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