Memories of Childhood

A nasty memory stirred up by reading one of the 1970’s group postings on Facebook.

Basically the question was asked about whether you ever ate something as a child that was so bad that you still shudder at the memory. Reading it brought back a hideous memory which I thought I had forgotten from the freezing cold winter of 1978/79.

This was the time when there used to be a Ready Brek (a breakfast cereal - for those readers who are too young to remember it) commercial which had the slogan ‘central heating for kids’ and would show kids who’d eaten it, be going to school looking like they’d spent too much time at Chernobyl, given the almost radioactive looking orange glow which would be surrounding them.

Anyway, one particularly freezing cold and snowy morning, my mum came up with the bright idea (!) of making me corn flakes but with hot milk!

All I can say is that the experience must have been so traumatising that I successfully blanked it from my memory until now (39-40 years buried away in the dark recesses of my mind) The corn flakes as you can imagine did not react well to having hot milk poured on them. They turned into a slimy, gloopy and mushy mess.. absolutely disgusting. I must have forced them down, because it was a case of eat what was in front of me or go without in those days...bleugh...

At Cub camp(Gilwell Park) I remember we were given what the Scouts ate in 1916(they must have really been limited back then) some kind of muesli thing and this put me off cereals in general for a decade-it was years later I rediscovered Rice Krispies but that experience, which traumatised a lot of us, stayed with me for ages.

I never really liked Ready Brek that much either but still hate semolina with a passion or me mum's rice pudding!! (sorry Mum!!)

Any of you remember jamboree bags? If I recall they were little bags of a mixture of sweets and I think with a comic. I'm sure they were about 20 - 30p maybe a little more.

I remember Jamboree bags I think they were around 3p and had sweets and some sort of toy or game in them too. Never had Ready Brek, my sister used to like it though, the only cereal I had was(after a hiatus of 10 yrs being put off cereal for life by my Cub Scout experience) Rice Krispies.

I never did it myself but my best friend did it several times - went up to Trafalgar Square for New Year's Eve well before they had the idea of copying Sydney and putting on a firework display by the river. I can also remember it was pretty quiet around that time, now of course it can be pretty noisy. We would watch the special on television, usually some Scottish thing(even though Hogmanay has French roots) with comedian Chic Murray and then the bongs at midnight.

And Andy Stewart dancing in his kilt!!

And Moira Anderson the noo Looking back at that I am amazed that anyone stayed watching.

Do you remember returning to school after Christmas and feeling different, as if it was going to be a long slog to the next term. It was mostly getting back to normality after the rush and excitement of Christmas and sending cards, concerts etc. Nowadays I think that would be called post-Christmas Blues.