Yesteryear

[laurence2]

People moan in todays society about being poor etc, surely they've never had so good compared to previous generations.

Who ever ate Bread & Dripping then, i believe this is still quite common up north.

Who waited for the jelly to set on the window seal {no fridge} in the height of the summer {it took 4 days to set lol}

Who had advertising logos on the bottom of their footwear { ie cardboard from the weetabix box to cover the worn out sole}


You can't beat the good old days, what memories to you recall of your earlier years, thats if you have any memories

[stewey]

Bomb shelters being in the school playground even though the war had been over for a few years.
Cinders covering the playground: if you fell and scraped your knee you'd just go to the 'bogs' clean the cut and put toilet paper on it....no traumatic counseling needed!
Glass shards and metal spikes cemented atop of walls to keep us ruffians out.
Being too scared to be close to the edge of the platform at Stoke Station when the steam-engines came clanging in
Making patterns with your shoes in the saw-dust on the butcher's floor while your mum was buying tiny portions of meat.
Having powdered-eggs and oatcakes for breakfast on a Sunday.
Going with your mother to get a bottle of concentrated orange juice and a bottle of codliver oil once a month from a council place for free.
Going to the pictures at any time and leaving when someone said "This is where we came in".
Hotwater bottles
The Goon Show
Mars Bars for 3d

As soon as I post this I'll think of better ones!!

[Katy May]

I remember that easter eggs had the sweets inside the egg and not attached separately. Am I imagining that?

patches in the shapes of rainbows and butterflies sown over holes in jeans.

Wearing trousers that had been let down so many times they had lots of darker lines around the bottom.

going to school in my brothers outgrown underpants coz we couldn't afford girly ones for me - so embarrassng at PE time

Having roast chicken on a sunday, chicken salad on a tuesday, chicken and veg pie on a wednesday and chicken soup for the rest of the week

My dad bringing home a live rabbit as payment for the plumbing job he'd done, intended for the pot but we just had vegetables the next night and kept the rabbit as a pet. that sounds so sad but is true!

[Ethel]

Jno - you've made me smile. The candles under the kids noses weren't wax candles.

It was the thick twin trails of dried snot - you just don't see kids like that any more.

[jno]

didn't see it in my day at all, Ethel. I possibly grew up in a healthier country than others did. I've just been looking at old school photos online and we were all robust and smiling in the sun.

[Ethel]

No hanky pinned to your jumper, jno? I'm sure it was caused by all the fumes from the gas works, the foundries, the coal fires and so on. It were a mucky time.

[raysparx1]

Oh yes Ethel, the candles, we had a lad in our class we called silversleeves, the arms on his jumpers looked as a slug had crawled up and down his arms, gross.

[raysparx1]

And strings going through the sleeves of your coat with mittens attached, and wearing a balaclava, what the hell was going on, lol

[garner]

Having to wear a libbity bodies with those rubber buttons and listening to journey into space on the wirleless and wilfred pickles and mable [ givem the money mable] cannot remember the name of the programme and my grandma making peg rugs and blacking her fireplace.

[bigmamma]

Hee hee Ethel and Ray ...snot ...my brother had a friend who used to knock at the door to see if he was coming out to play , ugh, he always had 2 really green streaks hanging down , I wondered if he had ever ever used a hanky !!
Katy May you are right , the Easter eggs sweeties were inside .
Garner , thank goodness someone else wore the awful liberty bodice things with the really difficult rubber buttons , you had to first up in the morning to have time to dress , and you were always last out of the changing room in school sports .
Jno.....luxury....
xx

[radiogaga]

what a lovely thread for a change, nice one keep it up!xxx

[ELVIS68]

My dad reckons one of his school teachers used to stop kids having green snot streaks by covering their nose with her mouth..take a huge suck and then spit the mouthful of snot in the bin

Fluuuuuuuurch!

[bigmamma]

With 4 girls in the house you can imagine the washing line full of Bridget Jones size navy blue school knickers !!!

[johnlambert]

Listening to Ed "stewpot" Stewart on the radio then the "forces favorite" where they broadcast a message from "pete in Aden" or "harry in Singapore"to his wife and 2 lovely kids in Hakney, not long till summer 1964"

My paternal granny showing me on an atlas of the world the place in Russia where she was born, the place in Canada where she emigrated to, to escape the communists and, ultimatley met my Grandad, a navy engineer.

My maternal granny telling my how my gradad beat the Germans in ww1 + , he never talked about the war and after my own experiences in the Army I cant really blame him.

TV that closed down at 11:30 at night until about mid day next day.

[stewey]

How about the back of the cereal boxes? They had all kinds of neat thing on them to cut out use. And Guy Fawkes night when it seems like every back yard had a huge bonfire....is that still allowed? Wall's Ice Cream Trucks ringing along the street. Saturday morning at the pictures with all those western and The Three Stooges..........couldn't even hear them!.....And yes, the handkerchiefs: blow your nose, place in pocket repeated numerous times a day.........it became solid!

[bigmamma]

The enormous black metal pot on the stove that was used to boil everything from the dish clothes and tea towels to the dumplings and christmas pudding .

[johnlambert]

Hey stewey
yeah they are still allowed, but some "human rights" nutter will no doubt try to ban them soom lol, yeah I also remember the saturday matinee, loads of cartoons then the main "childrens film foundation" film. The girl who took my money (sixpence) was my 1st real girlfriend. I never had a hankie though, my dad couldn't afford one, you must have been a posh kid lol

[stewey]

Yea, John, we were so posh my parents used to thank me when I used to come home with a carrier-bag of coal that I'd collected in the shunting yards......crazy eh?

[raysparx1]

Did any of you have to go to the public baths to have a bath ? we never had a bathroom, we had the tin bath hanging up in the yard, but when we got to big for that we went to the public baths, you hired a big towel and you went into a big booth with a bath and it was filled with hot and cold water, from outside the booth a bloke would turn on the hot water with a spanner so if you wanted more hot, you had to call out the booth number, and yell for more hot,and just round the corner from there was a clinic, my brother had to go in there because he was forever getting fleas, he had to have all this stinking gunk put on his head, it was so funny, also a real slum near us, had toilets on the landings, and hardly any of them had doors on, I hated going into those flats, but one upside to those days was collecting jam jars, and beer bottles etc, because you got money back on them, we had a great scam going cos we would take them to the pub, the bloke put them in the back yard, and we climbed over the fence, got the bottles back and took them in again, he sussed it though, then started marking the ones he had paid out on,