Childhood & Sentimental memories

Olliebeak

A few more memories have come back to my mind (had to dig quite deep!):

I had a doll (called Gloria!) that was bought for me by my Godfather from one of his foreign tours of duty (Royal Navy). A very pretty doll with (very gently) brushable hair and 'go to sleep' eyes and a couple of spare outfits of clothes. Well I thought she could do with a bath and put her into the washtub - after a bit of a rub with the Fairy scrubbing soap, she slipped from my hands and I couldn't reach down to the bottom of the tub to fish her out. Scenes of much hysteria followed as I ran into the house - I thought she would 'drown' in the water! Grandma came back to the 'wash house' (equivalent of a 1950's utility room lol!) with me, rolled up her sleeve and plunged her arm into the washtub. She fished around for a while but all that came out was a matted clump of yellowy fibres and then a pair of metal eyes! Poor Gloria had been made of papier mache and had disintegrated in the laundry tub! She didn't do the laundry water much good either - it all had to be thrown down the grid after that!

Anybody else remember having to have a plimsoll bag for school and another one for your soap, nailbrush, flannel and a small hand towel.

Making a 'dirndl skirt' BY HAND at school out of gingham fabric and embroidering cross stitches in the white squares - I think we were around 9 or 10 at the time!

Watching Grandmother using her treadle sewing machine - she tried to teach me but I couldn't keep the momentum going properly and when you 'stalled' the machine would start going backwards! I have inherited her love of sewing but have had to resort to an electric machine (however it is a 1956 Singer Model that I would never dream of parting with!).

There were still lots of air-raid shelters around on school playing fields when I was little - always supposed to be 'out of bounds' but obviously great temptations to us kids.

If somebody in the house wasn't well, there was a squeezy spray-bottle of diluted Zoflora disinfectant (no aerosols) to spray the air in the sick-room, the lino was mopped a couple of times a day with a stronger solution of the same disinfectant and the invalid would get a bottle of PROPER Lucozade complete with cellophane wrapper - not the stuff we have today (tastes completely different!).

Grandmothers 4711 Ice stick that she rubbed on her forehead to help get rid of a headache - still love the smell of that today.

Doing lots of tests to practice for the 11+ exam (or scholarship as it was also known) and all having to go into school on a saturday morning (in April) to sit the exam - woe betide anybody who didn't turn up because of oversleeping! Waiting months for the results (in July) and then getting a record player for Christmas (5 months later) as a special gift for passing the exam. I saw the receipt once - £8.00 from Curry's in Liverpool! That must have been quite expensive in 1962 - I bought a Phillips CD/MP3/Cassette/Radio player two weeks ago for £15 BRAND NEW!

Grandmother was quite old-fashioned in her ways but she DID let me listen to Rock 'n' Roll - Oh Boy!, 6-5 Special, Boy meets Girl and then a bit later Ready Steady Go! She actually liked Joe Brown (I'm 'Enery the 8th I am) and Millie (My Boy Lollipop). Personally I preferred Gene Vincent and Cliff Richard - every girl was either a Cliff or Elvis fan - but strangely NEVER both of them!

Playing in the park (across the road from where I lived) for hours on end but then running away when the 'Teddy-boys' arrived - they used to have battles with chains and knuckle-dusters and we were all terrified of them.

The Bandstand in the park where the Brass Bands used to play every Sunday throughout the summer months. You could have the use of a little wooden chair for 3d (old money) - lots of people paid for the chairs but there were wooden park benches all around the perimeter of the bandstand that you could sit on for free!

Being sent on 'messages' to the shops with grandmas shopping bag and the money wrapped up in a note! She had a separate old bag that was only used for 'spuds and veg'. No throw-away carrier bags in those days - how ecological of us!!! I do remember grandmother getting a shopping basket on wheels (made in the local 'blind school') - a proper old-fashioned one with a woven cane basket and a 'walking stick' style handle and a plastic cover to keep the rain out.

I also remember that dreaded moment - at the age of 12 - 'when I became a lady' as grandmother called it! Being told NOT to wash my hair, NO playing out, NO swimming, NO PE lessons and KEEP AWAY FROM THE BOYS!!!!!

rosieben

Olliebeak wrote: »

...
I also remember that dreaded moment - at the age of 12 - 'when I became a lady' as grandmother called it! Being told NOT to wash my hair, NO playing out, NO swimming, NO PE lessons and KEEP AWAY FROM THE BOYS!!!!!

good grief I'd forgotten that - dont wash your hair at that time of the month or you'll go blind!!!!!

forgotten about the cliff/elvis thing too, I was definitely a Cliff fan, could never stand elvis. my favourite pic though was of Billy Fury.

liz105

MRSMCAWBER wrote: »

Hi there Gale_10

i was born in 71 and I still call it "putting my face on"..something i picked up from my mama:p

On our shopping days we had potted dog cobs, porkpie/sausage roll and crisps.. the only day we didnt eat "proper" full cooked dinners..but i loved thursday for that .... and still love potted dog mmmmmm

I was born in 1984 and call it 'putting my face on' too!

I remember angel delight being a treat (one pkt between me mum and dad, OH now goes through a pint of it on his own) mr. 'turkey twizzlers' turkey roll, gawd knows what was in it. I just about remember penny sweets, JUST! remember mars bars at 28p. was never allowed one tho. didnt get pocket money but remember getting a pound off my dad to buy some sweets once!! (in about 1993). Remember my dad walking me to school once. he was always at work so thats a fond memory. I cant wait to have kids of my own so I can start creating their memories! I hope my mum and dad are as fantastic grandparents as some of the ones mentioned on here! (I bet my kids get spoilt rotten, I didnt tho! grrr!)

AMIE399

sunday was cooked breakfast, then mum would spend all morning cooking sunday lunch, for tea it was seafood, pint prawns, pint winkles, pint cockles bread and butter.

Cinzano Bianco
party 7
thunderbird

funny faces ice cream lollies
bar six
munchies
caramac bars/ pink panther bars
malteesers in the brown bag
pacers
ice breaker chocolate
cresta drinks ( its frothy man !!! )

the only takeaways were fish and chips or wimpy

i remember the parafin man every week and the pop man

watching miss world and eurovision song contest

crying to little house on the prairie when the girl went blind
white horses
follyfoot
champion the wonder horse
top of the pops on a thursday

was totaly in love with Woody from the Bay City Rollers

chopper bikes
those balls on strings that were banned cos they broke your wrists !!!!
paint wheels
those long plastic tubes things that when you swung them round they made a noise

tank tops.. with the white blouse underneath
huge collars and cuffs

smiffy perfume
the pretty peach collection from avon

Jackie/fab magazines

scuzz

I'm a 1983 girl and can remember not being allowed to watch the likes of Grange Hill, Press Gang and Biker Grove - the weren't suitable!

Dad would insist we turned the sound off if any pop group started performing on the TV - try it, you'll find watching them jig about to nothing quite funny!

Making "tents" in the garden by draping an old blanket over the swing

Playing tennis against the side of the garage or with my sis, only to have to raid next door's garden 50 times to get the ball back!

Sunday tea of pink salmon sarnies in front of the antiques roadshow and songs of praise

Breakfast in bed on a sunday, when Dad would make scrambled egg and sis and I would sqeeze on to our parents' bed

Going prawning with my Dad in the summer

Not being allowed wine gums - too many e-numbers

Nan & Grandad coming round for Christmas. They'd come on Christmas Eve and I'd be opening the front door every two minutes demanding to know where they were, before asking if I could go to bed at 10 in the morning!

Everything was so magical as a child. My parents made fairies, the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas a really big deal for us and all my friends are jealous of the up bringing I had.

scrimpingbadger

Mum didn't believe in packet food. Unfortunately. Not the best cook. Still isn't.

But what I really remember above anything else and still makes me heave just thinking about is tinned fruit cocktail with evaporated milk. Yuk all that nasty juice mixing up with the milk.

I would have killed for arctic roll like my friend had. I must have seemed very ungrateful.

Olliebeak

rosieben wrote: »

......my favourite pic though was of Billy Fury.......

MY favourite pic was of Cliff Richard in 'THAT white string T-shirt' on a hill, overlooking Athens with the Parthenon in the background singing 'The Next Time' from Summer Holiday - phwaaaooooorrrrrrr. Think that was the moment when my 'tomboy days' ended :rotfl: .

A few more memories have surfaced during the night hehehe:

- 1/2d bars of Cadbury's chocolate.
- Cadbury's Milk Tray in a bar of chocolate
- Cadbury's Bournville in a bar of chocolate
- Terry's chocolate waifas - still love them but hard to get these days!
- chewing gum machines where you got a piece free every fourth turn of the handle
- our corner shop (HAD to be the inspiration for Open All Hours!)
- being sent for a 'piece of cod (skinned) for 4/6' to feed three adults and a child - I used to shout from the shop doorway because I hated the sight of fish! - Grandmother made her own batter and mushy peas - no chippy could beat it.
- Monday lunch was 'lob-scouse' (potatoes, onions, carrots all boiled with the bone off the 'sunday leg of lamb' - very little scraps meat IF any!). That could cook itself while Grandmother was doing the washing!!
- Left-over roast meat sliced up for Monday tea time with chips and peas)
- stewed apples and custard (or evap) for dessert - apples left-over from baking on a Saturday!
- Home made rice pudding with a lovely thick skin on the top - kids loved or hated the skin!(ours was cooked in the oven next to the fire in the living room)
- Grandad eating pig's trotters smothered with vinegar and pepper - and all the little tiny bones left on his plate afterwards (yuk!)
- crying because I HATED kippers being served - they were STARING at me but nobody believed me! Even today I hate the sight and smell of any fish whether living or dead - but especially the smell of kippers! Will only eat tinned tuna or cod in batter WITHOUT the skin.
- Armchair Shopping on TV (sunday tea-time) with an elderly gentleman or lady sitting in a chair telling you what they liked to spend their money on - 'Davenports, Beer at Home, Birmingham' was one of their adverts! Beer delivered to your home in the 50's!!
- Also sunday tea-time 'Journey of a Lifetime' - a young couple on honeymoon in 'The Holy Land' visiting all those places that you heard about in Sunday School - Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Bethany, Capernaum, Sea of Galilee, River Jordan, The Dead Sea
- Armand and Michaela Dennis wild-life documentaries (the Crocodile Hunter and his missus of the 50's/60's)

borderlakland

This thread is brilliant. i was born in 1971 and remember..

Spangles(wish they'd make them again) black jacks and mojo's costing 1/2p each.
trying to tape just the music from top 40 on sunday night.
my nan moaning at grandad about the huge amounts of raspberries he grew(he was afraid the crop would fail so grew far too many)even now the smell of raspberries reminds me of them.
evaporated milk on puddings
jumble sales,mum buying clothes and making them into clothes for me and my sis.
collecting the smurfs from our local petrol station
getting our 1st video recorder.it was top loading and cost a fourtune
chicken&ham paste sandwhiches for packed lunch.
having to drink milk(individual glass bottles)at school,it was delivered v early in the morning and sat outside,so in the summer it was warm,but in the winter it had often started to freeze so they used to put the crate next to the stove so again it was warm.Ihated milk and still can't drink it without gagging
having lots of snow most winters(I'm sure we had had far more snow than we do now)getting sunburnt in summer and putting calomine lotion on but not worrying about skin cancer
kids birthday parties that never had an entertainer/disco or party bags.just musical statues,bumps etc.
sticking posters from smash hits ALL over my bedroom will blue tack and getting a rollicking off dad that it would pull all the paint of the wall.
mum buying a 2nd hand Atari games console(remember them??)and thinking it was the height of technolgy

[Deleted User]

My earliest memories of food was sitting in the shelter with my Mum and two brothers hearing thunderous noises overhead which were the Luftwaffe trying to flatten our house:eek: .Everytime there was a bang and it was at a distance my eldest brother Johnny used to yell 'Yah missed us again'. My Mum had been bombed out twice, and we seemed to spend most of our lives down a hole in the ground.:eek:
My middle brother Davy would sleep like the dead throughout all the noise and just before the All-clear went would wake up and demand Tea and Tosh(toast).I can clearly remember my Mum whispering 'Come on Davy wake up son' as she knew it meant the all-clear was about to sound.We would drink tea from a billycan that had been boiled on a small camping stove ,it was always dark brown and very sweet as Mum used to put condensed milk in it to sweeten it a bit .We also had toast with condensed milk spread on it as it was very thickand a dark cream colour.After the war finished things didn't get a lot better as there was still rationing and I can see my Mum sitting at the table working out how to make the rations streeetch a bit more .When we moved to Blackheath things got a bit better as we had a huge garden and my parents grew lots of fruit and vegatables. Tinned stuff was almost unheard of in our house unless my Mums sister arrived for her annual holidays in June .She was a single lady who was rather posh, and expected everything to be as it was in her house. Linen napkins and my Mums best china and culery were brought out .Along with her best tablecloths. My Mum loved her sis but was always glad when she went back to Glasgow after her holiday.She was a nice Aunt though, as she would always give my brothers and me a half a crown when she left.An absolute fortune in those days and we had to save it until our summer holidays started in July.
When food finally came off the rationing my Mum sat and cried as she was so pleased that hopefully she could feed her children a little better,but food was still scarce in the shops and queing was a way of life. Shopping with Mum meant joining onto one queue as she was in another. My Mums other sister lived in America and used to send food parcels with things that we couldn't buy over here .Once we had a huge tin of pineapple chunks and we wern't sure what to do with it so once it was opened we had to eat them all up in case they went off.Even though we were always a little bit hungry I soon got fed up of pineapple chunks and to this day I can't stomach them.
Bread and dripping was a favourite, along with Porrige with salt sprinkled on the top. My Dad grew so many tomatoes that we used to eat them sprinkled with sugar like strawberries.Milk was kept in the larder in a bucket of water to keep it fresh, when the milkman came down the road with his horse and cart My Dad always made us take it in turn to follow with a bucket to pick up the droppings for the garden .The milkman's horse was scrawny-looking thing called Jimmy, and he and I hated each other I would always try to get around him by offering him an apple and the miserable beast would always try to bite my hand . The baker delivered everyday and once a week my Mum would buy some doughnuts from him and they were smashing.He once brought some called Dunkies but we preferred the old cream ones
Pocket money was 9d a week, 6d for Saturday morning pictures and 3d for a banana-split Palm toffee bar that stuck to your teeth like glue.My brothers used to go to Lewisham Market on a Saturday afternoon and pick up lots of orange boxes and bring them home.On Mondays they would chop them up and I would help them bundle them up with string and they would sell them door to door.In those days everyone had an open fire .
My Mum was very lucky because she had an open range which was kept alight for most of the time as she would cook on it as well as dry out muddy shoes in the winter in the oven part.She would black-lead her range everyday and it gleamed .She also donkey-stoned her step everyday and god help any child who trecked mud on her snowy white step. Every woman did their step every morning and if you didn't then you were vitually ostracised as a mucky mare.
My late Father was a Chemist and if we were ill then out would come Dad's 'black bottle' it cured all ills, ,just the taste of it was enough to send you running back to school.
We had a radio that my Mum had been given as a wedding present in 1935 it had survived being bombed out along with her three children and it was her pride and joy .She polished it until it gleamed and we were forbidden to touch it on pain of death as it was always set for the Home service for my Dad to listen to the six o'clock news.
I used to look at the dial and wonder where Hilversum was or Luxemburg. She kept her radio shiny and in perfect working order until her death in 1962.
I can remember there being masks printed on the back of cornflakes packets. Usual clowns or demons .There was only a choice of cornflakes in the summer or porridge in the winter .Saturday tea was kippers if we were lucky with bread and marge and jam to follow .Most pudding were sponge based or rice based covered in thick Birds custard
I think I had a fairly normal childhood for the times .Most children did as they were told and didn't answer their parents back .You got up ,went to school ,came home did your homework, then listened to 'Journey into Space' on the radio, then cocoa and bed .Bath night was Friday night from a tin bath that hung on the back of the cellar door.We had an outside loo that had the biggest spiders in London. I don't feel at all deprived that there were no luxuries as what you don't have you never miss. Floor covering was lino,blooming cold in the winter, and your Dad's army great coat if it was really cold..The best room was kept for best and that had a carpet square in it .It was used for high days and holidays Christmas ect:rotfl: Life was tough at times and my parents probably knew quite a few hardships but there were lots of cuddles and that made up for not having luxuries .Very few shops were around then that had the goods in them anyway.Toys were almost always second or third hand and passed on to the next child down .My eldest brother made me a dolls house out of wood he salvaged from a bombsite and I was thrilled with it.He also found a dolly that was missing and eye,arm and leg and I loved that doll to bits .My Mum wsn't keen on it as she knew that the original owner had probably died in the blast but my Molly-the-Dolly was wonderful and I knitted things for her and made sure that her bonnet covered her lost eye and disguised her lost limbs.
I wouldn't have swapped my childhood for all the ps2's or trainers in the world .I think it made me the person I am today.

sassy999

Remembered a few more things

- making perfume out of rose petals, water & an old jar

- Catching bees every summer in a jar & comparing with your friends. You were the king if you caught a bee with a red bum