Memories of Childhood

Evening eager young space cadets-no, you're not dreaming, it is ME! I am back.
Does anyone remember the BBC survival show Now Get Out of That? It was hosted by Bernard Falk(Nationwide) and consisted of four people from all walks of life who had to solve puzzles and games in order to rescue a scientist being held in a castle. They had to survive on their own and also prepare their own food with stuff provided for them. One episode had a young university kid from the US called Zeke and boy did he get up people's noses, although he did used to help solve the puzzles.

So here it is nearly Christmas. How many of us remember getting very excited as it began to get closer and closer? At my primary school they used to produce cards to buy for a few pence that you could then colour in and then we had a postbox to put them in. One person was designated a postman/woman and it was their job to deliver those cards to the pupils. This carried on with my next school as well.

Winter memory inspired by a chat with G last night.

A day in the really cold winter of 1978/79, pretty sure it was December 78, went to school which was about 3 miles from my home village (700 feet above sea level). Basically it poured and poured with freezing cold rain, we got absolutely drenched at break time and in the dinner hour, teachers had no sympathy for us at all, the rotten sadists! Coming back into class looking like drowned rats. End of the day came..,having to line up for our buses home..we squelched on board, steam rising from all of us...

Then things got worse..about halfway up the hill returning home we noticed that the higher we were travelling the more the rain was changing to snow..then by the time we got to the bottom end of our village it was full on snow, which had settled to such a depth that the bus couldn’t travel any further. What a joy, getting off the bus, soaking wet and having to walk nearly a mile through snow which was up to a foot deep by the time I finally got home in the dark.

Cheers for reminding me about that G...

NO problem Carl anytime mate, I'm a mine of useless trivia and all it needs is a trigger to get fired up in my memory.

Do you remember going to a doctors surgery and having to wait what seemed like an age to see him(mostly men in those days) One thing I didn't like was the signal that sounded he was ready to see you, a buzzer which was quite loud and made you jump. I think the waiting makes your symptoms seem worse than they are and my Doctor's "bedside manner" was more like facing a headmaster at school.

My childhood was pretty decent in the Winter.
I'd stay over at a mate's gaff and early morning we'd block the country lane with huge snowballs. The bus would have to reverse twenty yards back in a farmers gateway and school would be a no go
It wouldn't be an issue these days... 5mm of snow and the school buses can't be arsed.

Response to G’s post about doctor’s surgeries...

I used to hate going to our local GP surgery...there was always a really strange smell in there..don’t ask me what it was, it was like a combination of TCP (vile stinking stuff which to this day I cannot stand), and Dettol...really nasty.

The waiting room was ALWAYS full of old biddies carrying out whispered conversations amongst themselves, which to me as a young kid was always an unpleasant and slightly sinister experience!

Around this time of year as youngsters me and my sister would be taken for a ride by our father to see the Christmas lights in London, which was one of my highlights of the month - we'd drive around Oxford Street, Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus. On the way we'd play Spot the Christmas Tree-if you spotted one you got a point, and a bonus if you saw more than one. In those days you could see trees no-one yet decorated the outside of their house like they do today but at least we don't go mad like the Americans do-although some do copy them but it is usually to raise money for charity and not to get one-up on their neighbours.

I put this out on social media Facebook( a nostalgia group I belong to) and got a phenomenal response so let's see what happens here:
Did you or were you allowed to take games into school during the final week of school before breaking up for the Christmas holiday? I remember we had fun quizzes, could bring in books to read or board games to play. The teachers relaxed their classes and let us do virtually anything-within reason

2050 : remember when it used to snow, and there wasn't a monsoon season.
Remember when East Anglia wasn't under water.

Hey ho, keep it light.