Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 10:27 am Post subject: Our Hidden Lives.
I watched a very enjoyable programme last night on BBC 4.
It was called "Our Hidden Lives", and starred Richard Briers, and Lesley Sharp.
It was based on the diaries of real people written just after the Second World War, when the Government of the Day, set up the "Mass Observation Unit", where they asked ordinary people to write down their doings and thoughts in a form of Journal and they were asked to submit these writings to the Mass Observation Unit.
The main things that featured strongly between all five of the people whose Diaries were featured, was the almost permanent hunger that they suffered, along with shortages of almost everything. Also featured strongly was the Authorities attitudes towards homosexuality, how easy it was for "Agents Provocatures" to entrap unsuspecting victims at Public Conveniences, or "Cottages" as they were then called.
There were mentioned instances of men, in their seventies being sent to prison for "ten years of penal servitude", just for so-called indecent acts with another man.
By the early Fifties, most people seemed resigned to things never improving, and food being always on ration.
It seems that although we "won" the War, we still duffered chronic shortages and hardship for many years afterwards.
It also showed people, families. wearing their overcoats indoors, during the Winter, as there was also shortages of Coal and other fuels.
I, personally, can still remember Ration Books, and I think that sweets were the last thing to come off rations.
Things didn't start to improve until the mid fifties, and from then on, by the Sixties, the War Years were well and truly behind us.
I didn't see the series Sandie, but I've still got my ration book from when I was a kid ! Did you ever see the TV sereis Housewife 49 starring Victoria Wood as Nella Last from Barrow in Furness and her Mass Observation diaries ?
I really enjoyed it.
Yes, Ken, I did watch that series, and it was really good. The immediate Post War years are so often overlooked by modern Historians, yet it was a very interesting, if austere, period of our lives. _________________ http://sewardchronicles.ning.com/
They also issued petrol coupons during the Oil Crisis, based on the size of your car. I had some of those for ages, long after that particular vehicle went to the great scrapyard in the sky.
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