Memories of Childhood

Do,you remember when you had to physically get out of the chair to press a button to change channels on your television? I can remember we came into a remote control tv with Teletext like Ceefax quite late and it was a revelation; changing channels pressing a button on a small handheld device without getting up all the time AND accessing news and weather etc with just a few presses, even playing games!

And do you remember when television used to close down for the night- "don't forget to unplug your television set before you go to bed" and then you got a little white dot that you watched slowly fade. Can you imagine not having 24hr television or indeed radio. I can remember when radio stations had to close down at 2am so it was quite a revelation when someone decided to allow radio to continue throughout the night-non-stop radio, which meant that you could listen into the wee small hours-good if you couldn't sleep on a hot night in Summer or wanted some company to help you drift off to sleep. When I was a teen I used to listen to late-night radio entertainment/talkshow LBC because at the weekends there used to be several presenters who had rolling quizzes-you rang up, set a question or answered a question and then set one yourself.

One year a presenter played a computer game, Lords of Time, a text adventure using an Amiga computer and people rang in and each time they had to play and try to solve puzzles. It was really good. I also used to listen to a chap called Clive Bull who used to have these amazing characters on, real life people who just phoned in and became regulars like an boy Charles from Camden Town who used to sing(good voice) and Babs from Bermondsey, a real cor-blimey cockney type. I have mentioned this before but he also had a man called Sven who was a Norwegian trawlerman and he would regale us with his fishing tales. Later it was found that it was in fact the comedian Peter Cook who was Sven.

Here's something I was thinking about last night did any of you have midnight feasts when you were young? I can remember me and my sister getting up before midnight, gathering a load of food and just having a night picnic in the lounge. It was really good fun, but we didn't eat too much. At one point my Dad came downstairs and we hid behind the sofa. I remember we had the usual stuff crisps, a few sweets and some kind of drink and it lasted about half an hour.

When they worked and not used as a toilet I remember physically going to a phone box and putting coins in a slot, then dialling a number. You could use it to ring someone obviously but you could also find out information - there was Dial-A-Recipe, Dial-A-Disc(where you rang up and could pick a track to listen to-imagine that today??), you could also find out the latest weather, the Test Match cricket scores and of course the time thanks to the Speaking Clock. Nowadays you have all that as an app on your mobile/smartphone for heavens sake. I cannot imagine today's youngsters bothering to go to a phone box let alone use their fingers to actually dial for something. I feel it was more exciting. The other thing I remember is when some phone boxes were replaced by modern card-using machines. You bought a special phonecard which you could get for an amount from £1 to £10 and then make as many calls as you had enough credit on them.

Carl posted some tickets for Red Rover - this allowed unlimited travel all over London for £2(which for a schoolboy was quite expensive but it made more sense than paying each time for a single ticket) and you could hop on and off any bus-in the days of the old Routemaster when you could hop on/hop off. I also remember the passes you could get. It was like a lottery ticket with 31 days to choose from and all you did was choose the day you wanted, it was printed out for that week and you scratched off the days you wanted to use it and I think the time you would be using it too. Once on the bus you showed it to the driver and you could use it all day or week or month, depending on which sort you had bought.

(26-03-2019 18:19 )GreenMachine Wrote:  When I was a teen I used to listen to late-night radio entertainment/talkshow LBC because at the weekends there used to be several presenters who had rolling quizzes-you rang up, set a question or answered a question and then set one yourself.

For a few years in my late teens and early twenties it was routine on Monday to Thursday on nights I was at home to listen to John Peel between 10pm and midnight and then on Friday to the late, great Tommy Vance. I can't imagine youngsters now taking time out to listen to the radio for two hours solid. And I mean really listening, not just having it on as background music.

I remember The Rock Show with Tommy Vance and John Peel's stuff, although some of it was what I called 'aural assault music'.

Holidays have been mentioned but I remember the excitement of going to I think it was Torremolinos in the late 70's on the newest aeroplane to hit the skies; entrepreneur Freddie Laker created a brand new airline, Laker Airways and it was a huge plane to go on although ecomony class was a little cramped. Laker Airways and indeed Freddie Laker had been the darling of Margaret Thatcher and she trumpeted its success all the time. A dirty tricks occured from their main rival British Airways but in the end Laker Airways went bust.

If you wanted to interact and be social when you were young you went to a nursery, school or in this particular case, to someone's house after school. I remember arranging to go to various people's houses when I was young. It was good because on those days you got a lift so you didn't have to stand around waiting for a bus to go home in the pouring rain and you also got fed. I went to a friends' house one afternoon and we ended up building a LEGO Technic set-the chassis if you remember that one(posted on the Images thread) and at the same time we also had one of my favourite meals- spaghetti bolognese and ice cream to finish. Another friend of mine invited me back to his house and we ended up building LEGO stuff and listening to records(vinyl) which was also good.

One of the best things I did though was go to my best friends' house each December and record a tape which we would then send to an old schoolfriend of ours who had emigrated to Australia(Perth) when we were in secondary school. Each time I would go over armed with records and sound effects stuff and a diary of the year to read out. I listed all the things we had got up to over that year and we tried to match that with an appropriate record or sound. It was great fun cueing up records, a Christmas tape and sounds and at the same time telling our friend about the year here. At the end of each tape(started in 1987) we would wish him a Merry Christmas/Happy New Year and say that one day we might get over to see him-not that we could afford to at that time. However, one year that DID come true but he came to see us in 1992-my friend had arranged for him to stay at his flat and they both surprised me one weekend. We went bowling and he had this huge television camera-style camcorder and he filmed a lot of things. He also went sight-seeing. At the end of his visit we said goodbye and as usual said "might see you over there one day" as we also did on the cassette done at the end of the year. Little did I know it would be sooner than I thought.

Come 1993 my best friend came to me and asked me how much money I could get my hands on. I had some savings and had a slight windfall with some shares that had come to me-Abbey National gave its members 100 shares BUT some got more, and I managed to get 200 shares(not by nefarious means I assure you, it was a mistake by the Bank) It got investigated but I managed to keep mine and I sold those to pay towards my ticket to Australia plus I got a bit of help from my grandma and family.
(The trip has been outlined in detail on the Everything 90's thread)

I am glad to see that today's kids still go to each other's houses but I suspect that is to play on computer games or sit and scroll idly through the Internet - still gets them out of the house!

Not so much childhood more teenage I remember the excitement of getting my very first magazine(referenced nowadays as 'jazz' mags) and I think it was either FIESTA or ESCORT, the more downmarket ones. I also have to confess that I managed to get it for nothing as I worked out how to distract the shopkeeper whilst I hurriedly hid it either inside a newspaper(The Sun or Star) or up my jumper at the back. Yeah, yeah I know I was committing an offence but at that time magazines were expensive even at £1.50 and I got quite expert at it - it helped if you knew the blindspot of a mirror on the wall OR you managed to create a distraction. When I did buy magazines it was mostly monthly ones like 'M*yf*ir', 'Pentho*se' or Men's World etc. I rarely got Pl*yb*y unless a British girl was in it like Samantha Fox or Marina Baker(it was rare for Brits to make it big enough) and concentrated on the less expensive ones as well as specialist mags like BIG ONES, ASIAN BABES and BLACK BABES(of the Electric Blue stable) but I had to cut back as the prices rose.

School-6th form around 1982-3. Imagine the scene. Me and six girls in the same classroom practically everyday doing the same course a BTEC(Business & Technical Education Council) which had five different modules(World Of Work, Data Processing, Business Calculations, Book-keeping & Accounts and People & Communications) It might sound like the ultimate dream for schoolboys and some of the girls were very pretty BUT it could be a nightmare. Most of the time they would talk non-stop about clothes, pop music(in particular Duran Duran and Culture Club) and other girlish things.

Oh I got the nudges and winks alright from my fellow students but at times they did my head in. I just got on with things and helped them out if necessary. I did get one over them though as our English(P&C) teacher had given us assignments to do and I had managed to finish mine on time whereas the others had only half done it-I was exempt from homework for the week whilst they had to finish their assisgnments. One good thing that separated us from other classes was we were allowed to make a cup of tea and eat in the classroom during our English lessons which was pleasant. I was quite chuffed when they typed out birthday messages one day which at least meant I existed in their eyes-most of the time they discussed television and pop magazines. It was an odd existence that's for sure.

Anyone remember the Cornetto ads?