Images of the 1950s

I’m in the midst of doing yet another jigsaw, another compendium one. This time the subject is the 1950s.

Central to the picture is the image of a petrol ration book, dated March 1957. That surprised me as I understood rationing finished in 1954. But was that only food rationing? Or was petrol still in short supply so rationed? Or even was it re-introduced with the Suez crisis in 1956? I certainly don’t remember my father having a ration book although as long as I can remember he did drive. Admittedly we didn’t come back to live in England until autumn/winter 1957 so maybe the rationing had ceased by then. I do, however, remember ration books being issued in the early 1970s when the OPEC crisis occurred and there was a risk of petrol becoming in short supply. However, I don’t think the rationing ever began.

Needless to say the highlight of the 1950s portrayed in this jigsaw is the coronation of the queen. I supposed for us Brits that has to be the abiding memory of the time. For many years I had a handkerchief of the coronation with the royal coach going around the edge. My mother & brother were in England at the time & watched the ceremony on early TV. At that time I was a glint in my mother’s eye. She discovered on that trip that she was pregnant with me.

I was surprised to discover I could still recognise the young Stirling Moss, in a hand-tinted photo, in his racing car. I was a big fan of his in the 1950s – my brother backed Jim Clark.

I boggled even more at the image of people sitting on sands with Tower Bridge in the background. Apparently an artificial beach was put on the Thames in London. I would have thought the water of the Thames was so filthy those days nobody would want to go swimming in it.

I find myself smiling at a little girl in what was obviously a home knitted swimsuit. I can’t help giggling a bit over the Fox’s description of the pair of trunks his mother made for him that stretched all over the place as they got wet. His was clearly not the only mother that knitted swimwear in those days.

I’ve just been doing a bit on Anthony Eden. It had never struck me before what a natty dresser he was. The smart, well-fitted, double-breasted suit just had to him, so much smarter than the suit on Winston Churchill stood next to him, or the one on John Foster Dulles, the American Secretary of State, visiting Downing Street.

How times have changed!