Childhood & Sentimental memories

parsonswife8

Bread and butter, chopped up, sprinkled with sugar and then some milk poured over it and eaten.
Tomato sauce sarnies.
Haddock poached in milk, then covered in parsley sauce.
Rice pudding with skin on the top and nutmeg.
Fruit cake and crumpets for tea.

wayne

the corona man calling once a week.dandilion and burdock,orangade and cream soda.
the bakers van calling on a saturday morning.
searching the hedgerows for pop bottles then pegging it to the shop for the deposit off it to get sweets.
trawling all over minera mountain eating windberrys till we were sick.
sunday tea was a huge plate of cheese and jam butties and battenburg cake for afters.still love the butties but cant even look at battenburg without feeling sick.
my mum refusing to pluck and cook a brace of pheasant (my dad had had given him) coz it had been hung for a week.
watching the wrestling on world of sport with my nain on a saturday afternoon.
sherbert fountains,bubblies and penny arrows.
being able to buy 5 soveriegns and 5 matches for 10p.(heheh)
turning my nose up at the veg on my plate.veg i cant get enough of now.
£1 pocket money on a saturday morning.bus to town,into the baths,cup of chocolate after.bag of chips.latest "45"(single record for younger folk on here) and the bus back home.
happy days apart from fridays.
stepping off the school bus dreading going home for tea.(my stomach churning now just thinking about friday night tea) getting to the bottom of the drive and there you could smell it...yellow fish.bloody horrible disgusting smelly yellow fish.urgh.

Allegra

Going to school wearing a matching hand-knitted sky blue jumper, skirt, coat and PE kit bag; the outfit on cold days accessorised with - I kid you not - a matching balaclava helmet.

My mum is a superb craftswoman, but she can be seriously evil at times.

Buying ribbon by the metre to put on the ends of my plaits. I had hair down to my bum, and ribbons to match every outfit.

Hanging the sheets of freshly hand-made pasta over the washing line to dry; hanging cornflowers to dry for winter flower arrangements over the same line.

Wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and mum tearing little bits of hand-kneaded bread dough off for me to shape and then cook on the stove top.

Burda patterns and iron-on embroidery pattern transfers.

Hand-knitted jumpers for a fake Barbie (and how I longed for a real one, but you had to go abroad to buy one and my parents never did) and tearing up old sheets so I could make dresses for her, too.

Getting a real Barbie at last, and my 2 year old niece (I was 9 at the time) giving her a haircut and cutting her fingernails and toenails. I am still amazed that I managed not to commit murder (9 year olds are not really known for their sense of perspective).

Foraging for wild asparagus and olives.

Picking walnuts off the huge tree in the garden, using a hammer to crack them and shell them, then helping mum pull out a wicked-looking contraption that got screwed to the table-top, and was then used to grind the walnuts. She had a similar one for mincing meat, too, but I didn't like using that one too much, was always scared it'd mince my fingers, too.

Pigs' trotters in bean stew.

Eagerly anticipating the start of the tourist season because we knew sooner or later someone would bring us some Haribo gummy bears. Going off gummy bears when realising that they must have thought us children well deprived for not having such treats on tap. We weren't.

Climbing over neighbour's garden walls and stealing their apples, plums and cherries straight off the tree. It didn't matter that most of us had the same fruits in our gardens; it always tasted better off someone else's !

Rose petal cordial (I am still looking for someone who remembers a recipe for that one !). Preparing the fruit and vegetable "winter stores" - it involved covering the spuds in some sort of powder to prevent them from sprouting, and lots and lots of pickling.

Eating fresh peas and radishes straight from the garden. Picking violets and making violet "eau de toilette". Wild straberries from the local woods.

Turkish delight, turkish coffee, baklavas. Mum stretching out filo pastry by hand. Apfelstrudel and sachertorte. Goulash and sarma. Being offered tripe at a friend's house and not knowing how to refuse.... Ugh.

Raiding mum's clothes in the early nineties and being the first in town to wear vintage sixties and seventies gear when no one could afford new clothes. Others soon cottoned on though !

Three month long summer breaks. Leaving home for the beach in the morning, popping back for lunch, back to the beach until dinner. By the start of the next school year my skin would be chocolate brown, and my hair flaxen.

Walking home from school 3km in the pitch dark because the bus driver refused to have kids on his bus....

Thinking about it, some of these sound like memories of a different planet, not Continental Europe 20 years ago !

recovering_spendaholic

I love reading these memories! As a child I either walked or went on my bike to school. My bike was a second hand one, but I always wanted a Raleigh Chopper (never got one though) - I remember entering a competition to win one in the Bunty and being on tenterhooks for WEEKS in case I won! My Mum always insisted that I take this hideous yellow rain cape if I was cycling - it went over you and the bike and I HATED it. One day I stuffed it down a grid and told my Mum that it had been pinched at school - she went up and made a real fuss about it and I was terrified that someone might have seen me chucking it away and the worry kept me awake at nights for months! We also had these horrible plastic things to wear over our school Hats called "rain mates" - they were clear plastic covers which tied under your chin - I hated it but had to wear it because I would have been in such trouble if my hat had got wet and ruined. The other thing which I absolutely hated was my "pac-a-mac" - a nylon thin mac which you kept rolled up in your satchel and put on over your uniform if it was raining and you didn't have your gaberdine on. All the cool kids didn't have one, but I did and I used to get butterflies in my stomach in school in case it started to rain before hometime - My uniform was expensive and I only had one of everything and it was all dry clean only so if it got wet and spoiled my Mum would have gone bananas because we wouldn't have been able to get a new one. My school blazer was worn all the time, even when not at school, because it was expensive and my Mum couldn't afford to get me another coat. My school jumper and blazer both had leather patches sewed onto the elbows to preserve them. This was in the 1970's - My kids have loads of clothes and go through uniform like I don't know what - I tell them about how I had to look after mine and they think I am just "a saddo".

Bitsy_Beans

For me it was home baking by my mum, toad in hole (can't bring myself to eat it now!), having roast chicken of sunday lunchtime and then chicken sandwiches, smoky bacon crisps and copious cups of tea whilst watching the antiques roadshow and last of the summer wine in the evening.
Oh and I remember when Creme eggs only cost 8p. Pah! Inflation is pants!

mustangsal

i used to spend a lot of time on my grandparents farm and the best thing ever was my granny's chips! she only made them once a year. lol after we'd picked all the potato's from the field we'd come in to lovely chunky chips cooked in beef dripping! gorgeous! and her tattie soup was amazing! she mashed the tatties and carrot etc then added the stock so it was really thick and lovely. with fresh oatcakes. mmmm!

bellaquidsin

Bread and milk for lunch on washday and then being allowed to play with 'peggy legs' - the wooden posher my mum used to agitate the washing with in a galvanized tub. Oh yes and being given a bowl of soapy water when the tub was emptied and blowing bubbles with a clay pipe. Fisher Price eat your heart out.

Bella.

gairlochgal

lol recovering spendaholic

I remember all the shame of rainwear. Hard to remember now what that was about but I can recall being mortified that my mum made me take wellies in bad weather. My kids have so far been to a an infants with ultra strict uniform where we had no choice, and now juniors where they can wear what they want, so I can buy coats they are ok with. We have secondary school on the horizon now with DD1 so I'm sure some of those battles will start!

Olliebeak

As a child at Inf/Jun school (mid to late 50's) I had to wear long socks with turnover tops (beige or grey!) in the winter. These would eventually lose their elasticity, and that was when my Nan would make 'garters' out of lengths of knicker elastic secured with a knot. They would be hidden underneath the turnovers - but I found it terribly embarassing!

We all went to school in wellies in wet or snowy weather (got those horrible red marks where the rubber hit the flesh on your legs) and had to wear our plimsolls in school all day. Some kids, in really poor families, would have to wear the wellies when it wasn't raining, if they had no other shoes to put on. It was very rare that wellies ever got worn out, so larger families would often have pairs of them in various sizes to pass down through all the kids.

Sometimes having to wear socks on your hands in cold weather if your gloves were still wet from the day before or from snowballing.

Navy blue school knickers - often with pockets in the leg (for your hanky, for goodness sake!). My 10 yr old dgd would have a fit if she was asked to wear those !

Being scared of getting a note (and a brown paper bag) to take home to your your mum from 'Nitty-Norah' because EVERYBODY knew what was in the paper bag - a bar of Derbac!

meames_2

HI OllieBeak

I remember Lennons, behind the sefton and was once a Kwiksave! It always reminds me of my nan that part of town and going for a treat to Berties chipshop on westfield street!