1950's Childhood.

I have so enjoyed reading all your memories it took be back to a very different era when life seemed so simple.

Hi annodomini ...lol I was one of those dolly cream scrubbers of stone steps,when I was only 9yrs old..at the time my mum used to teach us to respect and Help the senior citizens on our street,run errands ect"....I in turn taught my sons to help people whenever they could regardless of their ages . Yes those days were hard but the people were More caring, polite,and helpful shame for the kids of today no Guidance in many cases.

Yes mrs mop to all you have mentioned,Bread n Dripping loved that on a Monday after the beef dripping in the roasting tin,Give that to me now and I would turn green I think lol lol.���� loved my little bottle of milk cos mum couldn't afford to let us have just milk to drink being six of us it was to expensive ,and the tin Bath was really a round washing tub for soaking clothes in lol lol,so nothing as posh as a tin bath. An aunt used to knit the socks.��☺️����

making mud pies.

Throwing them at a sketch of Mickey Mouse my father drew on shed door.

Hopscotch

Finding chalk in garden and drawing on pavement.

Dusters on feet and polishing the floor.

Using my aunts mangle

Walking down a country lane unafraid to local pond.

Catching tadpoles

Bob a Job week.

Making dens in hedges that surrounded school playing field (bottom of our garden)

Using said school's long jump pit as our sand pit

Helping dad plant peas (well going behind him an picking them out of holes)

Next door neighbour's bread on a Friday.

Local butchers and asking for 'Piece of topside about 8/- please

licorice comfits

sweet tobacco

tiger nuts

lying in bed and hearing parents and next door chatting over the fence on a summer's evening with blackbirds and thrushes singing in the trees.

roller skating

tennis in the road when Wimbledon was on

Coronation and watching on neighbour's TV

Coronation glass mugs (so tiny)

School milk, warm in summer and frozen with top pushed off in winter

new packs of crayons where you could stand them up in holes in box.

School Assembly and 'The Hebrides' and all sorts of classical music.

Harvest Festival at school with a massive sheaf of corn made out of bread surrounded with REAL vegetables and fruit, not tins of soup.

Asking the butchers for sawdust for my rabbits' and mice cages and going round Romford market picking up discarded cabbage and lettuce leaves for them also.

Lying in bed at night listening to Radio Luxembourg on my transistor radio.

Oxfam week at school when we paid to go to the lunchtime disco.

Honeycomb on a stick, coated in chocolate and wrapped in polka dot paper.

Rossis icecream, with swirls of fruit sorbet, served from a stainless steel iced bowl. It's still around but doesn't taste the same these days.

Mum, sending me to the butchers to buy some belly pork.
Me, terribly embarrassed, "i'm not saying 'belly' to the butcher!
Can we have mince?'"

That's so funny mrs mopp.

We had the front doorstep painted cardinal red and it would be polished often by me and my sister so we could have the tin for hopscotch when we emptied it. The back door was donkey stoned till it ran out and we had to wait for the rag and bone man to come back with more.

My friend reminded me of the bonfire that was built in our road in the 50s. It was over a gas main pipe, unkown to the neighbours, who only realised when it was all swept away next day. Lucky we weren't all blown to kingdom come!

Your belly comment made me lol Mrs mopp! I'd have felt just the same.

thanks, I was very self conscious in those days.
And mum would always say 'tell him its for Mrs Taylor!!' But I never did, i couldn't see the point.

Talking to someone today about betting, reminded me of the bookies runners, before betting shops were legal. Ours was known as Little Johnny, a small man with a hunched back, he`d knock on the back door, whoever opened it would give him the money wrapped in a bit of paper with the bet written on it, then he`d, hopefully, be back the next day with the winnings.

I was about 15 and a sensitive soul when our next-door neighbour asked me to buy a pack of Tampax when i was doing my mum's shopping. This was, of course, in the days before you could pick up a product and take it to the check-out. You had to go to the counter and ask for it! Oh the embarrassment! I had only a very vague idea what Tampax was and what you did with it as my mother was far too embarrassed to even think about it.

How many girls got pregnant because boys were too shy to ask for durex?
Taking the point that you had to ask the sales assistant, in the days before self service. I vaguely remember a clip from A Kind if Loving when the boy went into the chemist, lost his nerve and came out with a bottle of Lucozade or something similar.

When we were first married, we lived just a few doors from our local branch of the Co-op, so knew the young man who managed it very well. One day, I needed sanitary towels in a hurry, but didn`t want to ask Fred for them........so hubby went instead, and came home with them wrapped in newspaper!

My DH says that when he was small he bought his mother a packet of sanitary towels for Christmas. He had no idea what they were but had
seen her buying them in Woolworths so he knew she liked them.

And my mother-in-law who (as they used to say) thought she was better than she was, used to ask for stomach pork, as she couldn't bring herself to say belly either!

Stomach pork, that is hilarious!! I bet it gave the butcher a giggle !

I bet it did Mrs Mopp. She also used to make her husband walk behind her when they went out. I don't know where she got her ideas from, they had absolutely nothing, even living in a room in someone else's house. Bless her.

I clearly remember our butcher, a character larger than life. A booming voice, and if the meat came to fourteen and sevenpence halfpenny and I had a pound note he would holler, "How much change is that then?" And stare at me as I tried to work it out in my head. So very embarrassing, and all the housewives in the queue watching and laughing. Oh he thought it was a huge joke. I wasn't very old - if I had more confidence I would have said "Ten bob, please". I might even have got it!

If you lived during the 1950's, please complete this short survey about housing then. It'll only take 2 minutes and it would help me so much! Thank you in advance! www.surveymonkey.com/s/F8NYCZH

A quick look showed me one flaw - my grandparents council house cmy ost £1 a week, and parents's council flat was £3.50 a week rent (that was considered very expensive - known as an "economic" or realistic rent - no, I don't mean economical - and those houses were let to professional people like teachers)

Your minimum amount for rent is £100 pcm, which at that time would just about have rented you Buckingham Palace.

Of course, wages were far lower, too. My father got £9 a week as an experienced qualified teacher. It would have been impossible for him to pay £100 a month rent.

I have not looked any further, but I would suggest that you do some research and find some more realistic figures.

I mistyped there - should have been "cost £1 a week, and my parents' council flat . . ."

I think we can relate to these

I take issue with the assertion that fish didn't have fingers in the 50s!

"The first fish finger in Britain was a resounding success when it was launched in 1955. More than 60 years later the frozen brick of fish is just as popular."

number I remember my mother sending me to the corner shop for what she called 'doofers'. I was so excruciatingly embarrassed I wrote it on a piece of paper to hand to the store owner. Of course he didn't know what 'doofer' meant so I had to say sanitary towels
I hated going back there afterwards, although he didn't bat an eyelid.