1950's Childhood.

Ink wells with dip in pens and the 'ink monitor'
Skipping ropes with a person turning on each end and skipping rhymes
Dinner money being 5 shillings a week
Saving stamps with Prince Charles and Princess Anne on them
Sunday school on Sunday afternoons
Roaming all over the village and just turning up for meals
No school uniforms at primary school

Liberty bodices
School outside toilets

Mums at home all day.
Children's Newspaper.
Coronation on tiny TV, (curtains closed).

The milkman's horse. Ditto the coalman.
The baker's van and his big basket of warm-smelling goodies.
Glass milk bottles in a bowl of water with a wet tea towel over the top in a shady place in the garden in summer.
Frocks with masses of smoking on the bodices.
Brown paint – indoors and outdoors.
A cuckoo clock money box in which I lovingly inserted my sixpence a week – every week.
Frost on the insides of bedroom windows on a winter's morning – and hot water bottles the night before.

The Beano and Dandy which my dad thought were unsuitable reading for a nice little girl. Loved them.

The smell of Mansion House furniture polish.

Five stones.

Hardly any cars parked in the road.

Plasticine

Also roaming about all day (as mentioned) and coming home for tea.

Marbles in the gutter and manhole covers.

My collection of bus tickets.

Dolls' prams.

The 50s were my teen years - and when I consider the 60s I'm glad of it!

Our milkman's horse was named Rosie - fancy being able to remember that! We had United Dairies - Express Dairies had a horse-drawn float too, but the Co-op had an electric affair like a dog-cart with one shaft. The milkman walked, holding the control section of the shaft, and thus drove the float!

Roses and rhubarb did well in our avenue... the net curtains would twitch as the horses progressed and decided where to deposit their loads, at which point people with shovels and buckets would erupt from the sideways that led to their back gardens! It never failed to amuse me...

Fly papers
Journey into Space
Chilblains
Po under bed

Petallus - flypapers We used to have one shaped like a basket of flowers and another shaped like a parrot.

They were coated with DDT and I used to play with them!!!

Asbestos - we used to play on an asbestos roof and mum's ironing board had a hole in it and inside was crumbling asbestos!!

Where have all the flies gone - there used to be thousands of them in the 1950s summers, also wasps.

I still have old fashioned sticky fly papers hanging in my workshop, but as said, there are no where near as many flies now.

petallus; Journey Into Space sounds like a radio forerunner of Pathfinders in Space which was my favourite tv series.

Black canvas 'pumps' - we ran around on them all summer.
Five bob a pair from Woolies.
We used them for PE as well.
Ah, P.E. Standing in rows arms stretch, knees bend..
Throwing beanbags to one another.
The pop man, with Corona, 3d back on the bottle.

Ginger beer bubbling in the pantry
Milkman's horse - Dobbin
Malt extract and cod liver oil
Vicks rubbed on our chest when we stayed with grandarents in the summer hols!
Whip and top
Skates with ballbearings in the wheels
Jacks (got some in Lakekand last Christmas - identical)
Listen with Mother
White sandals polished and laid out around the dustbin lid to dry in the sunshine
Grandad spreading cinders on the path in his veg patch
Cutting through the gap in the hedge to call for friends to play out
Village smithy and cobblers

Boring piano lessons
Sledging down the road at high speed
Riding my bike with no hands
Reading under the covers with a torch
Hiding out in granny's old air raid shelter
Climbing the big sycamore tree
Picking blackberries - and eating them.

Spotting steam train numbers from the railway embankment, with biscuits and a bottle of lemonade.
The man selling oatcakes and crumpets from a wicker basket with a red gingham cloth on top.
Getting a goldfish fom the rag and bone man with his horse and cart.
The man from the water board who used to listen to the flow in the pipes with a metal rod with the end fitted in his ear. He would let us listen too, but we didn't really know what we were listening to!
Before they were converted to electricity, the man who lit the gas lamps in the street.
Saturday morning childrens cinema shows.
Gymslips and gaberdine raincoats.

The salad lady pulling her cart around the streets on Sunday followed by the shrimps and winkles man.
Bread and sugar instead of dinner
Socks that always fell down
Chapped legs
Knitted pixie hats
Hospitals that reeked of ether (had to have my finger sewn back on)
Playing on the bomb sites
Skipping in the street while two men turned a huge rope
Red cardinal doorstep paint
Plimsoles that had to be whitened
Washing drying by the fire
Women wearing scarves as turbans over their curlers

I grew up in the East End of London in the 50s - dire!!

Waving to steam train drivers as they passed our house. Piano lessons, awful, hated them. Collecting shit manure from milkman's horse.

1d toffee chews (Penny Dainties) - filled your mouth so you couldn't speak
Sweetie tobacco and cigarettes (!)
Digging soft tar out of pavements in summer with a stick
Annual purchase of Clark's sandals-hated getting the crepe soles dirty
Bird's Eye roast chicken dinners.
Piano lessons
People still talking about first WW
Walking to school by ourselves
Hiding in the canes of sweet peas

Pigs trotters for tea. Ugh!
Red blotchy legs from sitting by the fire. The rest of the house like an icebox.
Fog and smog.
Smell of smoke from coal fires.
Mum and dad smoking woodbine and coughing all the time.
Sweets four a penny.
Gobstoppers.

Hot, Hot, Hot.
Sun, sea, boats, swimming, shopping at night.
School finishing at lunchtime. No homework.
Tomato ketchup sandwiches.
Flip flops.
Playing the recorder.
Elvis Presley.

Impetigo.
Sunstroke.
Asian 'flu (in Asia)
Salt tablets.

Shooting, grenades, mesh grills on school bus windows.
Letters home.
Comics (at least a month old)
Enid Blyton.

Back in UK just in time for the sixties

Building dens out of all the cut grass after the council cutters had been.
Skating down the paved hills on the local council estate because we loved the noise. (our estate had tarmac paths)
Feeding buns from the visiting baker to a jackdaw that used to sit on my shoulder.
Bunty comic every Tuesday, swapped with friend's Judy each week.
Going to mass every Sunday - picking all the French knots off my 'best' dress because I was so bored there
Taking a tobacco tin full of beads to school every day and spending break-time swapping them with friends.
Collecting PG Tips cards (always called 'cigarette cards' )
Playing on bombsites and later, when we'd moved from London, playing on building sites in the half-built houses.
Corned beef fritters.
Fry's balsam - loved this and often used to 'steal' a spoonful when unobserved, even when I didn't have a cough...
Honey and borax on mouth ulcers.

Dick Barton, Special Agent (on the radio).
Lots of dogs running freely around the streets.

... and messing on the pavements petallus

'Fat Bob' who came round with his fruit n veg van.

Making dens in the long grass of the open space behind our gardens.

Camping out over night in the garden with my friend.
Mum polishing the lino.

Being jealous of my older brothers Lego and large wheeled trike.

Dads annual holiday being spent having day trips out to Margate, Ramsgate, Broadstairs. ( I was 11 when we had our first holiday away)

Plus all of the previous posters memories.

Tying dusters of my feet and skating about on the lino pretending to be a top class ice skater.

Mum thought it was a great game and encouraged all my friends to do it.