Memories of Childhood

I sympathise with you as to what happened in the pissed of thread mate. I remember same thing happened to me when I was younger I wanted an ice cream got one lut as the freezer was in the garage at time, the parents were away on holiday and I accidentally forgot to close the freezer!! ended up defrosted about £200 of food least to say parents were furious!!

Mind you I remember that we had one of the old style chest freezers we had once,was kept in the garage once it was in there you could just get the car in there - were they taken out of service because of ozone emissions or something or through that several deaths had occurred with tthem ? Don't know if they wold still be allowed today.

Funnily enough I did do it once. I went out one Sunday to play snooker with my friend and accidentally switched off the main fridge-freezer but luckily by the time I got back I realised what had happened and switched it back on-it had only been for a few hours so nothing really defrosted(unlike yesterday) and nothing got thrown. I think the old chest freezers had something that might damage the ozone layer, like CFCs so they had to be scrapped or redesigned. I know they were convenient but bloody expensive back then.

Speaking of snooker we used to have a small table but big enough to fit over the dining room table and we needed to have a very small cue if the shot were against the old fireplace(bricked up over time). There was a problem though, we found out the table wasn't level so if you took a shot it would veer off left or right and straight into the pocket, however we solved that by putting two old folded-up tablecloths under it at either end and that stopped it. As long as we did that you could play a decent game. I miss that old table. I used to lift it myself onto the table but normally I would get help from my Dad. That dining table also doubled, when pulled outwards and the middle section slotted inside, as a ping-pong(table tennis or if you're Boris Johnson, whiff-whaff!) and we would set up the net in the middle and have a few games.

We used our old dining table for pretty much everything from table tennis to Subbuteo - that brings back memories - anyone ever make a complete Subbuteo stadium and who collected the most teams? i do recall we did one floodlit game!!

I have my original Subbuteo stuff from the 70's but I never had floodlights and I had three teams. I bought a team from the now defunct TOYS R' US which said Liverpool on the box but when I got it back it was clearly Denmark! Flick to kick!

We had an old pull out table which also served for cramped games of snooker and Subbuteo. I had a set with the floodlights and a green surround fence with adverts on it and a scoreboard which you had to slot in the names of the teams yourself - the names came on little strips of paper. There was also a manager and a trainer figure. I had four teams - England, West Germany, Holland and Argentina. Like all of the South American teams figures at the time, the Argentines were stereotyped as being black. Odd, as I've never seen a black Argentine footballer.

I remember the scoreboard and they even had a television camera with figure and pitch side interviewer in miniature. Didn't have the fence or floodlights, in fact I think it was fairly basic version I did like the green baize pitch which my mum used to iron occasionally to keep it flat which was essential for accurate game play. I also remember seeing a player on Blue Peter and another kids show as he was the world champion apparently. We were good at this game. Easy to play, yet hard to master to world championship status. The worst thing about the figures was if you flicked too hard they would either sail into the air OR mishandle them and they'd break-glueing them was a total nightmare.

i had rugby cricket and football and the snooker express

Yes there were different versions of the game. I remember the Rugby and Cricket but not the Snooker although it does ring a vague bell.

I'd forgotten about the tv camera rostrum, had that too. About half of my squad were 'injured'and needed the glue. Never had the rugby one but it looked intriguing.