Changing Times Looking back on the fifties we see so many things that are familiar to us today, yet our lives are very different from people of the fifties. This change in social manners and attitudes was first truly acknowledged at the time of the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977. Sir John Colville noticed and developed the idea in his book the New Elizabethans 1952 - 1977 and wrote in 1977:- "Whatever their station in life, the way people now conduct their affairs differs, voluntarily or involuntarily, in both opportunity and amenity from what was customary twenty five years ago. They feed and dress differently, they talk, live and spend their leisure differently, and they do so partly by choice and partly by force of circumstance." You could write much the same about the last 25 years since 1980. We are obliged to move forward with change at frightening pace compared to 1950. Much of this change is to do with attitude change of what is acceptable and what is not and the speed of this acceptance has all been fuelled by communications of a global nature. Britain in 1952 In 1952 Britain was still bearing the scars of a World War. Evidence was everywhere in war torn Europe. Open bomb sites with their crumbling buildings were set amidst a new kind of architecture, half built blocks of flats. These were the first signs of redevelopment. Throughout Britain, people still produced identity cards and housewives queued on chilly pavements, nursing their ration books. Churchill, hero of the war, gave new hope to all when he was re elected to power under the Conservatives. Newly arrived back in Downing Street, London, Churchill began his reign of office by looking at the austere diet of the country. He called for one week's food ration to be set out before him. He wanted to see just what the people really had to eat. To his horror it was set out on a small tray. The entire rations for one week were what he would normally have expected to eat at one breakfast!

SEE A FEW IMAGES OF THE STORM.....