Warm milk and school cod liver oil

lizapriscilla62 · Post by **lizapriscilla62** » Fri 14 Aug, 2009 4:57 pm

At Blenheim school in the very early 50s: a dessertspoon of cod liver oil (same spoon for each child) followed by warm milk (due to it being placed by the classroom stove to unfreeze it!). Eeuw. Playing in the sweeps' soot pile behind a wall in the screggy little park on the corner of Ella Street and Blackman's Lane. Racing other kids with shovels to pick up the horse poo from the delivery cart to put on our stunted rhodedendron bushes in our pocket handerkerchief front yard. The tin bath brought up from the cellar on Friday nights and sharing the bath water , poured from the big black kettle on the range. Different world, really.

Post by **chameleon** » Fri 14 Aug, 2009 5:23 pm

lizapriscilla62 wrote: At Blenheim school in the very early 50s: a dessertspoon of cod liver oil (same spoon for each child) followed by warm milk (due to it being placed by the classroom stove to unfreeze it!). Eeuw. Playing in the sweeps' soot pile behind a wall in the screggy little park on the corner of Ella Street and Blackman's Lane. Racing other kids with shovels to pick up the horse poo from the delivery cart to put on our stunted rhodedendron bushes in our pocket handerkerchief front yard. The tin bath brought up from the cellar on Friday nights and sharing the bath water , poured from the big black kettle on the range. Different world, really. Sure it wasn't a teaspoon? Desertspoon is a very large dose - but the baby-orange we got afterwards was rather good!

lizapriscilla62 · Post by **lizapriscilla62** » Fri 14 Aug, 2009 5:38 pm

My memory may be at fault - it felt like a tablespoon. I remember queuing up for medicine bottles of free orange juice concentrate with my mother (didn't like the taste), but we had all sorts of medicines to try to make up for poor diet - Virol Malt Extract, which I loved, Californian Syrup of Figs being 2 among many. Do you remeber liberty bodices, flannel singletty things done up with press studs or hooks and eyes. You didn't hang up washing in a smog, because tiny holes would be burned in stockings and delicates. I feelnostalgic, but also recognise that they weren't really the good old days.

Post by **chameleon** » Fri 14 Aug, 2009 6:19 pm

you, didn't like....baby orange??? Wonderous stuff, drooling at the thought - can you still get it?

Patexpat · Post by **Patexpat** » Sat 15 Aug, 2009 9:35 am

not sure I dare ask this but ... what is/was baby orange? I'm 52 and I don't remember it ???Now horrible school milk I do remember - put me off milk drinking to this very day!

Post by **chameleon** » Sat 15 Aug, 2009 12:53 pm

Patexpat wrote: not sure I dare ask this but ... what is/was baby orange? I'm 52 and I don't remember it ???Now horrible school milk I do remember - put me off milk drinking to this very day! When you were a lad (Like me!) 52 years ago, we had baby 'clinics' where mums could get tins of 'National Dried Babay Milk' and bottles of codliver oil and concentrated orange juice with tokens that I think looked like the old Family Allowance books, all to make sure we grew up strong and healthy.These last two things seemed to be poured down children at nursery'infants school every day.As for warm milk, yup, I had an aversion to it. One rather unpleasant teacher insisted I drink it - just once - after I promptly returned it with some force and she had changed it wasn't a problem any more