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Childhood Revisited

(181 Posts)
HollyDaze Thu 26-Jun-14 15:04:49

How many of you can relate to the following as being representative of your childhood:

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According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 50s, 60s, 70s and early 80s, probably shouldn't have survived because:

Our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint with was promptly chewed and licked.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles or latches on doors or cabinets and it was fine to play with pans.

When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip flops and fluorescent 'clackers' on our wheels.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the passenger seat was a treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle – tasted the same.

We ate dripping sandwiches, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy pop with sugar in it but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can and no-one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill, only to find we forgot the brakes.

After running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we got back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us all day and no-one minded.

We did not have Playstations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. No 99 channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no internet chat rooms. We had friends – we went outside and found them.

We played elastics and street rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt.

We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits. They were accidents. We learnt not to do the same thing again.

We had fights, punched each other hard and got black and blue – we learned to get over it.

We walked to friend's homes.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate live stuff and although we were told it would happen, we did not have very many eyes out, nor did the live stuff live inside us forever.

We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law. Imagine that!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem-solvers and inventors ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility – and we learned how to deal with it all.

And you're one of them. Congratulations - you had the luck to grow up as real kids before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good.

For those who aren't old enough, thought you might like to read about us.

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How many felt uncomfortable as they read it? Has today's conditioning worked on you?

rosequartz Thu 03-Jul-14 21:35:39

My DF used to grow sweet peas, and I saw some lovely ones at a garden we visited today.
We have one flower on ours so far this year!

We had a tv for the Coronation and all the neighbours crowded into our front room to watch.

Mishap Thu 03-Jul-14 09:57:44

My Dad bought our first TV the day AFTER the coronation, because he realised it would be cheaper then - you now know all there is to know about my Dad!! "Waste not, want not" was his motto, and whilst I now applaud the sentiment, I felt at the time that I never ever wanted to hear it again!! I still can't throw anything away, and, when they were little, my children knew how to wind me up by wasting food!

One of my memories has just been triggered by a friend bringing me some wonderful sweet peas from her garden. When I was little we used to go to my Grand parents' house by the sea where they lived in a lovely house with a stream at the bottom of the garden.There was a vegetable garden with trellises bearing sweet peas all around it and little paths. My brother used to push me in a wheelbarrow round the paths and we would brush against the sweet peas as we went and get drenched in the scent. Wonderful!

hildajenniJ Thu 03-Jul-14 09:04:53

I also went shopping with my mother and two sisters to buy new dresses, with bows at the back, and sometimes smocking on the bodice, for our Sunday School Anniversary. Ialso remember the taste of the orange juice from the clinic. We didn't have a tv until I was seven. I use to visit my Granny's house on a Tuesday to watch Andy Pandy on theirs which my grandad bought for the Queen's coronation. Not many people had a tv where we lived so my Grandad's house was packed with neighbours that day.
We had a coal fire in the sitting room and a solid fuel rayburn in the kitchen. No central heating. I hated wearing my liberty bodice because all the little rubber buttons showed through whatever else you wore.

rosequartz Thu 03-Jul-14 00:03:41

shock have just googled it and they still sell it!

rosequartz Thu 03-Jul-14 00:02:21

New skin - it was awful. Supposed to keep cuts clean without plasters, but it stung like mad. I hated it but DF thought it was better and more hygienic than plasters until I protested so much that we reverted to plasters

numberplease Wed 02-Jul-14 23:59:08

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.

yogagran Wed 02-Jul-14 23:51:40

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

numberplease Wed 02-Jul-14 23:50:11

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.

TwiceAsNice Wed 02-Jul-14 23:49:03

TG should read Tag

TwiceAsNice Wed 02-Jul-14 23:48:02

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.

Dragonfly1 Wed 02-Jul-14 23:35:07

Or were they Little Liver Pills?

rosequartz Wed 02-Jul-14 23:28:18

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!

Dragonfly1 Wed 02-Jul-14 23:22:12

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

HollyDaze Wed 02-Jul-14 22:24:48

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.

numberplease Wed 02-Jul-14 22:07:07

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!

boheminan Wed 02-Jul-14 21:24:37

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 eithersad

feetlebaum Wed 02-Jul-14 21:10:31

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

hildajenniJ Wed 02-Jul-14 21:00:27

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?

hildajenniJ Wed 02-Jul-14 20:39:00

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.

annodomini Wed 02-Jul-14 19:40:54

apricot - sounds like a great childhood. Where?

apricot Wed 02-Jul-14 19:27:33

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.

HollyDaze Wed 02-Jul-14 11:21:11

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

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

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.

d4dsquared Wed 02-Jul-14 00:03:42

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.

rosequartz Tue 01-Jul-14 21:44:41

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

penguinpaperback Tue 01-Jul-14 20:47:23

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

www.loopknittingshop.com/product/1275/Prym_French_Knitting_Doll