Saturdays no 3

This was our big, lumbering family-style car.  It was a VW Passat.  We bought it when Sam was on the way and I could no longer fit my bulk behind the wheel of our lovely MG Midget sports car.  I still regret parting with our Midget.  It drove like a dream with the best heating you can imagine.  It was perfectly possible to have the top down in snowy weather and still be warm and toasty.  In fact we did this often!

Driving in the new Passat felt like travelling around in a lounge, it was so roomy.  It also weighed a ton and steered like a cow.  I believe they have improved somewhat since then.  It was also solid, safe, waterproof and never went wrong, which was all quite different from the Midget!  Great for carting kids about, in fact.

Jim used to do the shopping because he didn't trust me to do it right.  I admit that I wasn't the best shopper, but I am sure I could have learned.
I once had to do the food shopping (before kids)  when Jim had mumps.  He says I came back with cleaning products and cat food.  I have to say I don't remember this, and therefore deny it hotly.

Even now I only shop for food if he is incapacitated.  It takes hours because they have always reorganised the aisles in the supermarket since the last time I shopped, so I can't find stuff.  I think it is a secret supermarket plot to get people to walk miles in search of their food so that they will be hungry and buy more.

Jim loves to cook.  He likes to feed people too. When we were first married he had been cooking his own food for years.  He says he rebelled when his mum provided tinned ravioli on toast with instant mashed potato for the main family meal.  My mum was and still is a fantastic cook so I never had occasion to go in the kitchen.  I just hung round the outskirts getting mixing bowls to lick out.  I left home to get married at 18 so learned nothing of cooking.  In my first two weeks of marriage, I cooked chicken for 15 minutes from frozen under a hot grill, made creme brulee which we drank through a staw, and burned a salad.
Then he took over.  Result.

Saturdays no 2

Here we are having second breakfast!  More tea, with toast and marmalade if I remember correctly.

I really don't know why Jim is sitting in that peculiar position. Could be to emphasise the revolting slippers again.  People don't warn you about things like that before you get married.  I think they should.

Sam is impatient to have a book

It was the longest distance from the bedroom to the bathroom of any two rooms in the house.  Our bedroom was right at the top and front of the house,  with the bathroom downstairs in the back extension.   We had to go down the stairs, and through the hall, dining room and kitchen to get to the bathroom.

Sam hated it if we were both occupied at the weekends.  He seemed to think we were at his disposal.  Which, of course, we were!

I thought about this before I put it up!

Jim wasn't sure about me showing his horrible slippers to the world (potentially)  and likewise I was not sure about showing the enormous baby bump!  I have seen that lots of young mums nowadays wear more revealing and figure hugging maternity clothes instead of the voluminous smocks we wore, so I don't think this will cause offence!

I had such a bad back with this baby, something to do with joints in my pelvis?  I do know that it hurt to walk and made an unpleasant grating noise which was better if I waddled.  I waddled a lot.  I found it hard to do anything to my feet, including putting socks on, or even finding them.

Saturdays no 1

Sam wakes up

At this stage I was still trying to finish the week in pictures to teach Sam the days in order.  I hoped the routine would give him a better idea about the passage of time.

I know now that you can't hurry these things, and they learn it all too soon anyway, no matter what you do.  Still, I am glad I made the drawings because they are fun to look back on and I kept doing them for that reason, long after they weren't needed any more.

Sam comes to find us

Sam used to feel really grown up coming to find us in the morning.  He used to bring all his soft toys and his little cover with him.

I made the little cover for him as a pram blanket.  I used old dresses and scraps from dressmaking projects to make a patchwork,  so it was very haphazard.  One good thing was that if it wore out I could just replace bits of it from the stock fabric in the loft!  I had re-made it at least 4 times by the time he left home.

Once Sam arrived in our room whoever's turn it was would go downstairs and make the drinks.  We had lovely chocolate biscuits as a snack to start the day.  I found out far too late that they were rather high calorie. Like Hobbits, we had second breakfast later on...

On Saturdays there was time for a particularly extended and sleepy wolf game, also known as lookout games.

Sam didn't know what a wolf looked like.  By the look of this picture, neither did I.

Friday in 1990 episode 4

It was always nice when Jim came home.  When we were both working, we worked in the same part of London and travelled up and back together, as well as meeting for lunch.  We really missed that when I stopped work so any time together was very valuable.

We had been used to having dinner together after work, at around 8pm.  When Sam arrived, we used to give him nursery tea at 5.30, then Jim would cook something for us later.   In retrospect, this was a bad idea as it was too easy to get into the habit of not eating with Sam.  We did eat together on  Fridays and all weekend though, so we tried.

It looks like Jim is standing in a dip here!  I am afraid it is just bad drawing, although the kitchen did have a 3 inch step down because it used to be the scullery.

The house was built in 1902, so originally had no bathroom or indoor toilet.  There was a coal hole in the kitchen when we moved in, and a large double coal bunker in the garden.  All the fireplaces were still intact so if there was a power cut, we were ok.  The one in the dining room smoked terribly, but also gave out a lot of heat. We really only used the one in the lounge, which was a good drawer.

Even Sam's tiny bedroom had a small cast iron fireplace with a mini hearth about 18 inches square.  It had a cast iron flap in the flue which you could close to stop draughts.

Jim was desperate to spend time playing with Sam.  He would play with the Lego as soon as he could after work.  Most of the fun for me was listening to them talk together - Sam was like a little old man in the way he spoke sometimes.  I think Jim played with Sam more than most fathers because he felt he never had enough attention from his parents as a child, so he wanted to make sure his children were not deprived of his time.

Friday in 1990 episode 5

On Fridays Auntie Carol, my sister, came to see us for tea.  She was and is a very pretty girl (I still think of her as a girl despite the 53 years I have known her!).  I was always so jealous of her almost white blond hair.  I only had a yellow pencil so that's why it's like that in the picture.  By the way, Sam had white blond hair as well.  He still has it, and the most gorgeous blue film star eyes you ever saw.  He would say that his luck gave out after that!

He waved his sword at everyone.  He has a full sized replica claymore now, which he still waves about from time to time, but not unless he is a long way from everyone else!  As he is still only 26 I have put it in the loft until he is more mature.

Sam was at this time waiting for his first bout of heart surgery.  We had to wait for his lungs to grow after he had his lung artery improved when he was 18 months old.  He was supposed to blow the bubbles to help his lungs, so I used to get a few going as he wasn't very good at getting them big enough to float around.  I used to let him have a go too.  Eventually.  Honest.

That bathroom!  Horrible, cold place with three outside walls and a flat roof!  The walls are brown because, in a vain attempt to warm it up and insulate it, we put  cork floor tiles on all the walls.  Probably should have bought a lighter shade.

The carpet was made of vile rubber-backed felt tiles that moved around if you couldn't walk like a ninja.  No one in our family has ever walked like a ninja.

Wolf games!  Sam always played this game in our bed.  When he came in to our room first thing he would snuggle in and start.  "Ssh!  What is it?  It's a wolf!  Quick, hide!" It involved us all getting under the covers and being very quiet.  He never twigged that we were trying to go back to sleep!  After a bit of snoring on our part, we would have to go and get breakfast, or if it was the weekend, drinks in bed.  Such luxury!

He was always trying to get a wolf game whenever he passed our bed. Especially if he knew it was his bedtime.  He would become very charming and use all the long words he could think of.  He hoped that we would be so fascinated, we would forget to send him to bed.  It didn't work.

Sam was very insistent that Auntie Carol  had to come up and listen to him saying his prayers.  He usually put her in anyway, but I think he wanted her to know!

Aah!  The songs!

There were three songs that HAD to be sung before he could go to sleep.  Away in a Manger, even in the height of summer, a little lullaby called Sleep Gently My Own One and Stay Awake from Mary Poppins.  After I had sung these he was out for the count in seconds.  It was like Pavlov's dogs, just sing the songs and he would sleep anywhere!

I think Carol was dieting...

Friday in 1990 episode 3

Here is Sam watching Thomas the Tank Engine.  He really liked dressing up as a brave knight in his play time.  He had a plastic breastplate as well.

That Brownie is still behind the curtain.  It was a bit like "Where's Wally" in these cartoons.

I haven't drawn in the video player, but I think that was just laziness on my part because it says he was watching a tape!

Fridays were quite busy because I was always trying to do everything so that we could go out at the weekend, when Jim was home.

Sam liked most foods , but was ornery* and always took the opportunity to say he wanted something else.  Hence my rather harsh response!

Looks like he needed a haircut at the time this was drawn...

I have always hated washing up.

Especially weetabixy plates.  In fact any kind of plates.  Saucepans are pretty awful as well.  Don't much like washing up cups or mugs either.  Cutlery sucks.

On the other hand, dishwashers are wonderful.

* ornery means contrary in disposition, amongst other things.  It was a word my mother used to describe stubborn or difficult behaviour especially if it involved the word "no" from the child.

It was such a relief when Jim got home each night!  I was thrilled to have someone to look after Sam so I could go to the loo in peace, or rest.

Jim was a civil servant in those days and had a plastic official briefcase with EIIR stamped on it in gold paint.

I am wearing  a blue corduroy sack, and a 1970s recycled dress as a pinny.  I blame my grandmother for the pinny.  It came from a lovely and very expensive dress which I wore to a disco in 1975 with a date who was a student at the London School of Economics.  It wasn't a good disco, and he was an even worse date.  His breath smelled of Evo-stik -  I later found that all dates did after a few beers!  The dress was the best bit, and my mum at some stage gave it to my granny to make aprons.  I was gutted when I found out, and even getting one of the aprons didn't really help.  I still have the apron, and yes, I still wear it.

Friday in 1990 episode 2

The plastic  sword was probably a mistake, but Sam loved the whole "brave knight" thing.

Isn't being pregnant with the second so much more difficult than the first?  I was in full time work in central London the first time and stopped 2 weeks before the baby was born.  It was fine.  He was 2 weeks early but I was a bit gung-ho about it all. Travelling on the train and tube in the rush hour through Clapham Junction was interesting, but I used my brief case as a shield and people were good about offering me a seat.  (Thank you, the young man with the purple Mohican haircut).

The second time around I was simply enormous.  I fainted when I laid down on my back towards the end.  I was constantly exhausted - always looking for somewhere to lie down!  Sam was not really a demanding child, but he wanted to play all the time, and I was his only playmate in the day.  Looks like the cat suffered too.

When we moved in to this house in 1981 (horribly cold winter,  no central heating) we got a home improvement grant as there was no kitchen.  We had £200 to pay for it, so to make it stretch, I put the kitchen in myself.  I bought the cheapest and most basic units which were white laminate with aluminium handles along the tops.  We had no room for wall cupboards.  The fridge freezer wobbled because of the old gas pipe which I hadn't been able to saw off properly  (it was cast iron and too tough).  I had terrible trouble with the plumbing because I forgot to allow for bends in the pipe so the taps were in the wrong place.  A rookie error as it turns out!

The kitchen was really a bit tired by 1990, but we had finally got around to putting the lino down so it seemed quite luxurious compared to bare concrete.

Sam at nearly 4 years old was a bit bolshy about going to bed in the day.  I think I needed the rest more than he did by then, so it was a purely selfish act to make him go!

He still hadn't quite got the courage to get out of bed once he had been put there.  I look back and feel so mean!