04-08-2013 7:55 AM - edited 04-08-2013 7:55 AM
1d caramels that were huge, 1d to use some toilets, putting money into a public phone and pressing A if connected or B to get your money back , syrup of figs , kaolin & morphine for upset tummies and one CB brought to mind, camphorated oil.
So what sort of things do you remember ?
05-08-2013 8:57 AM
Ooh I loved the pink custard, and sometimes we got chocolate custard.
Also there was this flat tart thing with a pastry base and soft, beige-coloured
stuff on top with chocolate sprinkles - gosh how I loved that stuff! I've never
seen it since, some say it's gypsy tart but the only gypsy tart I've seen and
tasted is nothing like it.
I remember being on the swings at the caravan park we used to go to in
Devon, sitting there swinging whilst they cut the grass, the smell remains
with me today. Oh and teaching myself to swim in the site's outdoor pool.
I'd be in that pool for ages sometimes, no 'elf & safety then, we were often
in there by ourselves (myself & sisters) and I taught myself to swim. I forgot
how to by the next time we went and had to teach myself again!
I used to meet my friend there who would come for weekends with her
family and their touring caravan - we were about 9 when we met up and
we still keep in touch today, in fact I'm hopefully seeing her next week.
A sad memory too - being told at school by the headmaster that my sister
had died, she was 12. I remember my best friend finishing the huge tortoise-
shaped cushion she'd been making out of blue and green fur fabric.
I remember we all sat around a big square table in art lessons and one day
we thought it would be a good idea to staple ourselves together by our
jumper sleeves - so we did. Then when I was asked to go to the teacher
it was a proper performance trying to take my jumper off so I could get
away from the table!
Gosh, when we actually start thinking there are so many memories that
come back!
05-08-2013 10:19 AM
I remember the AA man on his moterbike & sidecar saluting if your car had an AA badge.
05-08-2013 10:32 AM
The first car I remember my Dad owning ( cars always belonged to Dad.. I didn't know any Mums that could drive) was a Ford prefect. it was already old when we got it. it was black and had running boards.... Dad said the stone chip in the windscreen was a bullet hole from when the car belonged to Al Capone. and yes.. we believed him. Didn't everyone believe their Dad?
Until I was 8 our toilet was down the yard.. we did have a bathroom but you couldn't stand up in it properly and it was a very short bath because it used to be the cupboard under the stairs. ( ground floor of a three storey property) Then we moved to a house with a bedroom each, a garden and not only a proper bathroom but a toilet up and down stairs.
makes me sound ancient but I'm really not that old!
05-08-2013 2:40 PM
I didn't have a bathroom until I was married and had my son. As a child we had the tin bath in the yard, then we lived with my grandma for a year and she had a proper bathroom, although it wasn't 'ours'. Then we moved to our own house again when I was 10 and it was back to a tin bath, then when I was 16 I stayed with my sister in Scotland for 6 months and she had a bathroom, then it was back home to the tin bath for a year. When I first got married there was a bath in the kitchen with a big board on top so as you could use it as a worktop, then we built an extension and had a proper bathroom. My first proper bathroom and I was 23/24 by then!!!! Perhaps that's why I've got en suites and wet rooms to all the bedrooms now, so I've got a choice!!
05-08-2013 2:57 PM
The toilets at primary school were across the playground in a kind of shack... the wooden walls didn't fit properly and the roof was made of corregated sheets of something that looked heavy and also looked like it was going to fall any second ( what I now suspect to be asbestos) They froze in winter.. stank in summer.. You only ever asked to go to the toilet if it was a real emergency. and then only if you could persuade someone to come with you!
I Have real issues about toilets,, especially public toilets and I'm sure it dates back to then!
05-08-2013 3:34 PM
Ohhh captain i could go on and on..... The lemonade man coming around on a saturday afternoon and racing out to see what flavour i wanted that week. Our outdoor lavvy with a big old metal flusher chain lol,lol, and the spiders where all in there ohhh it made me really scared. I think we are all different ages , i was born in 1964. I loved the seventies disco music and getting my first wedge sandals which were not all that high but i thought i was towering abobe everyone in them ha ha ha. Faberge perfume i used to love ooohhh god yes. All the glittery body glitter and eye make up. Getting told off for wearing make up and colouring my hair when i was about 16 ha ha. Those were the days yes.
06-08-2013 9:41 PM
Those table mats that were free with petrol; they often featured old cars. Boiled ham from the confectioners, it tasted lovely; not like the plastic-looking stuff that you see these days that is pretty tasteless.
06-08-2013 11:55 PM
Oh and the Radiogram with the old 78's and the clatter they made as they dropped down the spindle onto the turntable; I think we could stack about 6 at a time on the spindle. (or whatever it was called.) And there was a Dansette record player.
07-08-2013 1:27 AM
Travelling in the boot of our estate car! H&S bods would have a fit, but if the three of us were on the backseat, without seatbelts we would fight so one always did long trips stretched out in the boot.
07-08-2013 3:31 PM
Did you go to my school ? mid 60's, the toilet door started about a foot off the ground and just about covered your modesty, in the winter the wind blew a gale threw the bottom and when you actually sat down to go you couldn't because it was so cold, those were the days, pink custard, Spangles, standing on a chair (oh the health and safety) to recite the times table and hopscotch in the playground. Oh god I sound old and just like my mother.
07-08-2013 3:32 PM
07-08-2013 4:08 PM
I remember standing on the teachers chair for my 5th birthday, everyone sang happy birthday and I got my morning biscuits free!! (we used to have a tuck shop..biscuits were 1p each or two chocolate fingers for 1p.
roasting chestnuts on a shovel in the ashes of the fire...duck apple night, (bobbing for apples on Halloween)
The school play, me playing a gypsy and having to run through the streets covered in cocoa and calamine lotion to make me darker skinned!! learning to shuffle cards on stage for the part, something I was terrified of doing....I was only 9.
sitting in my grandma's bath which was off the kitchen, with modesty boards that went over you and kept the heat in. Overhead, the rack with all the clothes drying on it.
08-08-2013 12:46 PM
@rescued_corgi wrote:Looks like we were in the same boat merc ! We were that poor I think the church mice used to bring us stuff
.
Another thing I remember is looking forward to weddings in the mining village we lived in so us wains could hopefully get a couple of pennies at the scramble.
I grew up in a mining village, and recall the pure excitement of a Sunday morning wedding...locally known as a 'Shabby Wedding' ...
All of us kids would stand waiting for the bride's car to pass, because we knew that at some point, the window would open, and a shower of sixpences & threepenny pieces would pour out and the scramble would begin..
08-08-2013 1:46 PM
It's funny what snippets you remember....
I'm actually pictured in a book - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-1970s-I-Can-Remember/dp/0749648686/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1375965398&sr=...
If you "look inside" there is a picture of my brother holding a bow and arrow (on yellow page) with our friend Trina. He's wearing a tarzan style outfit with leopard trunks, Trina has matching bikini - I had that one too 🙂
You can't see the pic with me in it, lol, but it's a funny school one.
Growing up on that estate in Devon was loads of fun, and we were a couple of miles from the beach. I have random recollections of life there - we moved up North when I was 7. Happy times, though we were poor and had no family around. We could only go to the beach if my mum's friend Hillary took us, or if family were visiting us in the summer hols.
It's so weird looking back on how things have changed.
08-08-2013 2:10 PM
@ilove2patch wrote:That looks like a rat eating a baby rabbit!
It does to me too
10-08-2013 6:33 PM
Wilson, yep maybe we were both poor and brought up in mining villages but hey they were good days and everyone looked after each other because we were all in the same boat !
Those were the days when communities were communities and banded together to help in any way they could.
10-08-2013 7:39 PM
corgi...
11-08-2013 6:45 AM
I remember some public toilets you paid 1d to use the cubicle and on the wall of one someone told me this little ditty was written,
" here I sit broken hearted paid a penny and only farted".