Memories of childhood + Updates if any

My stepfather smoked Players Navy Cut and there were always plenty in the house because he’d go abroad several times a month on business. However, if he was returning on an airline that didn’t stock his favourite smoke, he’d buy 200 Rothman’s King Size Filter for my mother, who, when I was in my mid- teens would give me a packet to take to school! And at weekends she’d give me money to buy a pack of Disque Bleu or Ducados from a local up-market tobacconist. Despite all this familial support, I stopped smoking nearly forty years ago, while my mother died three days short of her 95th birhday. Mind you, stepfather went quite a bit earlier…

Everyone writes their thank you letters on Boxing day and they are posted on the 27th :blush:

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Well done Vero… I’m not sure UK kids are quite so polite… :wink:

[quote=“Stella, post:83, topic:37416”]
Well done Vero… I’m not sure UK kids are quite so polite
[/quote]*

Mine are half and half like me - it isn’t really politeness, more expediency and striking while the iron is hot :grin: otherwise it doesn’t get done.

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Little brother and I would bring our sacks and stockings of presents into Mum and Dad’s room, all 4 of us crammed in their bed and there was a strict alternate order of unwrapping.
But most important of all was Dad and his pad and pen, recording everything as it appeared, what it was, and who it was from and to whom. Then the thank you letters had to be written the next day or boxing day.

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That sounds very much like how it was for us too, although my mother recorded who presents were from & ensured writing of thankyous.

I figured out quite quickly - probably pre-school - that presents weren’t from ‘father Christmas’. We were also happy for our children to understand too, however the parents of their school friends were very displeased when our children explained the true origins of Christmas gifts.

My mum used to cover the branches of the tree with cotton wool to simulate snow.

My understanding was that Santa was merely the transporter. Probably an early interest in lorries, never really believed that reindeer nonsense. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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I don’t want to remember my childhood thank you.

My first year at primary school I started a fight with another boy who said Santa didn’t exist. Kids of that age now are probably discussing much more “adult” things.

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Not a Memory… but an Update

I can report that Santa is alive and well and visits our Primary School every year.

While the children are singing their hearts out… and “Petit Papa Noël” is echoing across the room… the door slowly opens and Père Noël walks in… magnificent in his red outfit… and bearing a basket of goodies…

To watch those kids is magic in itself… to see their eyes opening wider and wider , in surprise and delight… and to hear their singing falter slightly as they catch their breath at the wonder of it all …

One year, I watched a particular young lad as he sang …
Earlier on he’d been making some of the smaller ones cry by loudly proclaiming that Père Noël didn’t exist. This was his first Christmas with us and I had hushed him gently and assured him that I reckoned there was no harm in hoping for a little magic at Christmas time.

Anyway… his face was a picture… as PN strode in… and it brought tears to my eyes to see his incredulity then delight.

I have no idea what his life had been like before he came to us, but I can assure you that all of us adults brought a lot of joy to those youngsters… and we do so every year.

Ho Ho Ho…

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Things under the tree were always from x y or z to whom you wrote your thank you letters on Boxing day BUT your stocking was magical and from FC/Santa, obviously.

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:hugs: :hugs:

I think there is a certain amount of nostalgia and looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses.

Yes, when I was a kid, I was allowed to go out playing on the streets and some of those times were fun. But lets not imagine it was all Swallows and Amazons. There were bullies on the streets too. Older boys who would wait for you on your long walk home from school. There were only a handful of non-white kids at my school and I’m glad I wasn’t one of them because their life was just one long fight against racist abuse.

I had a Chopper. Very exciting and cool. But it was a rubbish bike. The gears didn’t work and the whole thing was dangerous. My friend borrowed it for one race down the road and ended up in hospital having the whole of his chin sewn back on.

It’s easy to picture childhood as a lot of happy, sunny days having fun (which is a good thing) but think back on the boredom, the inadequate clothing, uncomfortable shoes.

We had to play outside because the house was full of cigarette smoke. School lunch was a marmite sandwich every day because the canteen food was an inedible horror or battered spam, grey boiled beef, marrowfat peas and over-cooked cabbage. I can still remember the smell of that grey-brown sauce they called gravy.

Teachers were biased and unfair, school toilets disgusting and the haunt of bullies. PE was like boot camp.

Holidays in a mobile home or damp guesthouse in a cold, windy “resort” arrived at after a long boring drive with no music, just more cigarette smoke.

I don’t think I had a particularly deprived childhood and definitely had advantages over some of the other kids. I also think I’m fairly normal. I can’t imagine what it was like for a teenager unsure about their sexuality. It was bad enough being teased for not having enough pubic hair or being told not to hang out with boys who had long hair, had an earing or wore makeup.

It’s also easy for those of us who have gone on to live happy, successful lives, despite our background, to assume life turned out just as rosy for everyone. I have no idea what happened to the majority of kids at my school who left without any qualifications or much more ambition than getting a girlfriend and a car. Those people are not on Facebook or other social media, they don’t live in France, they may well be living contented lives but my guess is that large numbers of them make up that huge number of discontented, unhappy 50+ year olds who voted for Brexit because they feel left behind.

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As you rightly suggest… childhoods obviously will have differed enormously…

Your memories sound not so cheerful as some of the memories others have…
but this doesn’t mean those “others” are wrongly remembering or viewing through rose-coloured spectacles…

This thread is about childhood… and our memories of that time in our lives, be those memories good, bad or indifferent.

It’s also easy for those of us who have gone on to live happy, successful lives, despite our background, to assume life turned out just as rosy for everyone.”

I really don’t think anyone is assuming anything about anyone…

I think the original post was similar to the ones we see passed around on Facebook where people born in the 1950s and 60s paint their childhoods as more freer, healthier, happier and therefore more constructive for adult life than those of children born after 1980 and the advent of the internet, games consoles, media coverage of street crime, road safety, health issues and an awareness of both minority issues and global implications. The kind of things dismissed as Woke.

My mum, who was born before the war, claims that homosexuality, transgender and racial discrimination didn’t happen in her day, or at least wasn’t talked about, as if that was a good thing.

I don’t think my childhood was that different to most. I didn’t benefit from a private education but I did benefit from having educated parents with decent jobs and a relatively stable family. We would not have been considered poor. I too can look back on the good times and ignore the bad stuff that mainly affected other kids. However, I have brought my children up in the era of all the stuff that the anti-woke generation pooh-pooh, such as mobile phones, cheap fashion, Netflix, social media and bike-helmets.

I work with many young adults and would say that they are generally far more thoughtful, understanding, aware and motivated than what I saw around me when I was that age. Progress may have its downsides but in general the world is a better place now for all ages than it was in the 1960s and 70s.

I wish I’d had a PS4, a mobile phone and good quality trainers when I was 16.

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Entirely agree with you!

“Rosy retrospection refers to our tendency to recall the past more fondly than the present, all else being equal . It is a cognitive bias that runs parallel with the concept of nostalgia, though the latter does not always directly imply a biased recollection.”

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Real candles on the tree!
At Christmas we always used to play lots of card and board games. We usually put the tree in the bay window so the lights looked Christmassy in the street outside. It was the 1950s and Dad had put real candles on the tree. One evening, we were playing Muggins and were all concentrating so much on the game that we didn’t notice the candles burning low. Someone must have looked up, only to find the tree, and then the curtains, on fire. Dad threw a bucket of water over the lot. The Muggins cards were soaked. What fun ! That was the first and last time for those real candles. The scene is burned into my memory !

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that happened to neighbours… but thankfully no major damage done…
my siblings and I felt somewhat aggrieved that we didn’t have “real candles” and therefore missed all the “fun” …
… naturally grown-ups didn’t see things in quite the same way… :rofl:

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We liked to live dangerously in those good old days !

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