Childhood Revisited

I loved French knitting and I know if I had a wooden bobbin now I would waste hours doing it. (And then wonder what to do with it all!). Does anyone remember Drene shampoo? It was a golden colour and smelt nice. My mother was convinced it kept lice away and said we only ever got them if she didn't wash our hair with Drene.

boheminan - I was agreeing with you . I must have made yards and yards of the stuff but for the life of me, I can't remember what I did with it

BeeWitch - some girls were born with more logic than others

No, I don't remember Drene shampoo rubysong but all this talk of French knitting - it's one thing I haven't shown my granddaughters how to do; they might be 19 and 17 years old but guess what we'll be doing next time they come here

I remember Drene shampoo - recalling the smell now

Yes I remember Drene shampoo. I used to steal my sister's Drene when she was out . I felt very glamorous using it.

Not just nails in bobbins these days, so cute..

www.loopknittingshop.com/product/1275/Prym_French_Knitting_Doll

Holly, we used to stitch the French knitting into flat circles for mats. My DM must have got fed up with them.

As a 10 year-old in the late 50s, I can clearly remember (having written the labels, that detailed the amount contained and farm of origin) riding on the open tractor trailer, on my uncle's dairy farm, to take the milk churns to the small platform at the end of the drive, for collection (by the Milk Marketing Board !). I also remember on occasions driving the tractor very slowly whilst my uncle loaded food into the mangers around the walls of the barn where the cows waited to be milked. Nothing went wrong, but the potential for it to is pretty hair-raising in retrospect!
My personal feeling is that current caution is largely based on apprehension of how your actions might be perceived by others and that this might lead to being reported to the authorities.

penguinpaperback - what fancy bobbins! Who would have thought it was still popular enough for them to make those

At least your mum had a daughter who actually thought of doing something useful with the miles of cord they'd made rosequartz

My personal feeling is that current caution is largely based on apprehension of how your actions might be perceived by others and that this might lead to being reported to the authorities.

There is an element of truth in that d4dsquared but it does make me wonder if today's youth are over-protected. I feel sad that they don't seem to have the level of freedom that we enjoyed.

My childhood was a bit exotic, we had the added dangers of typhoid, rabies, poisonous snakes and insects. When Daddy was away on manoeuvers he left Mummy his pistol because the tribesmen were restive. The nuns in the mission school were all sadists and I was expelled from Sunday school for sucking my thumb. My brothers and I ran amok and were very happy until we came home to England, where the children's accents and games were all foreign.

apricot - sounds like a great childhood. Where?

I never punched anyone either. We wore Clarks sandals and white socks in the summer,my mother took ages scrubbing the melted tar from them after we played cricket using the road outside our house as the wicket. We went for long walks in the woods, not returning home until dusk. When my little sister was three I was asked to take her with me when I went out, how many ten year old's now would be trusted with a three year old. I always moaned about it but had to take her anyway. We climbed trees,in skirts, made dens in the bushes and slept in a tent in the back garden. I loved my childhood, my DD is trying her best to give her children something similar.

Does anyone remember Koolose(not sure about the spellind) It was a bit like cremola foam. It came in a jar with orange celophane around it. It was a glucose based orange coloured powder you mixed with cold water, it was lovely and fizzy and tasted like nothing else. It disappeared in the sixties I think?

John Betjeman mentions Drene in one of his poems - describing Elaine, a 'bobby-soxer' whose hair "Friday nightly drowns in Drene"...

I don't remember Koolose Hilda, the best ever orange drink for me was the lovely orange juice mum used to get from the clinic for my little brother. It came in a flat glass square bottle. I've never found anything that compares to the taste of it.
My hair was washed in carbolic soap, so don't remember Drene either

Anybody remember Fennings powders? I think they were for lowering temperatures, and help with teething, but I loved the taste of them, would quite happily eat them straight from the paper!

Would they be like (or a form of) Beechams Powders numberplease? My mum used to give us half a Disprin if we had a fever or aches and pains.

I do, number, and also Fennings Little Fever Pills!

I loved that orange juice as well, bohemian. We also used to have cod liver oil and malt.

Navy blue bloomers - and those liberty bodices someone else mentioned. I suppose they kept us warm before central heating!

Or were they Little Liver Pills?

Having a new dress with a sash and bow at the back new white socks and sandals(Clark's) for the Sunday school anniversary. I loved playing French skipping in school and two balls and the rhymes you chanted whilst you threw them against the wall. We didn't have a car until I was 12 and remember catching two buses in all weathers to visit my grandmother and me and my cousin would be out all day in the fields playing with a bottle of pop and a sandwich and some of my aunties home made sponge. I only had sweets once a week on a Friday when my dad took me to the corner shop and I bought Five Boys chocolate . Does anybody remember that it had boys faces drawn in the chocolate and spangles sweets my favourite was old English. We had no central heating a coal fire in the living room and a calor gas heater in the kitchen. Andy Pandy the Wooden Tops and Rag TG and Bobtail was on the tele and when we eventually had a phone it was a shared party line so sometimes you picked it up to dial and there would be someone on the otherness talking and you had to put the receiver down again. Helping my Gran turn the mangle and stir the clothes in the boiler in the backyard on a Monday when I came home from school. We all got filthy walked to school by ourselves and no-one worried about health and safety.

TG should read Tag

My mother used to put the Fennings powder on top of a teaspoon of milk, but I loved them straight from the packet, they were a yellowy grey colour, I think their full name was Fennings Cooling Powders.

Bile beans - there was always some of those in the medicine chest, whatever were they for?

I was 12 and a half, at the end of 1955, when we got our first TV, and it was 1975, and I`d been married 12 years, before we ever had a car, 1982 when we got our first phone. I remember party lines though, because I was a telephone operator with the then GPO, from 1959 until 1964. If anyone needed to ring a party line, they had to go via the operator. If the 2 parties need to speak to each other, they called the operator, who`d tell them to hang up, pick up the receiver in a couple of minutes, then she/he would ring the other party, and tell them to hold on till the other party picked up.