Good morning from the U.S.! I was diagnosed with PMR in September of 2020; started on 20mg prednisone and am currently on 11.25mg, planning on tapering to 10mg next week. I had an issue with tapering from 15mg to 12.5mg, and ended up going back up to 15mg and staying there through the holidays, with the blessing of my rheumy. This site has been unbelievably helpful and is the first thing I look at every morning.
Now to the reason for my post! I was born and raised in the U.K. (Hertfordshire) until I was 12yrs old. and my family emigrated to the U.S. Reading your posts brings back fond memories of my life then; walking round to the shops with my Mum every other day; the green grocer, the butcher; hanging laundry on the line (we only had a wringer washing machine and no dryer); watching the coal truck make a delivery into the coal bin.........
(Reading back what I just typed made me realize that these memories are obviously those of a child because it sure looks like it was a lot of work for my Mum! ) Anyway, just wanted to say that some of your posts bring a smile to my face! Currently sitting in my kitchen having coffee and watching the snow falling outside, a little envious of DL's 'coffee in the garden'!
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SallyLeon
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Hi, Glad we bring back some good memories....and yes our mums did have it a lot harder than we do...
...ditto to the wringer washing machine! Good old hotpoint, looked like a dustbin on wheels - green in colour, and had to wheeled in front of the sink, so the clothes could be put through the wringer into to sink to rinse, then back through the other way... and my job to catch them in a bowl/washing basket so they didn’t fall in the kitchen floor!
Coalman carrying a sack round to the back of the house, to throw coal into coal shed - just by the back door.
Another glorious day in Dorset ☀️....sorry 🤦🏻♀️....even though have a washer-dryer, managed to gets sheets dry outdoors today.
Our coal was tipped out at the top of a long path, beside the road. Some of the lumps must have been over 2ft cubed - and my father and grandfather wheeled them down to the coalhouse at the end of the house and then hammered them into pieces small enough to use!
When I was about five one of my toys was - a laundry set: galvanized bucket, washboard, a toy but working wringer (mangle?) Mangle is an apt name as you are likely to be mangled by it. Way to socialize a little girl into doing labour intensive women's work! I've read that of all modern conveniences, the automatic washing machine has been the one which has actually saved us time and effort. Mind you, I suppose the machines of the 50s were a big step up from beating the clothes against a rock and spreading them out over shrubbery to dry!
To avoid breaking buttons here was also a lot of wringing by hand, often done over the garden. I remember being very impressed by how much extra water my gran could extract, after I'd tried with all my might!
Yes, I agree with “taper slowly” advice. Right now I’m on 1.25 mg pred (splitting a 2.50 mg pill in half). I’ve been very slowly reducing my doses during my 4+ years of PMR, per the advice and testimonials of many on this site, including the “pros,” who I am certainly very grateful for as well. After reading your post (been away far too long) I’m resonating with how relieved I too was to first discover this online group of PMR affected people —super helpful to my progress and health today. I also live in the US. Though I don’t share in the U.K. based “Mangle” memories, I recall helping both of my Grandmas use wringer washers and I too used one for a summer in Austria during my 20’s. My hubby and I haven’t had a dryer for 15 or so years now, using racks in winter downstairs and now in 30+ degree (F) fresh-smelling clothes/sheets off the lines in warmer weather now. Even with new snow, the sheets are out there! Re: Pred doses, I am remembering back to when I’ve been at 15 mg and had to jump back up after trying to drop to 12 or even 10 — too big of a drop meant trouble for me usually. And now, the lower Mg levels seem to call for tinier reduction increments, but after several weeks on 1.25, I’m ready to take the plunge to 1 mg. I feel grateful to be functioning just fine at this level and hope 1 mg works out ok. I’m looking forward to when I’m done with prednisone but have to listen to my body and pay attention to added stress at work/home. No flares allowed! The best of luck to you!!
I was brought up in a Victorian terrace that wasn't modernised until 1963, and it retained most of the original features. The washing was done in a built-in copper in what my grandmother called "the scullery". The copper was huge and the colour of a pumice-stone, was heated by a coal fire behind a hatched metal door and, on washing-day, it alarmingly filled the whole house with the smell of steaming soap suds. Then out came the mangle!
Living room had a black range on the top of which you could heat irons, or make tea if you stoked the fire up enough.
Interested if anyone else recalls anything like this.
Well, we could have lived next door! Scullery, copper-whites in first, then coloureds, then dark. We did have a gas cooker in there. The tin bath was brought in from its place in the back yard and filled with hot water from the copper. The scullery was off the kitchen where our big black range was situated. Our Mum used to put our slippers in a space at the side in the winter for when we arrived home after walking back from school and freezing cold. Kitchen was our dining/living room and also housed a Singer sewing machine with treadle. Dad sat in a big armchair after work and my sister and I could fit in each side of him and we begged him to tell us about 'Oliver Twist'...again and again. Front room was used on special days when the gate-leg table was opened out. I could go on but would probably be thrown off the forum!
Yes, there was a gas stove, had forgotten that, and a cold-water sink with worrying - at my eye level - cobwebs underneath. The scullery was quite a large room and, when it was modernised with hot water, etc, we then started calling it the kitchen!
Gas? What was that! There was a boiler in the kitchen and a blackleaded grate in the living room. We got a Rayburn when I was 6 - late 50s. Which was bliss in the winter to lean against the bar and have a warm back!
That was really living it up! We used to have a paraffin heater in the bedroom to warm up the room in the coldest weeks of winter. Mum used to leave it on for five minutes after we were in bed and the light switched off so we could look at the patterns its light made on the ceiling. No health and safety in those days!
No heating upstairs in our house! There were 2 open fireplaces but never used. You undressed and dressed under the bedclothes and had a hot water bottle. I used to thaw out the ice on the inside of the windows with my hands. The joys of rural England in the 1950s!
Can remember that in the early 1970s when we lived in married quarters on Salisbury Plain! You had to be hardy to be an army family in those days...little or no heating in the bedrooms! Wouldn’t stand for it nowadays.
And not just rural England. We lived in a big old early Victorian pile in Islington, London. As you say unheated rooms and it was often warmer outside than in the house. Once those places got cold it took a looong time for them to warm up again
You're certainly right about it being more up-market now. The family home was in the top end of Hornsey Rd and unfortunately my brother managed to turn it into a derelict ruin - literally. We only realised just how bad it was after he became incapable of living on his own any more. You could actually see the sky by looking up through the ceiling. However, derelict as it was it still fetched nigh on £1M from a developer.
I'm not surprised. I hope some original features survived. Hornsey Road! We used to go to the swimming baths there, come out and buy a penny (1d) slice of bread each - about 2" thick- and a bag of chips between us. A carrot from the greengrocer was 3 farthings and we used to munch on them-unwashed, peel and all. Happy Days!
I grew up in US, our upstairs did not get any heat from the coal furnace in the basement. Freezing cold in the winter, ice on the inside of the windows. My Mother had a wring washer & I remember catching the clothes as they came through the winger. We did not get a gas furnace until I was nineteen. Mom never had a automatic washer until she lived in an Apartment & used the laundry at the apt.
In retrospect perhaps being one of the fathers of the petroleum industry not so great after all! Climate change really affecting us. We had another rainstorm last night. Should have been snow, would have been snow once upon a time. I woke up with a raging headache which is no doubt due to air pressure changes, but of course nowadays I always have to have a little worry about GCA 🙄 until the aspirin kicks in.
Yes, we can see now the effects of all these 'new fangled' things which initially made things easier and quicker. If only we knew then what we know now. Would it have made a difference?
I suppose if early hominids hadn't kicked off the Stone Age we'd never have created great art, so, like managing PMR, I suppose we have to take the bad with the good! Too much bad at the moment, hope we pull out of this crisis as we have through all those in the past.
We also had a paraffin heater on the 2nd floor landing which my Dad lit before we went to bed for 30 minutes or so. To this day I have to sleep in a really cool bedroom because that's what I was used to growing up.
Yes, me too , have to have blankets at night . Grew up in Upstate NY near Great Lake Ontario. The only upstairs heat came from a register in the hall floor that allowed heat to travel up through ceiling to the hallway. Not much , the fire was "banked" for the night. But sleeping in a big bed with two sisters helped keep us cozy. Here I am in balmy So, Calfornia and my big indulgence is running the AC very low at night when everyone else is turning theirs off. If sleepless it always works. Turn up the AC and throw a quilt over me!. I'm gone! Sleep well.
Me too! The one thing I can't cope with is a warm bedroom - unfortunately my MIL had more money than common sense and her idea was to turn the heating up not wear a pullover or add a blanket. So OH does the same! In this house HE turns the thermostat up and I come behind and turn it down ...
You know all this thing about weighted blankets? Maybe just an extra ordinary one with less heating does the same?
Ditto warm bedroom! Trying to find a Christmas present suitable for niece with ME/CFS and 90% confined to bed, came across weighted blanket at reduced price. She loves it! Ridiculous price but did the job for her. Also gave DIL who suffers with weekly migraines weighted eye mask. She said it's the best present she's ever had and helps greatly with sleeping. I don't think I could bear sleeping beneath anything weighted but each to his own.
Among my earliest memories in Africa (Nyasaland now Malawi) was tin bath. The excitement when a big white bathtub came, with place for taps and drain hole, didn't know what they were.... I was three. Kerosene lanterns for lighting.
Ah, yes! I remember my Mum's Singer with the treadle....my Dad also sat in a huge armchair by the fire, and we used to sit on a Sunday and listen to stories on the radio. Good memories.....
What a lovely reply! I'm about 10 years younger and schoolfriends' houses were all modernised. The copper was too much but I loved the multi-function black range, which really was the heart of the home. Bread, toast, stockinged feet up on it, keep yer tea warm...
Bit 'late to the table', but my grandmother had a huge black lead range in the 'scullery'. She used to cook a goose every xmas in the oven and I remember helping to stoke the fire regularly to keep the cooking temperature regular. She also would dry her washing on something called a creel......an overhead 'hanger' on a pulley that was lowered from the ceiling. Her 'fridge' was literally a door leading into a long narrow passage with stone shelves and no windows and was the chilliest place in her old Victorian terrace.. it was VERY spooky and my sister and I were extremely reluctant to fetch things when asked! Life was much harder work then, but somehow more gratifying in many ways......not everything was 'done for you' and perhaps there was more of a sense of a job well done because of that extra effort required. Still........happy memories of a much simpler time.
Oh!!!..... and my mum's twin tub???? Well I remember when the spin dryer sometimes would 'go rogue's and not spin properly and the whole kitchen would shake and vibrate too!!!😄😄
OH's daughter and sister still have and use a Creel and our fridge was very similar. No upstairs heating and well remember ice on the inside of the windows, coke run boiler in kitchen did supply hot water.The coalman used to deliver Coke for the boiler and coal for the downstairs fires. Think that later became "Welsh Nuts" followed by smokeless "Anthracite". We did have a hot water "geezer" over the bath so we were always able to have a hot bath daily. Dad always washed at the sink. As you say a much simpler time.
That brought back more memories.... the coal fire in main living room and the Baxi fire in the front room....coke fuelled. I remember the coal man filling up the bunker at the bottom of the garden. Dad would put old hessian bags down as he had to carry the sacks across our lawn and he didn't want the lawn ruining! 😄
My Dad carried a sack of coal on his back a mile when I had measles and the doctor who came in to see me (remember those days?) said a fire had to be kept going night and day. I never ever asked where he got that coal from! Thinking back we must have been hard-up or there would have been coal in the cellar. Or was there a shortage in the late 40s?
A hot bath DAILY???? You must have been very rich/posh
We had a dairy at one end of the house - with a 6in thick slate shelf. It wasn't "put the milk in the fridge", it was "put it on the slate". No shop to confuse the type of slate ... And I'm sure we had a freezer before we got a fridge.
Definitely not posh or rich. Think we had fridge first, might have had a little freezer section in the top, but not sure that might have been a later one. I do remember a double coal bunker, one for the coke and one for the coal. We were in the new smokeless zone when it came in so had to change to the new and of course more expensive, types of coal. No more "proper" coal.
Don't know where he got it from but dad came home with an icrecream freezer from somewhere. The bliss of frozen runner beans instead of salted ones!!!!
Off our kitchen we had a larder which had a thick stone slab which was cold all of the time. Most items that needed to be kept cold were put in the larder, and we had a really small freezer as well. I remember the ice cream truck coming around on a Sunday and we would bring a bowl out to have him cut a block of ice cream and we would eat it immediately!
When you think how VERY hard our parents/grandparents worked - everything was physical - just everything - and both my mother and grandmother were houseproud!!
I wonder sometimes if that is why I have very aggressive arthritis. I've never had to work hard. I've had cleaners for 55 years and worked with my brain (even that wouldn't work these days).😂😂
Haha! My brain too!!Yes.....there was far less obesity and obesity-related disease and illness (although there were other horrors like smallpox etc) and this was probably due to life being far more physical and active than it is now.
Was it? You ate what you could get. Some were lucky, some not. There weren't processed foods of course and lots of unspoiled veg, but 'getting them' was the difficulty.
That is true, but sadly, it is also true today but leaving that part aside I think the quality of the food we ate was on the whole better for us. Perhaps I should change that to be, it is a lot easier today to eat food that is bad for you.
I'm amazed that the moderators have allowed this post to carry on so long. However, it has been so 'uplifting' that it has helped to cheer us up and be able to forget our pains and discomfort. Thank you Mods👏💐
As with many ailments the mental health issues that can go with our illness can be/are as important as the medication we take by the bucket load. These posts are and/or can be equally as important to help with those issues and I'm sure our moderators understand that.
The thread has also raised health related issues such as the comparative levels of physical activity, and quality and quantity of food.
We've talked about the hard "women's work", and about coalmen, etc, but even men who worked in an office would come home and maintain a productive vegetable garden or allotment. Wonder what they would have made of gymns? People managed to be strong then but without bulging muscles that they knew the names of!
Yes, that is very true, my Mum was a nurse but Dad worked in an office environment, even though some it was outside work and we had a veg patch in the garden and a full size allotment, which the pair of us managed to set alight one day. Those were the days.
The diet on ration books in the war was the healthiest diet the UK has ever eaten. Snacking wasn't a "thing" - you ate your meal and then nothing until the next one. Snacks and the need for them was a marketing ploy to get people to buy the early junk food.
Ha ha! My sister used to sit her toddler son on the spin dryer ( just for a minute or two) - his giggles were infectious. We had a coal cellar that ran beneath the hall (passage). My Mum used to stand jelly in a bowl covered by a plate on the top step to set. Every now and then we used to go and shake the bowl. When the jelly wobbled it was set. Scary, creepy place: never ventured very far down those steps. Larder set back in the passage was huge. Dried foods were in labelled jars. I was very fond of stealing raisins and sultanas!
I'd forgotten about the overhead drying contraption, and was wondering how the drying was done when it couldn't be done outside. Name doesn't ring a bell tho. Also remember there being a clothes horse put in the living room in front of the range, which disrupted my game of marbles...
Twin tub would usually do a little solo dance on the uneven stone floor!
In Toowoomba, Queensland, I remember my Nanna on washing day. Grandad would be up at dawn to light the fire under the copper, outdoors near the bottom of the back stairs. He then filled the copper with water and in would go the washing powder and sheets first, probably because they were white. Nanna would stand with the washing stick pushing the sheets around in the water. The washing stick was then used to lift the clean sheets out of the copper, weighing a ton, into the wooden trolley, made by Grandad, and he would wheel it into the little shed where the wash tubs were full of water, and he would rinse and then hand wring them. Of course, before he retired, Nanna did it all. Now we open a lid, drop in the washing and press a button. Two generations later, my granddaughters, 31 and 32, would be aghast at the thought. Aren't memories wonderful.
I was rather frightened of our coal man, with his coal covered face. We had a Walls Ice cream man on a bike, a rag and bone man, who gave you a gold fish. Also a man on a bike with strings of onions, whom we called an onion Johnny. When I tell my children, I feel such a relic.
Yes, I found something elementally frightening about coalmen: the coal-blackened face and clothes, the broad back bent double beneath the weight of the sack. As if they, like the coal, had come up from the depths of the earth. And then there were the sweeps, who actually came into the house! I'm sure they all scrubbed up lovely in the zinc bath though...
Oh yes!!!......the rag & bone man! He'd repeatedly shout out something completely indecipherable as he guided his horse and cart up and down our road. To this day, I've no idea what it was he was saying!!😂😂
I always thought he was calling out "Rainbow" Years later it dawned on me that it was "Rag and bones" The milkman had a pony and cart too. My grandpa used to rush out with a shovel if the pony performed anywhere nearby and put the manure in his waterbutt. The evil smelling result produced really good tomatoes....
Stone hotwater bottles. Scrubbed wooden kitchen table. Bread swirled round the bottom of the frying pan to catch the last drops of bacon fat. Dripping! Goodness me , how it all comes back!
Twas I who was sent out with bucket and spade. Went on the roses. I loved dripping on toast. The jelly bit was a special treat. Mind you it was not all haute cuisine. Sprouts cooked for a very long time and were squashed with a large darning mushroom type thing to get rid of the water.
Very nice post. What a blessing this site has been to this lifelong midwesterner. Have to admit I've had to look up the meaning of a few of the UK words and a few I could only guess. My first and only introduction to different cultures except short vacations in Mexico. Go slow with the taper and listen to the great advice here. Best wishes to you.
Thank you so much for setting off this thread. Fascinating memories. Just need a trigger.....
Oh what memories as above. Mine is the sweep coming and saying to me look for the brush coming out of chimney. Unknown to him I went into coal bunker, wiped my hands with coal dust and went back indoors saying I reached it.
As a child, I was given a little box of handkerchiefs. Each was for a day of the week with an accompanying embroidery of a female figure carrying out the assigned task for the day. I don't remember what every day was, but Monday was washday, Wednesday was ironing and Thursday was for beating the carpets. They would be put out on railings or over the washing line and beaten with a flat paddle-like cane device. I remember hearing neighbours out in their back gardens whacking away at their carpets all at the end of the week (it would have been against all neighbourhood code to beat your carpets when people had their washing out to dry at the beginning of the week). I was evidently being groomed to be a "good" housewife.
Back gardens then had a communal aspect, with low fences, and neighbourhood codes, as you call them. Now people consider them more as outdoor rooms, with high fences, and, on that basis, start up their barbecues whenever they want.
Good morning to you too ! What a lovely upbeat message to start the day ! Hope your wean continues to be successful. My childhood was spent in Dover up a steep hill and I have memories of thick snow and sledging with scarfs wrapped around our necks and then crossed over and tied behind our backs to keep our chests warm !
What a wonderful thread you have set off! Memories of my childhood have flooded back - in a room we called by its original name - the scullery - we had an electric cooker, and a small immersion heater over the sink, and a wooden drying board, a green Hotpoint washing machine with mangle. A toilet in the corner. A partioned-off area where the coal was kept.
I must stop. What I wanted to suggest is that you take a look at the plans for tapering the dose of Pred. at a slower rate than you are moving at at the moment. They can be found under the 'Topics' menu on the right of this window.
What amazing memories of our childhoods and so many similarities. I was brought up in the North East of England and my dad worked in the Durham coalfield. He used to travel 3 miles under the sea, on a little train, to the place where they dug out the coal. He worked shifts and had chronic bronchitis all his life. I remember when I was a child hearing him get up in the middle of the night to do what they called the "early shift" and hearing the sound of his pit boots on the path and him coughing as he walked to the end of the street. Sometimes I would lie in bed and cry and pray that he came back safe. Luckily he always did!
You are all right about how hard our parents worked. Imagine leaving school at 14, working at the pit, fighting in the war then coming back to spend the rest of your working life down the mine. Our coal got dropped at the gate, 15 cwt my dad used to say. My sisters and I used to help our mam to shovel it into buckets and carry it to the coal house when we got in from school.
Around 1956 we got a Hotpoint Empress washing machine which was cream, enormous and had an electric ringer and you had to be careful not to get your finger stuck in it. Quite often women with black finger nails would say they got it stuck in the ringer!
Monday was the main washing day, regardless of the weather and there was "war on" if anyone in the street let their chimney go on fire. I remember my mam bringing sheets in off the line to wash them again. The coal lorry never came to drop coal on a Monday for that reason. It was an unwritten rule.
We had an open fire with an oven at the side and this was a new council house built in 1957. Our mam hated cooking on the fire and the side oven so eventually she got a gas cooker and she thought she was the bees knees because she had an "eye level grill". Now we could have cheese on toast but my dad just saw it as more debt. Still no TV, that came 2 years later.
I imagine none of us were "spoiled" and we were used to not having our own way all of the time. I'm glad I was born in that era.
You lived out towards the coast then? I have a house in Pity Me, We lived there for a few months before coming here - moved from the posh bit closer to the hospital where I never felt accepted or at home. Funny place Durham. The little terrace of houses was a far preferable world!
I lived in Houghton-Le-Spring and went to school in Durham city. My dad worked at Eppleton colliery and was from Hetton-Le-Hole. I know Pity Me. I moved to France for the sun but I love Durham and the City is my favourite place ever. Great memories of the Durham Miners' Gala and I was there just a couple of years ago, educating my teenage grand daughter. She loved it too.
Loved reading your post ! I grew up in Australia and still miss the sun, even though I live in southern U.S. I remember the egg man and bakery man coming regularly by the house and my outings with my Mum to the City for a day of shopping and lunch. My Mum shopped locally several times a week so that we had fresh produce from the greengrocer's shopn etc. Yes, it was harder on women in those days, we are so lucky to have all our modern appliances. I learnt to love and cherish the outdoors through my parents, especially Mum
My contribution ? Does anyone remember Blue bag or Bluing which was in a little bag and put in the copper with the soap flakes ( no detergent ) to whiten the sheets ? I sometimes used to be taken with my twin over to my Grandmother's house on a Sunday so we could help with the Monday wash particularly putting the clothes through the wringer .
Yes! Reckitts blue. Little blue bag. I can see it now.But then - progress! we started to use a laundry service. A big rectangular box with reinforced corners came every week with clean ironed sheets, pillow cases, etc and a list to fill in with the next load of dirties. I was still using this in 1964, newly married to a husband who wore white shirts with a detachable starched collar. There was a special little box for the collars which were rock hard and must have been terribly uncomfortable to wear. Still I suppose if you wore a bowler hat every day on the commuter train, the stiff collar was just a part of the whole shebang, along with the rolled umbrella!
I grew up, and live, in the RockyMountains, where it snows deep in the winter. (Our cabin in the mountains gets 180” of snow each winter). I thought I knew what cold was until, at the age of 19, (1968) I arrived in Great Britain and spent my first winter in Ferndown and Ringwood, Dorset. Once a week, we would head down to the public baths in Bournemouth, just to warm up for a few hours.
It took me a year to get used to the humidity. But I will cherish the memories of living in Southern England for those few years. Reading all these posts brings back wonderful memories.
If you thought THERE was cold - you should have tried the NE! I moved south from near Dundee to Durham, naively thinking it would be less cold! Wind straight from the Arctic via the North Sea ...
Wow, sounds like all the contributors to this thread temporarily forgot about their PMR as they were magically transported to their childhood. Nostalgia is the best medicine!
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