Memories

[Guest]

My daughter sent me this, sorry I don't know the author. I did survive. ! and YES I'm getting old.

 

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s probably shouldn't have survived, because our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint which was regularly 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 'spokey dokeys' on our wheels.

 

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags and riding in the front passenger seat - or the boot - was a treat. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle, and it tasted the same.

 

We ate chips, bread and butter pudding, and drank fizzy juice with sugar in it, but 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 it.

 

We would spend several hours building go-carts out of scraps, then go top speed down the hill, only to find out we'd forgotten the brakes. After running into a patch of 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 were back before dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded.

 

We didn't have Playstations or Xboxes - no video games at all. No 99 channels on TV, no videotape films, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no DVDs, no internet chatrooms.

 

We had friends - we went outside and found them. We played French skipping and rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt! We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones, but there were no law suits.

 

We played Knock Down Ginger and were actually afraid of the owners catching us. We walked to friends' homes. We also, believe it or not, walked to school; we didn't rely on Mummy or Daddy to drive us to school, as it was just round the corner.

 

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls. We rode bikes in packs of seven and wore our coats by only the hood. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of they actually sided with the law.

 

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem-solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have seen 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! Pass this on to others who had the luck to grow as real kids, before lawyers and the government regulated our lives for "our own good".

 

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

 

 

And something else to put a smile on your face...

The majority of students in universities today were born in 1986. The Uptown Girl they know is by Westlife not Billy Joel. They have never heard of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Neneh Cherry or Belinda Carlisle.

 

For them, there has always been only one Germany and one Vietnam. AIDS has existed since they were born. CDs have existed since they were born. Michael Jackson has always been white. To them, John Travolta has always been round in shape and they can't imagine how this fat guy could ever have been a god of dance.

 

They believe that Charlie's Angels and Mission Impossible are films from the past ten years. They can never imagine life before computers. They'll never have pretended to be the A-Team, the Dukes of Hazzard or the Famous Five. They can't believe a black and white television ever existed. And they will never understand how we could leave the house without a mobile phone.

 

 

Now let's check if we're getting old...

1) You understand what was written above and you smile.

2) You need to sleep more, usually until the afternoon, after a night out.

3) Your friends are getting married/already married.

4) You are always surprised to see small children playing comfortably with computers.

5) When you see children with mobile phones, you shake your head.

6) Having read this, you're thinking of forwarding it to a number of other friends because you know they'll like it too...

 

I don't even use a mobile phone (well I have one in the car, just in case, but invariably the batteries run out )

 

Peggy

[HappyMaz]

I had seen this before but it always makes me smile when I read it - and I'm only very young!

 

Life is so much more complicated full of technology to go wrong and foul up your day, and of potential hazards and risks that might cause injury or mild discomfort. I was reading a review of the Olympics opening ceremony and the journalist was wondering what our parade would be like in 2012. He seemed to think the highlight might be the synchronised (and no doubt well rehearsed) Health and Safety team, resplendent in their high-vis jackets doing a (very safe) jig...

 

Maz

[Marion]

I confess to being very old

 

I think once Britain followed the USA lead and moved into a litigation culture we were doomed to a world without the "fun" we knew as children.

[Lucie]

I was born in 1986 and but still have memories of playing in the way described. I think that where you were brought up is as important as when to people who are the same age as me.

 

 

lucie x

[Guest Wolfie]

My son was born in 1988 and HAS heard of Bananarama...but only because he's at Uni with the son of one of the trio (and Andrew Ridgeley)!!!

[dublinbay]

Oh dear! I do all 6 things on your checklist Peggy. Should I be worried??

[Guest]

Oh dear! I do all 6 things on your checklist Peggy. Should I be worried??

 

 

No, don't worry, you're not alone.

 

Peggy

[Inge]

It wasn't just chips but fish and chips wrapped up in newspaper... (never tasted the same once they changed it!)

 

we played in the local brook for hours unsupervised about a mile from home!

 

and walked 3 miles to school every day... (to save the bus fare)

 

Funny this should come up just spent a lovely day reliving memories while putting the slides onto the PC.. (we do still have the projector but felt they were becoming a bit worse for wear.)

Oh for those who don't know that was how we had our photos stored and shown

 

Inge

[Guest]

I admit to being an old person, and eating chips out of paper, and all of the above.

I also wonder how much I was loved, as we were allowed to sit on top of the hay bales on the trailer as is was pulled down the lanes by the tractor. How we didn't fall off or get knoecked off by the tree branches I'll never know. They were so high up we had to hang on for dear life. Don't see any of that these days, just as well really!

Oh happy days.

[Marion]

and made camps out of the said haybales and drank water from the said brook ....and survived!

[beth1]

I have just read this, ermmm yes I admit I do remember everything but saying that I was born in 1980!

 

I still remember even though I was very young (2 years old) about the Falklands war, strange that?!!

 

 

 

Beth

[Guest]

my son was born in 1985 does that date me?

 

oh for fish n chips wrapped in newspaper!!

 

my kids have never known life without an answerphone

 

my daughter has just done a level history and part of the course was about the Berlin wall coming down, she was learning about stuff i sat and watched on t.v......i knew i was watching history being made i didn't know my daughter would be learning it

[Gezabel]

I was just thinking of all the things i have in my home now that were not in my home when I was a child

 

Washing machine (well mum had one with a hand mangle on top)

fridge

electric kettle ( it went on the hob and whistled when ready!)

toaster

microwave

colour tv

freezer

video/dvd player

computer

central heating (cold fire era I am!)

double glazing ( was the frost on the inside of the window that bad!?)

tumble drier

shower

cd player (Oh i want the dansette record player back!! awful blue vinyl contraption though it was)

 

As for toys I can't recall anything that needed batteries.

 

If anyone finds a fish and chip shop that serves it in newspaper do let me know I would travel miles

[HappyMaz]

I was born in 1986 and but still have memories of playing in the way described. I think that where you were brought up is as important as when to people who are the same age as me.

I for one refuse to believe that anyone was born in 1986

 

Maz

[Guest]

I would play for hours with my Worm farm. I used to take them out talk to them wash them and put them back to bed!!!!! Can't imagine any of my kids doing that.

I can remember the Beatles being on the Royal Variety show at 9pm and my mum and dad letting me get up after being a sleep to watch them in black and white of course. Now that really dates me.

I was in my last year at school when men walked on the moon and as we were the oldest year they allowed us to have the afternoon watching it live!!!!!!!!

I can remember my mum asking for some Pineapple chunks and getting it wrong and asking for Chinapple Punks we thought it was just a funny word little did we know that the word Punks would actually exist a 20 years later.

My mum used to make me clothes from her old dresses, large spots and polka dot shorts.

I'm definetely older than some of you a child of the 50's when a bottle of lemonade and a packet of crisps in the car while parents had a drink was a night out!!!!!!

 

Oh the good old days

Steph

[aliamch]

I remember spending every Sunday afternoon 'playing' in the pub car park with a pop and crisps, it was years later that my mum found out my dad never used to take us to the playground.

Karrie

[Rea]

I was recently talking about this to a friend.

We'd gone for a pamper session and while waiting for our massage, we listened as girl asked her mom if she could have her nails done after her eyebrows.

My friend was so shocked she blurted out 'How old are you?'

Turns out she was 11!!!!!

 

It got us to thinking about the things we did at 11. Crawling through the long grass playing army, using hay bales for dens, walking for miles, riding our bikes 20 miles and having to get them on a bus home, all the things on the list. Did you used to get leeches stuck on you when you played in the stream?

 

Respect was different too.

I remember being scared silly if a police car went past and saw us smoking, we were off through the fence and running. We could be told off by anyone, and often were, but we'd go and appologise afterwards. Really, we'd get a rollocking for something, go away and talk about it, then go back, knock the door and tell the person how sorry we were we'd upset them.

[Guest]

making dens down the woods then taking some sandwiches to eat in there!

How about those funny things you could bang together, large hard plastic balls on two bits of cord that you flicked with your wrist & they would smash together and when it went wrong you had mega bruises on your arms! how ever lethal where they!

[JacquieL]

You young things you!

I watched the man walking on the moon with my infant class in my second year of teaching on the school TV. We were all so excited! I was teaching near Wimbledon at the time!

I remember playing whip and top, and jumping jacks and eating penny liquorice sticks- makes my mouth water to think of them. They just don't taste the same now! We played out in our road a lot as there were very few cars.

We walked three miles to school and thought nothing of it. If I was lucky, during the horrendous smogs before the Clean Air Act, I was given a penny for the tram.We also played out in the woods all day and no-one worried. We were so much freer in those days, but I do remember my friend being assaulted by a man in the woods, and the police being involved, so these things happened then as well.

My Dad bought one of the first TV's and it was a fancy wooden thing with a very small screen. There were no programmes late afternoon and early evening so people actually had to talk to each other and play with their children! For my 17th or 18th birthday I was given a record player and Rubber Soul, as I just loved the Beatles.

[Rea]

H&S people would go mad but we used to cut short our 2 mile walk to school by getting a lift on the milk float.

[Guest Wolfie]

Lesley, I had some of those - bright blue ones! Klackers, mine were called! My school banned them after it was reported on TV that someone had broken their wrist. H and S starting to kick in!

[Guest]

Ahhhh! spending the whole day off on adventures. A whole group of us ranging from probably 10 to 15 or 16 year old. All quite happy and getting along, parents didn't worry so much because older brothers and sisters would let us tag along and looked after us. I remember walking miles, sliding down hills on opened out cardboard boxes - the thrill of sometimes going so fast we nearly ended up in the brook. Making dens in bushes in the park, or tents in the back yard with an old wooden washing maiden and a sheet. Fishing for tiddlers with fishing nets and a jam jar on string. The penny tray with caramel penny arrow bars. The pop man delivering Corona Cream Soda, and getting money back from him for your old bottles. Having stalls at the top of the street and sending the money (a pittance probably) to the RSPCA.

 

My friend had a really old TV - a great big wooden cabinet and I'm sure the screen was made of some sort of plastic because it wobbled when you touched it.

 

Oh and I remember getting a transistor radio one Christmas when I was about 10, and it was great because I could listen to Radio Luxembourg under my pillow - usually fell asleep and woke up in the early hours to find it was still on.

[Inge]

remember the smogs well.. often walked to school when I could not see the wall next to me, holding on as the only way to get anywhere, and that was a mile walk at primary school alone.. I must have been about 8 ...

 

At 13 used to go to London by bus with friends all day.

 

Klackers 1971, brought them back from our first package holiday to Italy... must have been about time package holidays began to take off and took ages to save for it. before that holiday was a caravan at a seaside resort ( or we were lucky and went abroad to stay with relatives in Germany and Poland.....when it was Eastern Block and we were locked on the train to prevent us getting off before our destination )

 

Our transport was motorbike and sidecar.... and we were lucky to have transport...

 

Piccy of me, dad and grandad from Poland...

 

Inge

[HappyMaz]

How about those funny things you could bang together, large hard plastic balls on two bits of cord that you flicked with your wrist & they would smash together and when it went wrong you had mega bruises on your arms! how ever lethal where they!

We called them clackers - and as with any fad that becomes difficult to manage they were banned eventually in our school... I saw some ages ago in a 'pocket money' toy shop - but the strings had been replaced with rigid plastic so the balls could never get too near to the person's wrists. Spoilsports!

 

Note to self: must read to bottom of thread before posting. Now I know they were Klackers! in 1971 I was 9, so still in primary school at the height of the Klackers mania!

Edited August 12, 2008 by HappyMaz

[Guest]

Inge, my husbands dad had a motorbike and side car, he remembers going off fishing in it as a lad.

 

Klackers, (I was quite and expert), Diablo and the hoop that fit on your ankle with string and ball attached (can't remember what that was called). Yes walking miles to school, I remember once we didn't put the clocks forward we arrived at school at 7am (winters morning, in the near dark), the kitchen staff gave my twin brother , two sisters and I some porridge to warm us up.

 

We loved school dinners (I always had seconds) one day a week being 'finger meals' day, when marmite sandwiches or other non cooked lunch was offered.

No designer gear for me, every Saturday we would go to the village hall jumble sale, me being the youngest, I had the hand me down jumble clothes. I am now the queen of charity shopping and have near panick attacks at he thought of paying more than £5 for an item of clothing. . Life seemed less commercially orientated back then.

 

We had a black & white TV, our friend (when I was around 11 yrs old) had a cover plastic or perspex type cover that went over her TV screen. It had 3 dyed strips, green at the bottom, peach in the centre and blue at the top - hey presto, colour telly.

 

We played in corn fields, skated on very thin ice on the local pond, toboganned down sand dunes on cardboard, fished for crayfish in the stream. Out at 8am home by 6pm in te holidays (EVERY day was sunny, or so my memory goes)

 

Sawdust on the butchers floor, lots of sensory memories like that. The smell of perm lotion at home (Toni perms).

 

Peggy

[JacquieL]

Amazing isn't it Peggy? Every summer day was sunny and we always had snow in the winter. I wonder if it was true or were we just sunny minded children remembering all the good things in our lives.

Inge you must have some really interesting memories from your visits to your family abroad.

 

My mother is French and I remember visiting France ever year when I was very young. I remember my mother washing my brothers nappies in the river near my Aunt's farm house, and each day I used to ride the donkey home with the cream churn on each side and taking the cream to my aunt to make butter. She slapped it into shape between two wooden paddles. I also remember drinking some of the cider they made on their Normandy farm, from a tap on the barrel. We also drank wine mixed with water when we were very young ( is that why I am a bit of a wino now I wonder )

My first horse ride was on my aunt's farm in France!

[Guest]

What fantastic photo's. My parents were Youth Hostel wardens so I had an idyllic childhood in terms of countryside, space and freedom. Downside parents worked 24/7 but this meant we were given a lot of freedom to gain independent skills. Parents were there if needed but I spent all my time with my siblngs (keeping out of mum and dads way)

 

Ironically we complain about work having to put resources in and out of cupboards etc, well my mum & dad ran the Hostel on their own, a large house, a large garden and orchard. 50+ 'guests' per day. They had to maintain the house, including decorating it, maintain the gardens and cook full english breakfast and 3 course supers every day, not to mention the packed lunches (I moan about making 4 a day ) and washing of the sheet sleeping bags. Plus 4 children (at one point all under the age of five)

 

They didn't have a day off, worked 6am-11pm, and only 1 week holiday a year, plus very low wages, a vocation that was my fathers life. Our social life was folk dancing on the red stone floor in the 'common room' next to a large open fireplace, with mum & dad playing the accordian.

 

The photo is of my 'home' in Surrey, from birth to age 11 yrs. We then moved to kent. You can see in the window the bunk beds that hosteller's slept in, 10/12 beds to a room. The house had roofing problems and was 'sold' by YHA because the association couldn't afford the repairs. The house was demolished , on the land they built 5 x 5/6 bed Georgian style houses.

 

My dad was also a carpenter and built us our own wooden play house in the garden, including an upstairs section with a sandwich spread jar and small bulb light fitting. We had a 'camp' in a clearing surrounded by large rhodedendron plants, and bamboo 'hedges' that we would 'bounce' on as we stood on the flint stone wall. Ah memories.

 

Peggy

[Guest]

oops, pic didn't upload first time. Here it is.

 

Peggy

[Inge]

Biggest memory of Poland was arriving at the farm we were staying at to find the loo was still being built... a shed with a bucket.... they built it because they were having guests!!

 

There were 2 rooms , everyone slept and lived in one and kitchen of sorts was the other one, while we stayed the family moved into the barn with the horses and cow..

 

water was from a pump in the yard and we had to use it for everything.. cold washes only ....

 

You went everywhere by tractor.. if lucky to have one.. or by foot... 5 miles to a local dance for a night out.. and back again in the dark...

 

My aunt lived in a different area and she had to walk to get water from a well using a yolk....5 of them lived in 2 rooms...

 

we were classed as rich.. mmmmm think it had something to do with using black market to sell goods for money though!!

 

Germany was very different, not dissimilar to home...

 

Inge

 

Yes it did seem to snow every winter and be sunny every summer.. just found a load of pics to prove the theory .. and we lived in greater london.

[JacquieL]

I feel totally exhausted reading about your parents working life Peggy. What a fantastic upbringing though! I used to go on YHA with a group on friends when I was young and had a great time.

I love the story about the loo Inge.

We all have these fascinating memories and these are the living history of everyday lives. My parents occasionally tell me tales about their young lives or the war years. All these stories will be lost when they are gone. I wonder what todays generation will consider their history?