See, we survived!

[pistonbroke]

lassy guns

kites made from sticks & old newspaper,  wet flour for glue

stonks

garden cane fishing rod , cotton line , bent pin hook . down the canal used to catch stonking big roach .

trundle

old car bonnet for sledging down the slag heap

cinder toffee

liquorice sticks

trying to get yer hand up Jaqueline Hewits knickers

 

great days

[KugaWestie]

Watneys - party sevens wasnt it? Make a hole on either side to let it flow

 

Scrumpy for me at 13 - split my head on the radiator

[martyblues]

plimsoles, wellyboots, anoraks, exchange and mart, football boots with nailed in studs, lace up football with inner bladder. weighed a ton when wet

[CRAIGR]

Smoking bracken

[housebeautician]

trying to get yer hand up Jaqueline Hewits knickers

 

great days

 

I think i did that with her sister   

And yes they were good days

[Norman Verona]

Green Shield stamps morphed into Argos.

 

They were good days. I was a kid during the 50s and we were poor. However it didn't show as everyone was poor. I can't remember anyone on benefits, everyone in our block of flats worked. Even the widows who's husbands never came back from the war.

 

When we were engaged my mother announced , on our weekly visit for the Friday night meal, that she had put our name down for a council flat. I had to explain that we were saving for the deposit for a house*. She didn't like that and remarked "council flats good enough for us, should be good enough for you"

 

I'm really proud that my kids have done better than me. I don't fully understand today's kids (kids, mine are in their 40s!). I don't knock it though as I remember my parents not understand my generation. Steptoe & Son was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. My parents couldn't see the humour. As for Monty Python they thought it was total drivel.

 

 

* We got married in November 1968. In those days, and the younger ones won't understand this, you had to join a queue for a mortgage. We had our name down with Abbey. I rang the branch manager and said we had £1000 saved could we get a morgage. He told be that he'd put me down on his list and we may be considered about Christmas time - next year. We lived with HMs parent over the winter and started looking for a house because everyone said it could take 6 months to find one. We found what we wanted in May. Phoned the building society manager and he said ring back in December. Went to work the next day feeling a bit down. Opposite the garage I worked at was a bomb site used as a car park. A customer was walking out to go to his office. I ran over the road and asked if he could help. To this day I have no idea why I thought he could but he took my details and rang back at 11:00 informing me we had a £5000 mortgage with the Halifax BS at Holborn. This chap work for an insurance brokers and he was the manager of life insurance. I didn't know that. Our first house cost £6,250. On the week we moved in we had to borrow £6 for the weekly food shopping. We sold the house, by then with a large conservatory, for £30,000 14 years later. We bought a house in Chigwell for £60,000.

 

Good days, well I suppose so.

[M444TTB]

The way mortgages worked back then is quite amusing. My parents were turned down by Lloyds Bank because they weren't married. This was a month prior to their wedding! What makes this especially amusing is that my Dad had worked for that branch of Lloyds and had been with the company for 5 years or so at that point in 1978. Apparently they lost the house they wanted and several years later it was worth a fair bit more than the house they ended up buying. Such is life I suppose and unfortunately not the biggest slap the bank had lined up. That came only a few years ago when they took on HBOS.

[Norman Verona]

HM's just come up with cod liver oil capsules in school. The weekly visit to the public baths, playing with a ball in a stocking (girls stuff), hop scotch on the pavements, French skipping with coloured elastic (no idea), stones and jacks,  Hornimans Tea stamps, Robinsons jam labels which if collected you could send them in for a golly badge., the nit lady at school. a bottle of milk every morning in school.

 

I had dinky cars, airfix model planes (spitfire was my favourite) and my huge meccano kit.

 

 

My grandson (6) has a lot of toy cars but mostly plays with his xbox and watches films. Hardly ever goes out to play. We were never in, always playing outside.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Ah, school summer holidays; head out of the house a bit after nine and have to be called back for tea, cause we'd all lost track of time. Dad used to say I could be out of the house longer in the holidays than at term time. (And he thought that was a good thing)

 

No, or very little afternoon TV when I was a kid. It just stopped after lunch. (School hols may have been different) But I remember when I was little, watching daytime TV meant you were so ill you hadn't been able to sneak out...

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Oh and just to make Norman feel old,      I'd have been two months old when you were married that November!

 

(Which also I suppose puts me in the age range of your children   which makes me feel young   )

[tolf]

And by 'heck we were grubbier, smellier, but fitter and probably more resourseful than todays kids. The only excercise some of them get is with their thumbs on the X-box controller.

 

Making gunpowder, dismantling fireworks and making smelly obnoxious potions

 

How the hell we did'nt kill ourselves I will never know.

[alexander72]

i remember my Nan smoking a fag while frying egg's and me dreading the ash falling off into the pan....  she had a polyester pinny that she wore for smoking and cooking..... i miss her and her ways. !!!

 

I had a claude butler racer as a hand me down from my brother in 1978 - he was 16 - i was 6.  couldnt touch the floor and rode it into the back of Cyril Bentons car on Great Houghton hill....#

 

smiling as i type this

[Norman Verona]

Funny thing is I don't feel old mentally, just physically. 

 

I suppose 66 is not old these day, was when I was a kid!

 

Our Simon was 42 in January and Tanya was 40 in December. 

[cidersurfer]

Itching powder!

[SootySport]

Whats more is, my Mum is still around after that long and dangerous list. 83 now, still drives around and holidays twice a year, of to Mexico soon withe her mates.

I'm still about, obviously, small wonder after my antics over 60 years and only recently at the helm of a Westfield. you see the signs at racetracks "Motorsport Can Be Dangerous"   Hmmm.

 

The big triangular iced drink was a Jubbly, wasn't intended to be an ice lolly of sorts, just an orange drink but somehow they were always frozen.