collecting pennies from the gas meter

yes that make sense anagram.

Yes, they had to stop ex-raying children's feet because of the radiation risks!

vampirequeing was that a clarks shoe shop seem to remember having that done on occasion,seem to remember a T.V advert that claimed they were first to do this.....and I still ended up bunions [cunfused]

We had a shoe shop that checked if the shoe fitted by taking an xray of your foot. We used to love seeing the bones in our feet

glass the memory of hiding behind the settee from the rent man or Mr. Locke (our equivalent of the Provi man) has kept me out of debt all my life. I promised myself I would never buy anything 'on tick' and I never have.

glass

nellie I think thats why we had to hide as we had said something similar too many times

oh yes remember the provi cheque and being sent to the door saying ''mum says shes gone out'' when I my children where growing up I became a provident agent and although thirty years or so had elapsed the refrain on friday night hadnt changed form when I was a child ''mum says shes gone out''was hollered through many letterboxes

Farnons and Parishes had those tubes... that's where we would go when my Mum had a Provi to spend and we could choose an outfit. Then the Provi man (Provident) would call on a Friday to be paid. We often had to hide behind the settee and wait until he had gone as there was no money to pay him that week..

changing direction here,can you remember the wires in the shops that carried the money in tubes to a cashier in an office over looking the sales floor,,and your coop number.

Yes, they really are lovely. One of the perks of living here!

Ooh fraises du bois! I'm drooling!

I only eat wild plants now when I am with my two gurus - my daughter or my Swiss friend. I am too scared even to pick the lovely mushrooms that grow profusely in the forests here. I am O.K. with wild raspberries, litte strawberries (fraises du bois) and blackberries, and hazel nuts. Trouble with some berries - the seeds get stuck in my teeth.

I grow wild garlic. Nice in salads and soups!
We used to suck the blossoms of clover and white dead nettle?

Wild garlic is nice - if you like garlic!

Don`t know about mustard and cress, but fresh hawthorn leaves were quite tasty, we called them bread and cheese. And I used to pull up stalks of grass and chew the ends, they were very sweet tasting, I only stopped in my teens when someone poi nted out how many dogs had probably wee`ed on it!

On the odd days we got into the country, we would eat what we called mustard and cress - it had a fresh,peppery taste. Perhaps it was wild watercress?

I too love the smell of tar, and something else we used to do, can't remember the name of the flower, but I think it was sweet william, we would pick one of the blossoms and suck the end - it was always very sweet. Anyone else remember doing that? I know we tried it with other flowers, but it was never quite the same, and as I said before, we are still here!

I like the smell of hot tar!

I loved popping the tar bubbles at the side of the road in summer. And, hope you don`t cringe too much, I do at the thought of it, but I wasn`t allowed chewing gum, used to peel it off the pavement and chew it!

I'd forgotten about Button B. We always pressed them living in hope and occassionally were lucky.

Sunday evening I would run to the offie to get my dad half an ounce of Old Friend and a packet of blue papers. There would be 3d change and that would be my treat money.

Oh, yes, donkey stoned steps - my mother told me that she had learned from her mother 'More passes than comes in', so the 'brass and glass' had to be shining clean. A woman could be judged in the 1940's by the state of her step!

Thanks to my dad's constant supply of soft,white cloth we always had lovely clean sheets and pillow slips, and my mother would dye curtains in bright yellow or green, so our house always stood out as being a bit superior!
She was a professional sewer and could run up a science overall with lapels and pockets before I went to school - she would take down a curtain to make it. My dad used to make very large handkerchiefs on our old Singer, and sold them in the pub for one shilling each.

My friend and I used to tour all the phone boxes in the area, pushing Button B in case anyone had forgotten to get their 2p back. We would also take bottles back to the off-licence and get a half-penny for each.

In the long school holidays, nobody in my area ever went away, but some bossy older girl , about 14, would organise a day at Dunham Massey for those who could afford the fare, or in Peel Park. We took jam butties and a bottle of water and the older girls would organise games

Vampirequeen you must have lived with us at some point,that describes our house completely I ended up with carbon monoxide poisoning from a badly installed Ascot,so did mum we had to condemn it and go back to boiling water in a galvanised bucket on the stove...the outside loo had to be wrapped up warmly too the pipes lagged with dads old army blankets and a hurricane lamp hanging from the cistern...the squits used to be referred to as the ''back door trots'' One day after I had left home the outside loo decided to cave in to the ground with mum sitting on it,she was widowed by this time,and whenever we went to see her we had to pee in a bucket ...eventually we managed to borrow some money to get a toilet and bathroom built, she never used the bath she had got so used to cocking her leg up and washing her feet in the sink....must have been good exercise as I can still get my leg up to my head

vampirequeen, my aunt used to donkey stone our front step, and we were told don't tread on that until it is dry - and do you know what, we would all try to jump over it, and consequently landed with one foot just inside the forbidden area.
nelliedean, I too enjoyed sitting on the kerb getting dirty, much to my mum's despair, although now I realise that keeping things clean, which is what she liked to do, was difficult. My favourite past-time, after the road had been re-surfaced with tar, was to sit and burst the bubbles left. What a disgusting thing to do, I think now.
My mum always went to work, and I lived in a small terraced house in the 1930's with my gran, cousin, aunt and mum and dad. My dad was a bit of rogue, never actually found out what it was he did that made him the black-sheep of his family, but he didn't have a proper job until he was in his 50's, and so my mum was the only provider. She made a really good job of it.

At last someone who remembers donkey stones. It was my job from my earliest years to donkey stone the step. I loved doing it and tried to persuade people to jump over the step rather than walk on it as I was always so proud of how it looked.

Did anyone have an old hat, gloves, socks and cardigan to wear in bed? We often had more clothes on to go to bed than we wore during the day. My sister and I had seperate beds but always ended up together.

We didn't have hot water until we got an Ascot water heater. The luxury of hot water. Dad would bring the tin bath in from the shed on a Friday night and we'd fill it in the kitchen. At tin bath.....the only way to have a frozen bottom and a scalded tummy at the same time lol.