The olden days

General Discussion
1

I have just received this, and have copied it verbatim, ( less the formatting ), it all rings true with me ...born in '51 eating powdered egg etc. How about you guys?


WE WAS BRUNG UP PROPER !!

"And we never had a whole Mars bar until 1993"!!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1930's, 40's and 50’s.
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank sherry while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos...
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, bread and dripping, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos.
Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on a Sunday, somehow we didn't starve to death!
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers and Bubble Gum.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter, milk from the cow, and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY, no video/dvd films, or colour TV.
No mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time....

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays.


We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door, or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet because we didn't need to keep up with the Jones's!

Not everyone made the rugby/football/cricket/netball team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and throw the blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren't concentrating ..
We can string sentences together and spell and have proper conversations because of a good, solid, three R's education.
Our parents would tell us to ask a stranger to help us cross the road.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility and we learned HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL !


And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.
And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.
PS -The big type is because your eyes are not too good at your age anymore.

2

Lovely thought Sheila, running to get your neighbours for the phone. Our first phone was a little later ( with a Party-line button ) great fun!, in the Vono black plastic suite and orange cushions era ( makes me shuddder ). Then outcame the 'Trim phone'...just doing the noise here. Ha ha, and a TV with a 50 pence slot...how sad is that?

3

I'm a 1956 girl, and you are all making me laugh with memories of gobstoppers, aniseed balls (as a child I used to call them "Nancy Balls"). We played out on the street until it was dark, out of line of sight of our parents. Such was the community then that another parent could give out to you, but would also put a bandage on your grazed knee. Everyone watched out for everyone else then. We survived swimming in the local sea baths, supervised by an alcoholic "lifeguard", who couldn't have possibly focused on anyone in difficulty, much less rescue them, but no one ever drowned. I remember our first TV arriving, in 1961. We had 2 stations, one was the Irish one and the other signal was picked up from Northern Ireland. We used to stare at the test card in the afternoons, our little hearts pounding in anticipation of the first programme of the day starting at 5 pm (I think, but memory is not what it was!). We didn't sanitise everything and we survived. I remember my mother boiling nappies in a big tin pot on the gas cooker, and the excitement when my father bought her a hand operated wringer. I remember the first phone being installed, huge ugly bakelite thing. We were one of the first with a phone, and it rang often - frequently for a neighbour - and one of us would be sent racing down the road to the neighbour to tell them to "come up, someone's on the telephone for you!"

Better stop now.

4

Oh, mmmmmmmoooooooooooooooooooo. Funny in a way. We had a neighbouring family where the son was also Brian. He did, in a horrible condescending way. His father worked in an office so he was not allowed to talk to me! Anyway, the head primed him for the 11+ and the wee scotty was ignored. He failed and went to the local shite pit, I passed and went to a good grammar. He worked like a maniac with his old man down his neck like Satan and got three or four Os. I bunked off school, never did homework, messed about, stayed out late at night, etc, and got 12! He went to the local tech in dire fear of his father killing him if he didn't get a respectable profession (non-manual), I got six As and Cambridge. The primary school head popped in to congratulate my parents (might have included me but I believe I was on the way to the Marquee at the time), the other Brian got a job in the local sorting office. Suddenly nobody looked on our family as Scots nobody wanted around, including the many black neighbours by then, but respected them because of me. My 4'10" mother was suddenly the tallest woman in our block. Dunno what became of the other guy after that, bet his old man made him suffer though!

5

I don't remember the term Nazi, but there was a lot of 'Donner und Blizten' and 'Ach Englander-ing' and when we played war games 'I' was the Germans.

As we had moved later, I attended a new school, where my Mum was asked to see the Headmaster to discuss my IQ, which had been rated at 155 the highest ever in the school, and whether I should stay in the b stream, blue collar bound, or join the a stream ready for the University challenge.

She elected the former as I had friends there. 12 months later I failed the 11plus, Mum visited the teacher, a gargantuan Mrs. Foster-Jones to ascertain why, and was told "I didn't give Ronald the same opportunities as the rest, as he is Half German."

Welsh Cow!

6

crazy world, will people say the same about what's going on now in 50 years time...?

7

Sure Andrew. My three 'mates' were Jane Penfold from the traveller camp who was referred to as a gypsy when people were being pleasant, Mirza Najeeba who family were from Pakistan so just try to imagine how she was treated, and Alan Beaver whose mother was the Italian bride of a soldier. The four of us were everybody's legitimate victim, including a few teachers...

8

and nobody knew what the words racism or politically correct meant, there again that was politically correct for the day, thank god things change, albeit rather slowly at times...!

9

Oh those wonderful old days. Knew it all so well. My mother went to school to see the headmaster about the fact the other kids were calling me a 'Nazi' because I broke into German whenever. She emphasised the fact that neither parent was German and that her OH had been serving the country and that is why we lived there and so on. Trouble was her accent, neither posh nor London as ye mecht expuct frae gowks frae ither side o' yon border. A few years later she told me that he had said that why didn't we go back where we belonged then, so that a headmaster who could understand what she was saying could deal with it!

People were so NICE in those days.

10

My part on the 'Olden Days' stage was somewhat overshaddowed by my enforced demenor as a five ear old schoolboy attending rough as heck 'St.Barnabus' in '56. I was, like several in these pages, that most mis-matched of cultural hybrids, the 'Half German boy'.

Even though we had moved from The Fatherland when I was 0, Mutti insited on dressing me like...... one of those palid German kids you see. Pink gingham shirt, peaked cap ( with zipped pocket money pocket and dingly dangly plastic footballer as the 'puller' ), brogue shoes with tassles, toothbrush moustache and something else...er ...Oh Ja! freakin Lederhosen! Yup, Ma sent me to that hell hole that was school in Lederhosen! braces, the little carved deer in the middle and all. I did get a little ribbed!

But the abuse didn't stop there! One day in between shopping trips to the secondhand store she bought me a black pair of 'drainpipes', so much in fashion with the green stitching, studs and 'at...I sported them with pride, these strides, and swaggered across the playground to the echoes of 'Eeer look! his flies are on the side, he's wearing girl's jeans, or his c*ck's in the wrong place.'

Kid's can be so cruel! So it was back to the Lederbochs, to wave ze fleg von Germany, uber alles.

11

Also very useful if you happen to have a cannon handy, fire one of those at your arch enemy and victory is sure!

12

:) ! we stock up on suet for dumplings on visits back to the UK

13

hilarious; thankyou!

14

Cyril Shaps the actor wasn't it. Weedy little runt when you think about the voice...

15

Getting there and figuring recent history out now. It was all designed by a dentist in a big surgery up there somewhere and we were encouraged to keep his disciples on this Earth in work. That is the only half way reasonable explanation I can come up with for the food anyway.

16

Cor, advertising sounds just like anthropology, field assistants always seemed to be in a stupour until out in the middle of nowhere where suddenly they could do everything. Finish the job and pop out to say 'Bye' and the guy couldn't even recognise you anymore despite six weeks together 24/7 and only 12 hours back 'home'. Cheers, I'll stick to sticky things - reminded myself, oh wow, another for the dentists, toffee pudding! Little bars of Palm toffee too, nobody could ever use those lines to break them into nice little pieces but they were part of it.

17

Hi Clogging up agin.....

ar. Suet artery clogger sumpreme....and I like a nice slice of Joan myself! Used work for JWT who had the Mr.Kipling account the voice-over guy was a alchi....so when there was a new ad. the company would whisk him in for a dry-out session, do the business, pay him, and send him back to skid row!

18

sounds familiar. I used to go to cowley tech when I was training to be an artistic blacksmith in Newneham courtney...

19

Easy pal, we are similar vintage!

20

Still make some of the puds. Spotted dick (or duff to we Jocks) with custard, girls love that, cholestrol rich suet pudding graced my pressure cooker a couple of times, chocolate pudding - well there is half of one from yesterday in the fridge so caught in flagrante there, treacle tart is one girl's favouite, plus (wait for it) and my OH has this on order for the near future - Bakewell tart!! I give that to French guests, plus cheesecake, and they wonder which French genius's rep they come from. When I say they are both traditional British dishes they shrink in shame...