Childhood & Sentimental memories

michelefauk

What a fantastic thread!
I was born in 1968 and we were quite poor by todays standards I suppose.
I remember the Milk tray chocolate bars and there was a rum and raisin one called Old Jamaica I think, my mum used to like that, and Frys Chocolate cream.

We used to go once a week to do out shopping at Asda and a real treat would be a jar of cockles and mussels to eat that night, or a yoghurt, I used to choose the Ski hazelnut flavour (the container was great for making a dalek out of!) My mum got a yoghurt maker off a friend and we used to have home made yoghurt, I remember my nan saying she wouldnt eat "that foreign muck" when offered a pot of our yoghurt!
Spent a lot of time at my grandparents, I remember they only had an outside loo which we were too scared to go to at night, so we had a china pot under the bed. one night I got up to spend a penny, only to step right in the pot which my brother had just paid a visit to! YUK! We used to have fish and chips from the chippy round the corner from my nans, and eat them in front of the TV on a saturday night, we used to watch Seaside Special, my brother and I always wanted to watch the Benny Hill show but my nan said it was too rude!

At home we had a pressure cooker which exploded once and we had rice pudding dripping off the ceiling! My brother once put a battery in the coal scuttle which ended up on the fire, another explosion! We only had the coal fire in the lounge, and had ice on the inside of our bedrooms windows, i used to lie in bed till the last second then leg it downstairs where my mum had our clothes warming on the fire guard.
I remember coming home from school for dinner every day,walking on our own. Once when I had wet myself, my brother was told to walk home with me so I could be changed, he was disgusted! The thought of any teacher letting a child walk home on their own nowadays is terrifying! They just assumed your mum would be at home I suppose.

Long hot summer days, out in the morning and not back till teatime, nobody knew where you were but didnt seem to worry. Making birds nests out of the cut grass and putting little stones in for eggs, picking blackberries till my fingers were purple, eating sour rhubarb with a pot of sugar to dip it in, the Corona man coming with his crates of pop, blue Cresta pop from the school disco (it's frothy man!) Crisps were a treat, a rare treat. We had bread and butter with everything, even a roast dinner I seem to remember. Being made to eat liver, and chewing on it for what seemed like hours, I wasnt allowed to leave the table until I had eaten everything. I hated liver! My mum seemed to be permanently at the kitchen sink peeling and chopping veg.

Happy days!

LittleVoice

Pitlanepiglet wrote: »

Surely not? I remember Green Shield Stamps way before Tescos...I remember taking them to our local VG store?

Green Shield were a separate trading stamp company and more than one retail company offered them but Tesco started issuing them sometime in the '60s and finished in the '70s. It was just that Tesco were probably the biggest single retailer.

mary43

My gran had an outside loo so it was a chamber pot upstairs at night under the bed................loo got emptied once a week.............lol
Cat caught rabbits and gran skinned them -that was dinner, if not it was one of her chickens...........our jobs were topping and taling gooseberries, shelling peas, picking apples/pears/plums, fetching the milk from the farm every day in a little churn.............oh those were the days.
All hush for grandad to listen to the news or cricket when they eventually got electricity and had the luxury of a radio........in the evenings we got the old magic lantern out that was my Dads..........used to do a slide show on an old white sheet on the door...............only had one set of slides so we watched the same tale over and over again and still didn't get board.

Beccatje

sammyjig wrote: »

I was born in 1970 and we were not particularly poor but we still didn't have the things my kids have today.
We always had leftovers on Mondays (and sometimes Tuesdays) after the sunday roast. We didn't have crisps or fizzy except for special occasions. Lots of stews and caseroles with the cheaper meat or sometimes no meat at all. Takeaways were unheard of exept the VERY rare fish n chip supper.
My best Christmas was when I got a Sindy doll and rather than all the expensive accesories that you get today, my dad made a wooden 4 poster bed and wardrobe for all the homemade clothes my mum had made.
I still have the wooden bed and dd has it now for her barbie.

YESS!! I remember getting a Sindy doll!. my mum had knitted a big box full of clothes for her as well. ;-) I didn't have a dad around to make me a bed or anything but still. I loved that doll!

Becca

Beki

what are your OS, or simply lovely old-fashioned, memories from when you were growing up?

my nan used to look after us after school every day while mum and dad worked, and she used to pick us up from school and we used to walk (yes, walk, shock horror :eek: ) the 3 miles home from school, and on a friday we would stop at the corner shop and get 20p's worth of sweets each, or an ice pole.

then if we went back to nan's house, rather than back to ours, we would make cakes almost EVERY day. she would make up one batch of normal cake mix then separate it into 5 or 6 different bowls. to one bowl we'd add some dessicated coconut, to another we'd add glace cherries, another one would have raisins, and another would be plain, but when we put it into fairy cup-cases, they woul have a blob of jam in the middle of each fairy cake.

then when grandad got home from work (usually about 5pm), we'd present him with a cake each, with a single candle in each for him to blow out

every sunday, we'd go to my other nan's house for the afternoon. she'd always do a roast dinner from scratch, even down to the gravy from stock. sometimes we'd walk with her to the butchers to get the beef if we popped over on a saturday or something.

she'd knit us jumpers which were all snuggly and warm, and i'd sit on the floor in front of her armchair while she tickled my back. she never got tired of tickling my back. i miss her

and i'd sit on the back of my grandad's armchair, while i combed his hair. he always had a little saucer of fruit pastilles which we'd sneak accross the room to get to and their gorgeous fat labrador, major, used to have a saucer of bonios on the fireplace which he used to help himself to when he could be bothered to get up lol

we used to go into the garden with nan and pick sweet peas with her for mum, and we'd get the rickety old sun loungers out of the shed to lay on the patio with while nan would bring us a drink and a biscuit.

oh, this is bringing back wonderful memories for me

HariboJunkie

Hi Beki. Here's another thread on childhood OS memories you may want to look at.

Beki

Ooops! Sorry, i should have done a search first really Hopefully mods can merge this

sillyvixen

i was born in the 70's both my parents had to work and i spent my days with my dads parents - my gran used to make home made bread - and when i was old enough it was my job to help her knead the mixture - when i went to school my gran used to make her bread with me after school - whenever i went to her house the smell of baking bread was there .. when my gran died the smell faded and my grandad used to have to buy bread. as a result i cant make bread myself, when my mum first got a breadmaker i had to go out when it was cooking - and in more recent years i have tried to make bread rolls myself but the evocitive scent of the cooking process has me in floods of tears remebering my nan and her specific scent.

i know this may sound really silly (i lost my nan 20 years ago) but i still cant bake my own bread!!

painted_lady

What a lovely thread, has brought back many memories for me.
Sillyvixen - your not silly at all for not making your own bread. You were obviously close to Gran and it is great you have some fond childhood memories with her.
My memories include a lot of what everyone else has mentionned (born 1977)
- pop man
- mum taking us to library every 2 weeks for books, we couldnt afford to buy them so we had no option, plus it kept us busy
- baking with mum, she is a good baker but sadly doesnt bake much now, we made eccles cakes (dads fave), buns, cakes, pineapple upside down cake, coconut macaroons, flapjacks etc
- going everywhere on the ASDA free bus, we wouldnt have gone anywhere if it wanst for the asda free bus
- mum bathing all 4 of us kids in the same bath water, on a sunday. Then we would watch bullseye before bed.
- sharing a packet of refreshers or chewits with younger brother, sure he always got the extra one
- underfloor heating, we would sit under the rug where it was warmer
- knitted school jumpers
- cussons imperial leather soap, will never fail to remind me of my childhood

Loads and loads more, thanks for sharing everyone

fedupnow

I was so very jealous of my friend because the pop man went to her house... we had the library van instead.

I was sooooo jealous I remember I smashed the free glass she had been given after her family had bought x amount of bottles. I denied it as well. So I was a jealous, vandalising liar.

Her Mum sent me home.

My Mum says it serves my right and clipped me round the ear.

I think I was about 7.

Then we got a pony and that girl wanted to be my bestest friend. I said 'no'.

That pop man had a lot to answer for.

I guess I wasn't a very nice kid.

I prefer books to pop now. Perhaps that says something.