were you born before 1988?

[DONNAKEBABUK]

If you were born before 1988 you will know that Michael Jackson has not always been White. You will also know that Billy Joel sang Uptown Girl and NOT Westlife. You may also remember eating chips and bread and butter pudding without becoming obese. You will remember playing Knock a Door Run and actually BEING AFRAID of being caught. If you fell out of someones tree and broke your arm your parents would clout you round the ear hole for being so stupid to climb the thing in the first place, prior to taking you to A&E rather than calling at your local PI Solicitors to make a claim. Recycling consisted of taking pop bottles back to the shop and getting 5p back on the bottle (12p for those brown cider bottles). And you and your friends could share a can of coke (without getting germs). You would go out and play 8 - 10 hours a day in the woods without a mobile phone. You perhaps made go karts out of silver cross prams and had never heard of Nintendo, X Box, DVD, Playstation etc. We had 3 TV Chanels and we were lucky they were in colour. University students of today were mostly born in 1988.

Tell me, does this make you feel old? Well it shouldnt, it should make you grateful that you had a childhood like EVERY child deserves to have.

Katie. x

[MONTCRIEFF49]

gone bk in time
a bit there but remember all them things

knockey door nieghber

that was great

xxxxxxxxxxxxx
im as young as i feel even now

[Uzoma]

Omigosh - TV channels actually used to close before midnight! And then they would play music with that girl and puppet in front of the noughts and crosses board.

[pips1]

I remember it all SO well, my childhood was amazing and I feel so sorry that children today can't experience the things I did. My sister and I used to go out all day blackberry picking (with a picnic) and then come home and set up a stall at the side of the road to sell them for pocket money. We lived in a tiny village in the countryside and had 500 hens, 2 ducks, geese, a dog and 2 cats and it was great!

[cazzz1975]

I loved the BBC test page as well (apart from the girl)

[B00]

Awww pips, your childhood sounds idylic, kind of like something out of Enid Blyton!

Mine was more "earthy" living up North with cobbled streets, we were like animals....heh!

[pusspuss]

maggs ,you were a bit young then to go and see dusty springfield live at mr smiths club all that week.also they were selling louis armstrong tickets for the free trade hall best seats �1.shirley bassey tickets best seats 15 shillings

[cazzz1975]

I wouldnt let my daughter play out the way I did when I was a kid!, I was out for hours and I remember my mom shouting for us to come in for dinner, she would be shouting for ages!

I also used to play knock door run, british bulldog, skipping in a group with a washing line, chinese elastics, apple scrumping, hide and seek they were great days of pure fun and pleasure, its a shame kids cannot experience that freedom these days

[pips1]

BOO - thanks, my childhood was idyllic! We didn't have electric till I was 8 and we also had a well in the garden which my granddad dug out when the bungalow was built. I still drive past there now and again and if I won the lottery I would try and buy it back - if only for the memories and the view - one end of the Malvern Hills to the other.

[andy-hughes]

I think we of a (ahem) certain age (!) I was born in 1954 - remember our childhoods and our freedoms very fondly.

I used to go out alone and walk for miles in woods with my dog amusing myself making dens and being a pirate or a castaway - an activity totally unsuitable for children today.

As my girls have grown up, I have lamented their lack of freedom to roam and play out of sight of home for hours at a time - a sad indightment of our changing times.

[Wop/tpo]

Probably your oldest reader, 80 in September. Remember
childhood well, first catswhisker radio operated by batteries
electricity not yet installed. Only cold water taps, hot water
came from a container alongside the kitchen fire. Baths taken in portable bath on Friday nights in the kitchen.
No heating in bedrooms, toilet was 20 yards away in back garden. Chamber pot under bed for night use.
But no one locked their doors, safety for children to play outside, regular sightings of the policeman who would
know you. Children could fetch cigarettes for their elders,
and didn't smoke themselves. Sixpence for pocket money
was a king's ransom.
School: pupils sat at individual desks, learned their
"times" tables by recitation, and were regularly examined
for head lice by the "nit nurse". School milk introduced
about 1936. Etc etc.

[whiskeysheri]

I was born in 1985 and luckily I had a similar childhood to lots of you. It might have something to do with the fact that I live i a village, though, but it was brilliant. I always had to be in before it was dark, but my school holidays were fantastic, walking over the fields to the forest full of bluebells and water fights on the green. :))

[DONNAKEBABUK]

A NIT NURSE for NITS - Good Lord ! Do you know that is classed as ASSAULT on children now ! Dont get me on the nits subject.

To the lovely person who so politely asked how young I am - I am 40 (with the mind of an 18 year old).

Do you remember hopscotch? No6 fags?

What were those long twirly tubes called that you twirled around and they made a noise, you could get them in every colour under the sun - I had a pink one !

Oh and remember KNOCKERS - those plastic balls that you could knock together.

Must say - I have a 10 year old little girl and she HAS NEVER played out alone!

Sad eh !

[Wop/tpo]

Not only were there nit nurses, but the examination took
place at the front of the classroom, no privacy whatsoever.
Also now illegal for under age people to purchase cigarettes.

[4GS]

us kids used to bounce around in cars without wearing a seat belt

[hippyhoppy]

I actually did fall out of a tree and broke my arm when I was 10. It would have been exciting but for the fact it was the first day of the summer holidays and I spent six weeks with a hard cast on, getting it taken off the day before school started - gutted!

[shaneystar2]

I am 20 years younger than Wop/tpo and most of what he/she remembers was till the same when I was a child ..tin baths ,no hot and cold ,outside lav,..my mother drew the line at pots under the bed though ! We used to have to make our own way with a torch !
I remember an aunt out in the country who had a dry toilet ..a sort of bucket with a wooden lid ..ooh how I hated it if I needed to go ..I used to think our outside lav was the height of luxury compared to that .
Washday Mondays ..the smell of bleach and the old copper and then the mangling in a freezing cold scullery .
But ..as others say ..we had much more freedom and I think we were probably happier in spite of the lack of mod cons than some children today whose lives are narrowed by the world we now live in . .