Childhood Revisited

Long wool socks in the winter with garters that cut into your leg just below the knee.

I'd forgotten those rosequartz! Mine had a piece of knicker elastic, tied with a knot, and when you took them off, there was always a red circle below each knee lol

If you are in the Midlands, the Museum of Childhood at Sudbury Hall is good, too. (National Trust)

Gobstoppers! No wonder my teeth are like they are.

'Riding in the front passenger seat' - how posh was the person who wrote those memories? We went everywhere by bus, train or coach, or Shanks' s pony.

Sorry about the kali. I missed out a page.
If you want to see all the toys we used to play with, go to Beamish. They have hoops in the school playground.
The next big thing they are going to do is build a 50s street. That should bring back memories for all of us.

Kali came loose in a paper bag.
When I was seven or eight I was put on a train to go from Hull to Crewe.
I was in the guard van with the guard. I mentioned that to my granddaughter yesterday, and she could not believe it.
"What, all by yourself? Not with your family?"

Numberplease I remember being given a stick of rhubarb with a sugar cone. With the combination of the acid of the rhubarb and the sugar it's a wonder I have any teeth left at all.

I couldn't get the hang of jacks, we played 'dabs' or fivestones in London 50's. I have a photo of me wearing flip-flops in about 1960…they were red rubber and yes, gave painful blisters between my toes

I wore Flip Flops as a child & I was born in '51. Made by Bata shoes. probably because I lived in E Africa.

I think there were many good things about 'risk' taking when we were kids and we do not allow enough now..parents hover over kids far more!

I would like to know the statistics of serious injury/death in kids playgrounds with those high slides, witches hat roundabouts, wooden seat swings and un-sprung seesaws all on hard tarmac. Did kids learn more about safety or did high numbers suffer injury?? I don't know.

Also death and permanent damage from polio, scarlet fever, measles etc etc! It was not all rosy!

Not all of us are on facebook, thank goodness!

Anyway, it bears repeating...

Another facebook " chestnut" I see. Ah well .

Oh, I think I'll definitely have to get some for my GDs...thanks, when!

They still sell them, Ana. I have a set in the children's toy drawer.

www.smartstart-toys.co.uk/puzzling-fun/indoor-games/metal-jacks.html

Jacks - remember those? I got very good at the game the one summer the craze lasted - school playgrounds are pretty hard on the knees and knuckles though!

Yes Ariadne, there was a whip and top season, a skipping season, and a marbles season. I used to take the leather thong off new whips and replace them with string, it worked better!

Fantastic, bohemian. I remember my dad taking us all for a picnic in Lyme Park (edge of Peak District) when I was 8. So there were 4 children in the sidecar, 8, 7, 4 and 18 months, plus collie dog, mum on pillion in summery frock and dad driving!

We didn't have a car but my dad rode a big Norton motorbike (no crash helmet). He made a 'sidecar' for my brother and I to sit in from our old pram - a big black old deep bellied thing. He took the hood off, hammered in a plank for a seat, and somehow attached it to the side of the bike, my brother used to hunch up behind me. We travelled miles, with mum riding pillion (in her flowery cotton dress and white sandals). Apart from the excruciating back ache, we had lovely days out - and all survived to tell the tale!

I was born in 1943 and we had whips and tops and chalked coloured patterns on them It was a seasonal thing and alternated with hopscotch with the grid being chalked onto the pavement and a bit of shiny tile used as the puck.

We also did skipping with lots of rhymes and bouncing balls against walls in rhymes too. There were both one and two ball games.

One of my favourites was "Releivio" which was a chasing game. When you were caught you were in prison unless someone not "it" could run and touch you and shout "Releivio".

My Mum was keen on "common" too and she classed red shoes and sandals as common so I was never allowed them. They were boring brown (and how I yearned for red ones) but I did love going to the shoe shop and putting my feet in the x-ray machine so I could see all the bones in my feet. I think they realised there was a danger from the radiation eventually and stopped them being used.

Ariadne yes! my mum had a list in her head of what was 'common' such as eating in the street, milk bottle on the table and the worst offence of all - having a fringe! Where she drummed that one up from, I don't know. Needless to say, I do have a fringe.......

I didn't know flip-flops existed until I went to work in Africa in 1965, after which I wore them much of the time. Clark's sandals were bought during the Easter holidays and eventually we were allowed to wear them without socks and got white T-bars on our feet! We played out on the beach and on the street, tennis without a net and French cricket. We could go anywhere on our bikes. 4 pennorth of chips on the way back from Guides. Pressed button B in the phone box to see if any money came out - very occasionally it did! Every few years yo-yos came into fashion. If we didn't have one, we could raid our mums' button boxes for big buttons to make our own. They worked.

Ariadne you've just reminded me that at my school we were allowed to wear short white socks in the summer, but not knee length ones because girls 'who frequented coffee bars' wore them!!!

I had whips and tops - I was born in 1946. There are two tiles of tops, but the most difficult one was a mushroom shape and I never mastered it. My mother thought it was all a bit common. (If you have read anything I have said about my mother, you will know that "common" was her watchword.) and I could never make those pretty patterns on my tops.

BTW, weren't whips and tops seasonal? Can'T remember when the came out each year, though.

Oh yes, Clarks' sandals in the summer, and brown bar shoes in the winter. But not knee sacks because they were.....???

Whips and tops??? I thought those went out in the early 1900s!

(Seriously...I never heard of anyone having those in my childhood, and I'm not that much younger than you, when)

My friend had a pair of skates with ball bearings in the wheels. She would let me wear the right one as she could manage on her left. Then we started watching the tap dancing lessons in a room at our church hall and acquired a pair of tap shoes. I wore the right tap shoe, her the left. To this day, I can perform tap movements with only my right foot!

We had whips and tops and would decorate the tops with coloured chalks. We played marbles into a well, scraped in the ground, hopscotch with shoe polish tins, stilts with National Dried milk tins and string and skipping with mum's old washing line.

For Whit Week, we had new white sandals which my mum would whiten and leave on top of the dustbin lid in the sunshine to dry, then it was off out in my dad's bike and sidecar to visit grandmother, four children squeezed into the sidecar and mum on the pillion. For a week in Blackpool, suitcases went in the middle!

What a joy to read all about my childhood Norvic Kiltie Glamma rings a bell and no flip flops. There was a farm next to my house and I was out from dawn till dusk and we played in the fields, the hay loft up rickity ladders and as others have said if you fell out of a tree you just picked yourself up and carried on - oh happy days.

Also my Daddy used to cut the toes out of my sandels to make them last all summer and I was never allowed to go into my summer clothes until "May was out" which in our house meant June

All these memories! We used to build bonfires too and make a Guy and take him out in an old pushchair to get pennies. Oooo and toffee apples.

An enterprising sweet shop owner near us when we were kids used to add water to kali and sell it as a drink for a penny. It was awful but we still used to buy it after the Saturday morning matinee at the pictures!