashworth

From ‘to the women’:

https://amzn.eu/d/0j4xR15k

Tomato Ketchup Jackpot ... and Books

 

Alan hit the tomato ketchup jackpot today when we went to Booths for breakfast.

The guys that are rendering the outside of our bungalow couldn't come and do anymore today due to the heavy rain that we currently have.  So Alan said he fancied a later more leisurely start to the day, and a bacon butty and a coffee in Booths while we had a catch up on all things renovation related, before he headed to the bungalow to continue stripping the wallpaper off the ceilings.

He ordered his usual bacon bun and was given two tomato ketchup sachets without asking, and as I have him so well trained he just accepted them without question.

They were added to my little stash as soon as I got home.  I haven't had to buy ketchup for a long time now.    

Yes, they are all lined up in date order ... I am that organised. 😁

On the way out of Booths we have to pass the charity book table, and after weeks and weeks of me being very good and not buying anything, suddenly there were four books that looked well worth a read.  So they came home with me too.  It was only when I got home that I remembered I was being so good so that we would have less books to move house with.

Oh well, at least I have my reading mojo back at the moment, so I will continue to donate all the books that I read that are deemed not really worth keeping.

The book I am currently reading, which also came from the book table a while ago.

What are you reading at the moment?

Sue xx