Childhood & Sentimental memories

passion8

gb57 wrote: »

Shoes had to be polished every Sunday, and as Dad had been a Sargeant Major in the Army during the war, that meant a proper shine, including the bit between the heel and sole:rolleyes: .

That brings back some memories gb57 My Dad polished all our shoes (spit and polish lol) on a Sunday night, and he was thorough too

Bobbykins! We'd share and eat pomegranates like that too

We'd go to Hull Fair and it was the only time we'd see pomegrantes. As it's renowned for always raining during Hull Fair week, (as it is now in east Yorks) I think it might be there this week

We'd always come home with a coconut too, and nougat or toffee apples, and fight over who got the coconut milk. That's if we managed to drill a decent hole in the coconut first

Roast chestnuts were really popular as well, but we always had to double-check the roast chestnuts for maggots! :eek:

passion8

positivelymummy wrote: »

oh yum, i used to love (and still do) buttered malt loaf, oooh and parkin too! we too had that at bonfire night. does anyone here remember the power cuts in the 70's i was only a lass, but i think it was something to do with the 3 day week or something? maybe it was just in our town? i seem to think it was planned power cuts, maybe there was a strike on? just seemed a lot of my childhood memories are of being with other families in the dark with lots of candles! god that sounds a bit wierd doesn;t it:rotfl: maybe we just didn;t have electric!!!!

That 3 day week was a nightmare while it lasted If I recall it right, we knew when the power would be going off, but it didn't make it any better lol. The shops must have made a mint out of candles, and I think the birth rate went up about 9 months later

And it was countrywide as far as I know pm

Peartree

diddydiddydondon wrote: »

Rhubarb dipped in sugar, yes I remeber now. The young shoots were the best!!!

When my Mum made apple pie, my sister and I would sit and eat the apple peel dipped in sugar!

One of my very earliest memories is of a friend of my Mum's coming around and eating sandwiches of white sliced bread with sugar in them. I don't recall that I was allowed to have them and I have a sense that Mum watched with a bit of horror. Must ask her!

It is a bit of a family myth that some of my earliest words were 'hot, feet and fonk', ie, hot, sweet and strong tea! I can't remember if I was allowed tea at that point (wouldn't be surprised) but I certainly couldn't live without my tea now. But everyone took lots of sugar, one of my aunts took about ten spoons in a cup. I don't even have a sugar bowl now and it casts me into disarray if someone asks for sugar.

Peartree

meanmarie wrote: »

.my father was very fussy and wouldn't eat mince or stewing beef...not sure how my mother managed financially to provide his lordship with what he considered his due!

Apologies for whizzing back on this thread which I've only popped into intermittently.

Anyway, my parents moved here in the 1950s from Ireland. My Mum was given the advice before she came not to eat 'their' pies, sausages or mince when she came over - presumably because with rationing still in memory you couldn't be sure what they involved. Whilst my family in Ireland wasn't rich, they had a lot of good food from their farming relatives and hadn't gone through what their peers over here went through with rationing in the war. It affected how we ate all through my childhood and there is still a difference between my Mum and Dad and some of their neighbours and friends who were brought up here during rationing.

We never had that 'bulking out' thing. It was always top quality meat and two veg but not necessarily a lot of it. We children always had exactly the same as the adults and I never even saw a fish finger or the like until I was an adult. I used to go to friends' houses where they had huge plates of food - but it would be all potatoes and a bit of savoury mince - and just couldn't eat it all. Worse, they'd have beans on toast or they'd have tinned spaghetti or some such which didn't cross our threshold! It has been a bit of an embarrassment for me growing up as my friends don't think I eat much. It's not that, it is that I grew up with quality and not quantity and I can't do big portions of pasta or rice and something suppers.

Of course, most of them don't think 'synthetic' food is a treat as I do, because I never got it as a child. Give me a crispy pancake or a bright pink cake and I'm in heaven.

Meat was a big thing in our house. As a child you could leave other things on your plate but you always had to 'eat your meat' because it was the most expensive thing on your plate. We weren't at all well off, it is just that, like in Marie's house, food was prioritised and somehow paying for it was managed!

Even fifty years after they arrived as immigrants, my Mum and Dad are still astounded about what some of their friends eat. They don't get the whole 'frugal with food' thing some (not all of course) of the English people their age who went through rationing still have. (Their neighbours still share a single Goblin steak pudding for lunch or think two slices of deli beef heated up represent a roast dinner!)

They were 'foodie' before it was a trendy term. My Mum can engage you in a conversation about the best place to buy almost any item of food (clearly it is impossible to get a good potato in this country!) and has always gone to a whole range of different shops to buy the best. No snobbery though, just taste - quite happy to involve Aldi and Lidl in the equation (but not keen on farmers' markets after a food poisoning episode). They do eat mince, pies and sausages but tentatively and only from certain places.

What is amusing is that my Mum was a school cook for 25 years. However, for the last 10 years, she took her own sandwiches!

Georgiabay

Oh I remember eating pomegranates with a pin.
I also remember blood oranges which I wouldn't eat because I thought it was real blood in them. I'd just got round to the idea of eating them when they didn't seem to be around anymore.

Olliebeak

Remember the pins turning your fingers black when eating pomegranets?

rev229 - school knickers! My grandmother got me some that came down to my knees. I was sooooooo embarassed by them when getting changed for PE. Bottle green knee-length knickers with a pocket for your hankie! I used to try rolling the legs under till they got shorter but then they were bulky. Senior school insisted on the bottle green in the winter months and white ones in the summer (the dark green would have 'shown through' the summer frocks!) - imagine a school nowadays dictating to the girls about what colour knickers they were allowed to wear!!!!!

Those power cuts in the winter months were awful. I remember them featuring quite a lot during my childhood but the worst were around 1974 during the 3-day week - when the telly went off around 10pm. We had a series of cuts in the early 70's caused I think by either a miner's strike or an electricity workers strike. My dad, ever resourceful, dug out our camping stoves because our cooker was electric, and bought in calor gas containers. Water was boiled in advance and flasks filled. Mum cooked a huge pan of hotpot in the pressure cooker on the calor gas hob - it was like the spirit of the blitz in our house - those powercuts weren't going to stop us from getting on with our lives. We even had paraffin oil lamps and candles that were normally used for camping. I think the planned powercuts usually lasted around 4 hours or so. We didn't have running hot water in our house, so were used to boiling kettles for washes etc. Baths were taken at the local public baths - they had private bathrooms there as there were many roads of 'two up/two downs' in the area.

Another thing we don't see many of these days - double-yoked eggs! I know that you can still get them from farm shops - at an extra cost. But years ago, you often found the odd one in a box of eggs! Now they seem to be sorted out of the rest and then put to one side for charging extra for.

passion8

Great posts :rotfl:

Do you remember how confusing decimalisation was? My Gran had come to live with us before it was introduced and she was really wary of it lol. I think it's because my Grandad made jewellery and she wore different oddments made of silver sixpences, real silver as far as I remember

She always had a good idea what her jewellery was worth - up until then

There's a site here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A506350

it made me feel quite young because I can't remember some of it, but remember a lot of the slang terms

Olliebeak, I remember double-yolkers then. They were a real rarity

Olliebeak

I can remember getting a 10/- note for my birthday one year. Thought I was really rich!

I was working behind a bar on the first evening of decimalisation. There were some arguments with the customers about the prices. Naturally not everything 'translated' exactly from old to new money and where it didn't you can guarantee that the price went up! We were trained to add up in the 'new money' BUT customers were adding up the prices in the old money and then 'converting' that into new money. Of course there were discrepancies. The pub manageress had to intervene between us and the customers. She took over the till, double-checking the adding up and giving out the change. This lasted for about three or four weeks after decimalisation - until the customers got used to the changes. What a palaver!!!

I remember my dad asking me how much change should he expect from £1 for a packet of 20 cigarettes! That was all he was interested in knowing about decimal money!!

rev229

Does anybody remember green sheild stamps were you had to collect a certain amount to buy a product. I think this was in the 70's and then it all became argos. there was also co-op stamps,bit like old fashion clubcard.

recovering_spendaholic

I've just caught up with this thread and it brings back such great memories - I had forgotten about Milk Tray Bars and those Terry's ones with the layers of chocolate in. I was a child in the 70's and remember the power cuts and used to love them - I would hope that the power would go off because we had candles and my Dad used to make us toast on the coal fire! Talking of coal fires, one of my jobs as a child was to set the fire every morning. I used to roll up newspapers into coil thingies every night before bed and the next morning I would set the fire with them after my mum had cleaned out the grate. To get the fire really going I would stand with a double piece of broadsheet newspapper over the opening to "draw" the fire - imagine kids doing that now? Quite often the paper used to catch fire and you would have to try and stuff the burning paper into the grate!

We also had a twin tub washing machine, but only in the late 70's - before that we had a one tub machine with a mangle on the top - I loved mangling the clothes!

My Mum was a wonderful knitter and every autumn we got a new hand knitted cream arran jacket with leather buttons on which we wore with a tartan kilt which was bought new every autumn to go with it.

When I was 11 I passed the 11+ and went to the local grammar school, and the uniform was quite expensive, so I always had to make my school blazer and coat double for both school and every day. I told DD1 about this the other day and she couldn't believe it!

I used to get the Bunty, Mandy and Judy comics every week, courtesy of my Nan, who used to buy them for me - I loved them and couldn't wait until they came out. My favourite was the Bunty because I loved the four Marys - Mary Simpson, Mary Radcliffe, Mary Cottier and I can't remember the other one! The horrible girls were Mabel and Veronica. When I got older I used to get the Fab 208 and the Jackie, and my daughters bought me the Jackie annuals that they brought out the last two Christmases and we loved reading them together. I used to love Glees sweets more than any other - they did fruit and toffee ones - they were a bit like skittles but nicer. Does anyone remember old english Spangles?