Memories of childhood + Updates if any

You seem to have forgotten the deaths that occurred on the south coast in the 60’s following clashes and stabbings between mods and rockers, and the problems on many estates in the 70’s and 80’s like the Handsworth Riots. Rosy retrospection indeed….

Anyone remember Radio Caroline… ???

that was in the swinging sixties…

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The happy days of ‘pirate’ radio. As a child I magined there was some real piracy involved, rather than unlicensed use & non-payment of royalties - reality was so disappointing. :wink:

How about the Cuban missile crisis 1962…

I remember just how it felt… being so fearful that our world was going to end …

Despite what some folk might think/say… I am able to recall, without any rosy retrospection…

I remember the good and the bad… they are my own experiences… which doubtless differ from others, that is only natural.

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I think you’ll find that they were operating from outside national waters… thus not liable to pay royalties… something like that… :wink:

and, yes, in my mind’s eye they were all dressed in pirate garb…

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We actually got closer to WW3 in 1983 than in 1962, though very few people knew it at the time.

Some critical thinking on the part of one Russian officer saved us all.

Lots of both good and bad. Getting caught by a gang of older boys who amused themselves by stubbing out cigarettes on bare skin before releasing their victims. Being able to go fishing as a small boy, out all day at the lake without parents being worried. I was never worried by the bomb though.

Times were different. Some things were definitely better, and worth celebrating, other things less so, and progress has been fantastic. I’m sure there are a wide variety of opinions over what belongs in which category. :wink:

My glory days of radio was Radio Luxembourg in the 50s. That’s where all the rock and roll came from. Listening to a tinny tranny under the bed clothes at boarding school. Jack Jackson, Pete Murray and ‘your DJ BA,’ Barry Aldis. :rofl:
I spent most of the 60s away from Europe in various places so missed much of what went on, but I could remember where I was. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Radio Luxembourg was wonderful… I would listen, while supposed to be sleeping…
There was a time when I could identify a song from just the first few notes…

Oh yes, like the first chords of Duane Eddy for instance. :wink: :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
And what amazes me today is the fact that, although I can barely remember what happened this morning. I can often readily sing along to many songs of the 50s, getting most if not all of the words right.

I hated my childhood, it is not something I wish to dwell upon.

fair comment… feel free to share more recent memories if you wish to…

In reply to Jane Jones: I wasn’t a child in the 60’s and certainly not in the 70’s and 80’s so totally irrelevant. I’m not Peter Pan :laughing:

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Well there was fairly obviously a short calm period just after the war, but it didn’t last. Juvenile crime figures started climbing pretty quickly into the and 50’s. This was closely associated with the baby boom, as these babies became teenagers they formed peer groups and behaved as well, and as badly, as teenage peer groups in any other era.

In 1962, I was just old enough to understand this threat to “my world” as I knew it… and it hit me hard…

By 1983, I was a grown-up, married with a family… and had discovered how to weather all sorts of bad News… which the Headlines kept throwing at us.
Knowing that I could do nothing to change things… I just got on with life as best one could… trying to be a decent human being and help others less fortunate than myself.

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The Cuban Missile crisis! I’d been to the Motor Show at Earls Court and we were driving up the A1 to Yorkshire. We passed a missile site and there they were, all pointing skywards and read to go. I thought if we see those launch we’re all dead.

Got back to our local and one chap sat in the corner moaning “We’re all going to die”. It was a scary time though and if you read the book “One Minute to Midnight” I think it’s called the Cubans were the biggest danger with rogue officers given the potential to launch nukes at Guantanamo Bay.

Along with, of course, the usual warmongers in the military telling JFK to strike first. Certainly 50/50. Thank God Trump wasn’t in power then :skull_and_crossbones:

Since the thread has gone this way, there’s a book some might find interesting by Bill Bryson : The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid. Obviously about growing up in that era, it gives another slightly amusing perspective, and bits of insight.

Memory from when just before I was 10. For some reason the school decided to provide fried egg and chips on a Friday, to all Catholic kids.

As you might imagine… every kid wanted to be Catholic… :rofl: rather than eat the mince/mash/cabbage which was on offer…

No idea how long this continued… as we moved away a few months later… :roll_eyes:

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What??? Surely every Catholic kid would be eating fish on a Friday?

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I only ever ate a couple of meals at school, otherwise walking home for lunch, then later as a teenager buying food (50p would buy a pork pie or steak & kidney pie & several cream slices) from the local baker. By the time I was 15 the career plan was to be a racing cyclist, and getting enough calories inside was quite a challenge. Not sure I even could eat that much any more.

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