Memories of Childhood

All Gen X kids will identify with these memories :

Sitting in the back of the car on trips out and not wearing a seat belt.

Eating weird sandwiches...sugar...brown sauce...ketchup...

Being able to buy sweets that were in the shape of cigarettes. They even had a coloured bit at one end.

No sun cream, I can actually remember in the summer of 1976 people rubbing spry crisp and dry on themselves (for younger readers, spry crisp and dry was a very popular vegetable oil at that time used for frying chips) - resulting in a very strange smell when you went past sunbathers..

Soda stream machines, with which you could make your own pop...

Having milk in glass bottles with foil tops, courtesy of deliveries by the milkman every morning.

Bouncing around on Spacehoppers in the early 70s.

When dessert choices were limited to Jelly, Blancmange, Trifle or Rice Pudding out of a tin.

When the top deck of a double decker bus was like an opium den with all the smokers up there...the back of the seats even had ashtrays built into them..

I don't remember eating sugar sandwiches, but I still have brown sauce, ketchup and Colman's Mustard, the latter of which I had last night.

(22-01-2019 10:18 )Carl_HoneyLover Wrote:  All Gen X kids will identify with these memories :

Sitting in the back of the car on trips out and not wearing a seat belt.

Eating weird sandwiches...sugar...brown sauce...ketchup...

Being able to buy sweets that were in the shape of cigarettes. They even had a coloured bit at one end.

No sun cream, I can actually remember in the summer of 1976 people rubbing spry crisp and dry on themselves (for younger readers, spry crisp and dry was a very popular vegetable oil at that time used for frying chips) - resulting in a very strange smell when you went past sunbathers..

Soda stream machines, with which you could make your own pop...

Having milk in glass bottles with foil tops, courtesy of deliveries by the milkman every morning.

Bouncing around on Spacehoppers in the early 70s.

When dessert choices were limited to Jelly, Blancmange, Trifle or Rice Pudding out of a tin.

When the top deck of a double decker bus was like an opium den with all the smokers up there...the back of the seats even had ashtrays built into them..

Yes but mostly felt car sick, No, not me matey, Yes, erm I remember that oil but didn't know people did that!, yes my cousin had one in his room I was sooooo envious, yes I was a milkman's assistant as a teen and got paid £2.50 for nearly 6 hrs work! I could carry three bottles in one hand when they were thinner.Never had one, but had a skateboard-more on that later. Ice creams like Choc ices and wafer sandwiches and as mentioned earlier Angel Delight. Oh yes, I remember the smoke on the back of the bus and of course kids necking and if you hit a bump you envariably bounced up and nearly hit your head on the low ceiling-ding, ding!!

Have to mention holidays that I went on as a kid.

We regularly went to Butlins at Pwllheli in North Wales. Sadly the camp is no more and the place is now basically a glorified caravan park which is run by Haven, but in the 70s it was Butlins and for us kids it was like heaven on Earth. Butlins in those days was very different to the Butlins of today.

For a start, everything was free - I can remember taking £1.50 with me one year (1978 or 79) and coming home at the end of the week still with loose change in my pocket. There was the funfair with a big variety of rides, a big boating lake, outdoor and indoor swimming pools, as well as the one attraction there which would guarantee that I would be an absolute mass of bruises when I returned home. A covered roller skating rink. You hired the skates by handing over your chalet key essentially as the ‘deposit’...then it was strap these lethal things onto your trainers or what you were wearing, in my case it was trainers. And out you would go onto this hard concrete rink with no head protection, no knee pads, elbow pads or anything. You went on there and learned how to skate the hard way....falling on your arse...on your hands, knees...until you learned how to go at speed while trying to avoid all the other kamikaze pilots rocketing around and falling over at regular intervals...

How none of us ever came to serious harm I’ll never know, but it was brilliant fun, and if I had my life over again I wouldn’t change a single thing. After battering myself into a mass of lumps, bumps and bruises, would nip back to the chalet early evening for a quick bite to eat, and catch the first sight of my parents since early that morning...before going out again to go to the pictures to watch one of the latest movies that were being shown.

By the time my evening was done and I returned to the chalet, my parents would be going out to the Bier Keller or wherever..in fact I would only really see them for any length of time on one afternoon of the whole week and that was at the beach, but even then we travelled by different routes, them by way of the miniature railway, and I via the chairlift, or the ‘overhead rope railway’ as it was called.

Absolutely loved my hols at Pwllheli, really though it should have been called Liverpool on Sea, as it was absolutely rammed with Scousers, so much so that it was easy to feel like I was a foreigner in my own country...

I wasn’t such a fan of Sunday mornings there though, going through the lines of the self-catering chalets to be repeatedly greeted by the overpowering stink of boiled cabbage!! I was convinced at that time that most people from Liverpool were big cabbage eaters..,it bloody stunk!

We used to have holidays at Littlehampton, West Sussex. my grandfather had a flat down there in a block and a beach hut and he let us use it for birthdays, anniversaries and summer/school holidays. Great place to feel alive and loads of things to do like playing cricket on the beach, picking up shells and building sand castles.

There was no such thing as the school run.. It could be 30 degrees below zero, the school could be surrounded by rabid dogs and all the paths mined. It didn’t matter. You walked to and from school every day.

Sweets were better.. They really were, because they weren’t laboratory-born experiments in obesity. They were bigger, and tastier, and cost tiny amounts of money.

Flares and tank tops were the height of fashion.. No, we weren’t wearing them ironically.

You taped the charts In mono... On cassettes.

Adults were allowed to beat you up... Parents, teachers, policemen, random people in shops… violence against kids was actively encouraged. Corporal punishment – the cane in England, a leather strap in Scotland – wasn’t banned in British schools until the mid-80s.

Roller discos.. They seemed like a good idea at the time.

Everything was lethal... Ring pulls were sharper than razor blades. Car exhausts pumped out lead. Chimneys belched poisonous smoke.

Playgrounds were paved with concrete. Nobody wore seatbelts or bike helmets. It’s a miracle any of us made it.

Phones had dials.. Assuming they weren’t in phone boxes that smelled of wee.

Food was weird.. Fancy a fizzy drink? Here, mix some powder in water! Fancy some dessert? Here, mix some powder in water! Fancy some mashed potatoes? Here, mix some powder in water!

(22-01-2019 11:53 )GreenMachine Wrote:  

(22-01-2019 10:18 )Carl_HoneyLover Wrote:  All Gen X kids will identify with these memories :

Sitting in the back of the car on trips out and not wearing a seat belt.

Eating weird sandwiches...sugar...brown sauce...ketchup...

Being able to buy sweets that were in the shape of cigarettes. They even had a coloured bit at one end.

No sun cream, I can actually remember in the summer of 1976 people rubbing spry crisp and dry on themselves (for younger readers, spry crisp and dry was a very popular vegetable oil at that time used for frying chips) - resulting in a very strange smell when you went past sunbathers..

Soda stream machines, with which you could make your own pop...

Having milk in glass bottles with foil tops, courtesy of deliveries by the milkman every morning.

Bouncing around on Spacehoppers in the early 70s.

When dessert choices were limited to Jelly, Blancmange, Trifle or Rice Pudding out of a tin.

When the top deck of a double decker bus was like an opium den with all the smokers up there...the back of the seats even had ashtrays built into them..

Yes but mostly felt car sick, No, not me matey, Yes, erm I remember that oil but didn't know people did that!, yes my cousin had one in his room I was sooooo envious, yes I was a milkman's assistant as a teen and got paid £2.50 for nearly 6 hrs work! I could carry three bottles in one hand when they were thinner.Never had one, but had a skateboard-more on that later. Ice creams like Choc ices and wafer sandwiches and as mentioned earlier Angel Delight. Oh yes, I remember the smoke on the back of the bus and of course kids necking and if you hit a bump you envariably bounced up and nearly hit your head on the low ceiling-ding, ding!!

Jelly was a top favourite in my house and blancmange and Angel Delight it was a welcome pud at home when you had to suffer having semolina for pudding in school!!

(22-01-2019 18:51 )Carl_HoneyLover Wrote:  There was no such thing as the school run.. It could be 30 degrees below zero, the school could be surrounded by rabid dogs and all the paths mined. It didn’t matter. You walked to and from school every day.

Sweets were better.. They really were, because they weren’t laboratory-born experiments in obesity. They were bigger, and tastier, and cost tiny amounts of money.

Flares and tank tops were the height of fashion.. No, we weren’t wearing them ironically.

You taped the charts In mono... On cassettes.

Adults were allowed to beat you up... Parents, teachers, policemen, random people in shops… violence against kids was actively encouraged. Corporal punishment – the cane in England, a leather strap in Scotland – wasn’t banned in British schools until the mid-80s.

Roller discos.. They seemed like a good idea at the time.

Everything was lethal... Ring pulls were sharper than razor blades. Car exhausts pumped out lead. Chimneys belched poisonous smoke.

Playgrounds were paved with concrete. Nobody wore seatbelts or bike helmets. It’s a miracle any of us made it.

Phones had dials.. Assuming they weren’t in phone boxes that smelled of wee.

Food was weird.. Fancy a fizzy drink? Here, mix some powder in water! Fancy some dessert? Here, mix some powder in water! Fancy some mashed potatoes? Here, mix some powder in water!

remember the trimphone ad and the people who impersonated them (crazy i have to say), but then the Generation Game did have Percy Edwards on doing his birds so to speak!!

(22-01-2019 18:53 )babelover48 Wrote:  

(22-01-2019 11:53 )GreenMachine Wrote:  Yes but mostly felt car sick, No, not me matey, Yes, erm I remember that oil but didn't know people did that!, yes my cousin had one in his room I was sooooo envious, yes I was a milkman's assistant as a teen and got paid £2.50 for nearly 6 hrs work! I could carry three bottles in one hand when they were thinner.Never had one, but had a skateboard-more on that later. Ice creams like Choc ices and wafer sandwiches and as mentioned earlier Angel Delight. Oh yes, I remember the smoke on the back of the bus and of course kids necking and if you hit a bump you envariably bounced up and nearly hit your head on the low ceiling-ding, ding!!

Jelly was a top favourite in my house and blancmange and Angel Delight it was a welcome pud at home when you had to suffer having semolina for pudding in school!!

Ugh....semolina...one of the trio of horrors dished out in 70s schools along with sago and tapioca....

Wouldn't touch that stuff with a barge pole-which one said to resemble frogs spawn?
Incidentally I am thinking of doing a childhood thread spin off for just images -what do you think? The reason is that a lot of what I posted has probably been missed or not seen so maybe a dedicated thread spin off might be better?