Growing-Up Downhill (in Lincoln between the Wars)

Description

Two sisters, Joyce and (Ruth) Edna Skinner born in 1920 and 1921 respectively, were perhaps typical of many children born into the families of skilled artisans in the years after the Great War.  Although times were never easy – standards were not allowed to fall.  Hard work was the quite exceptional norm for many of their class but that did not prevent them living full, varied and interesting lives.  This book chronicles their early lives until the left school in 1938.

After school, their paths diverged, Joyce to academia and Edna (after a brief spell nursing, ATS and the Civil Service) to domesticity and a traditional village life.  Only once they both ‘retired’ and Edna was able to watch her grandchildren grow up did they put pen to paper.

They set out to record their young lives primarily for the interest of Edna’s grandchildren to see how life was lived when elbow grease was more readily available than electricity and a day at the seaside as great an adventure as perhaps today’s holiday to Disneyland!  This work of two such articulate ladies records daily routines of lives hardly in the past, yet, for many of today’s young parents, so far away as to be unrecognisable.

Please note: This is the last remaining original, unsold, First Edition from the publisher, hence the price.  However, having been printed in 1989, the dust cover shows signs of aging however the book itself is in very good condition.