1950's Childhood.

Playing in old air raid shelters on the allotments
Shelling peas in the garden
Picking black currants and destalking them
Rhubarb crumble and custard
Liver and bacon yuk
Admiring grandads WW1 medals and bayonet he had
Knitted swimming costumes
Riding donkeys at Margate
Waving to TB patients who were in outdoor hospital which was overlooked by the guest house we stayed in at the seaside

How lovely to walk down memory lane!

Chilblains
Frost on the inside of the windows like fairyland
Sitting on Dad's knee in front of the coal fire & getting hot knees
A stripey deck chair type material over the front door in summer to protect the paintwork from the sun
Summer school sports - high jump, potato race and 3 legged race
Elastic garters to keep socks up - very uncomfortable
Having to wear a blazer in the hot sun - it had a certain smell when hot
Kicking through the leaves on my way home from school in Autumn
My Mum's pressure cooker whistling away in the kitchen
Roller skates
Sleeping on Dad's army camp bed in the garden
Making a 'house' out of an old packing chest
Playing in the rec behind our house and being called home to the sound of a bell
New shiney leather school shoes - ooh, the smell
Looking out of my bedroom window to the aerial at Crystal Palace some 7 miles away
Visiting my Grandma and getting Rose's chocolates and a 5/- note
The smell of sherry and cigars on Christmas Day

I could go on ........

Gas lighting at school

The school classroom made with asbestos walls

Making camps in the woods and lighting a fire to cook toast on ('elf & Safety?!)

Crowning of the May Queen

Trying to catch grasshoppers

Walking home after school up the 1 in 6 hill

Trying to break into my own house after reading how to do it in a comic (would have worked if the key hadn't bounced too far!!)

The coalman delivering sacks that were bigger than he was

Setting up camp in the garden to sleep overnight - we lasted about 5 minutes with all the strange sounds coming from the woods!

Getting stuck up a tree in the other woods where I wasn't meant to be

Only one car in the road

Sitting on the front steps playing with woodlice and other creepy crawlies, or picking at the fresh bread that had been delivered, leaving a huge hollow in the middle

Neighbours calling each other Mr or Mrs - no first-name terms until they'd known each other for at least thirty years!

Gas poker to light the coal fire

Shops selling broken biscuits and broken chocolate more cheaply than perfect ones

The foot Xray machine in the shoe shop

Fillings at the dentist with no anaesthetic injections

Party lines on the phone

Having to call the operator to book a call Person to Person to the US

Envelopes and letters being addressed to ". . . . . " Esq

The twitching sound of trolley buses

Blancmange and junket

Winkles for Sunday tea - using a pin to twiddle them from their shells

Coal fires.
Freezing cold bedrooms in the winter.
Eiderdowns and blankets.
School dentists and libraries having squeaky lino on the floor.
Taking a primus stove on family picnics.
Everything being closed on Sundays.
Being able to buy sweets with one penny.
Postal orders for birthday presents and thinking you were doing very well if you got more than half a crown.
Lots of cowboy series on TV.
Being very excited to stay with my aunt because she had ITV and adverts!
Always having to call adults Mrs or auntie.

Sitting in my dad's car on Sundays to listen to Life with the Lyons while he washed the car. We didn't have a radio indoors!
Stone hot water bottles.
Home made jam tarts.
Making paper chains at Christmas with flour and water paste - and trying to stop the cat eating it!
Fireworks ONLY on Guy Fawkes Night - not on any other day of the year, ever!
Oxo tins
Black jacks - 4 for a penny.
Palm toffee
Izal loo paper
Chicken for dinner being a real treat, only for high days and holidays.

Virol and cod liver oil
Making shampoo by soaking bits of soap in water
Helping to put the sheets through the mangle
Playing in the street - no traffic!
Taking a bowl to buy ice cream.
Long train journeys by steam train

Desperately wanting a bike for Christmas but getting a scooter instead because Father Christmas didn't have enough money.
Sitting on a step outside a.pub with a pkt of crisps. Dad inside having a pint.
Saturday morning cinema- bedlam!
Usherettes yelling us to shut up!
Trips out with our motor bike & sidecar, wow!
Getting badly sunburnt on bank holidays.

Cod liver oil and ( thick ) orange juice
Gas mantels and the smell of polish and apples in my Grans front room
My Grandads caraway seed cake and arrowroot blancmange
Ovaltine and candles at bedtime

My Gran had an ovaltine mug with a lid shaped like a nightcap.

Grans biscuit tin full of broken biscuits

I was born in 1962 and my childhood involved alot of what others have described in the 1950's. My dad was a coal miner and we lived in a two roomed upstairs flat in the only street left standing in the area. We shared a spider ridden outside loo with 3 other families.

I was about to say the same, gillybob. Not a coal miner dad, but we lived in a big old cottage in the country, and I remember my mother getting upset when the gas lights went, but letting me have the old bulbs as 'earrings' that she would twist up with fuse wire for me, because they were beautiful once they had blown. We had a well in the courtyard, and sometimes we had to use it. We had a big outhouse that housed the mangle, my mother and grandmother would put the eiderdowns through it once a year.

We had the rag and bone man, and I would be sent out with knives for him to sharpen - aged five! And the excitement when they decided to tar our dusty lane was immense, great big noisy steamrollers inching towards us, and my grandmother getting upset because I had tar on my new long white socks, having to have tar removed from my legs with butter.

Ice on the insides of the bedroom windows, my mother saying that Jack Frost had been in the night, and we believed her.

All of our shopping had to be done in one small, dark crowded shop. We did however have a washing machine and fridge and television. My mother still talks about how damp the kitchen and scullery were, but I remember the massive bath that all three of us and my father could get into together! Heaven only knows why it was that big, back then.

I loved it there, all of us did apart from my mother, and watching the Back in Time for Dinner programme, I can see why, with three of us and another on the way, so we moved into a brand new house in a village, with all mod cons and schools near by. A whole new world - we had jumped in a day from 1935 to the late 60s!

Winter coats with velvet collars and hats that matched
Angora beret and gloves that made me sneeze
Going to the fair on my own (!)
Walking a long way home from school on our own age 7 (and calling into the library on the way)
Clark's sandals with the toes cut out at the end of the summer
Learning to ride a bike - thinking my brother was holding the saddle but he had let go so I was away!
Learning to swim in the very cold small pool at the Corporation Baths
Swimming in the river
Mum using Dolly Blue to whiten the sheets
Running 'errands'
The grass on the wide verge in our road grew to head height - they never seemed to cut it!
The school dentist and the nit nurse
The 11+

Virol, cod liver oil and that thick orange juice from the clinic.
Dick Barton
Forces Favourites and the smell of Sunday roast dinner

And a coal fire in the sitting room but ice on the inside of the windows in my bedroom in winter - getting dressed underneath the blankets!

But I never remember feeling cold, even though we kept our coats on the bed to keep warm. Being sent home from school cause the fog was so thick none of the buses were running.

I was a latch key chiild as soon as I could go to school. My mother was a ward sister in the hospital across the road and she popped over for her tea break at 4pm when I came home, left at 4.30pm and I was on my own until my dad came home around 5pm.

Either one of them had to switch on the gas lights in the living room and light the fire in the winter.

We I assume could not afford to heat up hot water because I rarely had a proper bath. It was a good scrub up at the kitchen sink.

Usherettes at the cinema with their torches, nearly blinding us.

Feeling that the cinema seats could be flea ridden and it was not very comfortable to sit.

Most Saturdays it was cowboy films so I saw every one available. Hate them now!

3 of us sat in a shed, our den, built by her father and we stayed there the entire day most days during the holidays. If not there, in the local woods, splashing around in the burn. Home early evening when we felt hungry.

Tilly lamps and spiders in the outside toilet which was down at the end of the garden.
Newspaper squares instead of toilet paper.
Codliver oil and malt...yuk, and thick National Health orange juice which made my nether regions very sore!
Next door neighbours had gas mantels and wore clogs. Mr T used to drown kittens in a sack, in an old oil drum
Lino on the floor, dolly tub and rubbing board, and mangle.

Happy times though.

We had a tin bath in front of the fire and I remember once (when I was quite little) having an accident and being surprised at the things that were bobbing about in the water!

Mum was not pleased as she wanted to get in after me!

Waiting eagerly for the bread to be finished so we could have the waxed paper to sit on to make the banana slide faster.
Walking up the Dandy to go to the tarn, crossing the railway line on the way.
Church on Sunday morning and Sunday School in the afternoon.
New dresses and Clark's sandals for the Sunday School Anniversary in May.
Going into the woods in the dark with Dad to watch the bats.
Picking buttercups to take to Nana to put in the little china log.
Picking mint from the garden for mum to make mint sauce.
Toasting bread and cheese over the coal fire.
Being free and happy all day long.

Two Way Family favourites on Sunday morning inevitably linked with the smell of the Sunday roast chicken.
Clearing off out for the day in the long summer holidays. Nobody worried where we were. Mum saying she knew we would be back when we were hungry.
A picnic of jam sandwiches and a bottle of Timer was a real treat.
There was a sloping field nearby and we used to lie down and roll from top to bottom. It was our roly poly field.
Are today's kids the poorer for missing all this? I wouldn't swap places with them.

I remember Two Way Family Favourites accompanied by Sunday dinner roasting in the oven
Mrs Dale's Diary
Payton Place and not being allowed to watch it but mum's friends all came to see it
Corona delivered but not allowed to have Cherryade
Biscuits bought loose from a tin with a glass lid
Jacket potatoes cooked in the Parkray's ash pan, nothing tasted better
Toast & dripping
Sliding down hills at Westbury White Horse in cardboard boxes - my sister ripped her dress!
No jeans until I was 11
Being sent to my room for misdemeanours long forgotten but no punishment as would read for hours!
Piano lessons with a lady who's husband was decidedly 'odd', not in a sinister way, poor chap
Fibbing to my mother that I'd not been anywhere near the river though every Saturday a group of us made dens on the bank and came home covered in mud
Oh, life seemed so simple then

Paper cut out dolls and outfits with tabs and you could have lots of changes.
Knitting Nancy made with a cotton reel and 4 nails.

Being sent to the nearby small holding to buy the veg.

Janet and John reading books.
Singing 'Onward Christian Soldiers' a lot at school.

Famous five, Secret seven, toothache, chilblains, gaberdine macks that were down to your ankles so they lasted a long time, magic painting books, teachers with huge bosoms and booming voices. Times tables, spelling tests, lace up clumpy shoes, learning to knit in school. Baggy navy blue knickers with a pocket in them.

Making a big slide, the length of the school playground, on frosty mornings.

All of the above.

Instead of bomb sites we were in a new development in Northants.

We played on the new houses being built next door and along the road from our new house.
Building dens in the brick stacks.
Running around on the 1st floor scaffolding.
Pushing over newly built brick walls before the mortar set.
Riding on the back of a "digger" and being driven to the tip by "Donald" the digger driver.

What stands out of other's lists.
The red blotchy legs and freezing backs.
Prince Charles and Princess Anne savings stamps.
Milkman's horses
Rag gand bone men giving out Goldfish.
I also played with DDT ant powder.
Feet xray machines.

I wonder what the current generation will remember most about their childhood in 50yrs time.
Are "we" happier and less demanding people after growing up in the post war austerity years and do we appreciate what we had more than people do now?

The mind boggles about risk etc, but Oh Boy! did we did enjoy ourselves.