A bicycle parked at the kerb by propping it on the pedal.
The little metal plate on the bus, on the back of the seat in front of you. It was a STUBBER and my mum would use it to put her ciggie out. Sparks flying everywhere!

The rag and bone man with his wheelbarrow.

Ice cream man with bike and cold box on front, had solid co2 in box to keep ice cream frozen..He would take out a piece and hold it on the bell to make it ring.
. The muffin man and the shrimps and winkles man. They both carried a tray on their head holding the goods
..
The gas lamp lighter man, with his long rod for turning on the gas tap.

The street singer wandering through the streets in Kennington {London)
where we lived. A favourite song was "Just a song at twilight"!

Do you remember any of the "street games" we played?
Knock down Ginger. British bulldog. Cocker roosher. Hi Jimmy nacker one two three. Spinning tops, etc.

The man that came round the streets on Sundays selling prawns cockles,winkles etc for Sunday night tea.

Until quite recently our local town had a rag and bone man answered to the name of 'Flash' He pushed an 8ft x 4ft contraption around it looked like an oversized supermarket trolley.

As 5th of November will soon be here kids shouting "Penny for the guy".

Milk being sold in jugs by someone with a horse and cart.

Kids playing games in the street. Such as hop scotch

Brewery deliveries by horses, aah, lovely.

Buying pop at the door with the 'pop man'.

Shiney brass door wear.

AA boxes

Collecting pop bottles, bleach bottles from neighbours to take back to the corner shop. We could collect the 3d deposit that had been paid on them.
Recycling ain't new!!

The RAC patrol man on a motor bike who saluted you if you were sporting the membership badge on your car.

Donkey stoned steps.

Women sitting on the upstairs window ledges to clean the outside windows.

Washing lines strung across the streets.

Waiting for the chimney sweep's brush to pop out of the top of the chimney.

A knocker-up! This was even before my time, but my mother used to tell us about the man who went round knocking on bedroom windows to get people up for work. I don't suppose anybody could afford an alarm clock.

Gas mantles - the darned things were always breaking and the flame would spurt out of the hole.

Girls with skipping ropes.

Girls playing 'two balls' against the wall.

Rope swings on lamp-posts.

Children bowling hoops.

Whips and tops.

Mums and grans sitting outside their terraced houses on summer evenings, watching the kids playing street games.

The man who used to light the gas street light outside my bedroom

Theseus wants to join in: log tables; slide rules; starting handles on cars.

Me: wrap over pinnies; hair nets; motor bikes and side cars (every day!) pipe smokers.

POGS - we have very shiny brass door-ware, because DH polishes it up regularly - especially if he's heard that there's likely to be a bit of gossip in the village about something or other! He dashes out of the front door with the Brasso and a cloth, ready to polish up the knocker! If he's out there long enough, there's bound to be someone passing with some piece of news....

My mother was told by her mother that she must look after the 'brass and glass' because 'more passes than comes in'.
We got our donkey stones from the rag and bone man - he used to let us give his pony carrots. Sometime, the boys would beg a ride but the girls didn't like the stench of old clothes.
The first time I rode in a car was at my older sister's wedding when I was 12.

Marelli Could you please put him on the train for A......r next week along with his Brasso and rag so he can polish up my brass doorstep . I was so embarrassed at the state of it when all you GN's arrived last week; it hasn't been done for years - it would keep him out of mischief for at least a day! (and he could listen out for my village gossip at the same time)

Gally - he'd be in his glory! He'd also keep an eye/ear open for the philandering 'love-bus' driver! I didn't even notice you had a brass doorstep!!

We always knew when my mother was angry with my father - the black range would positively gleam because she put so much frustrated energy into using the Zebo on it.

Gally I for one didn't even notice a brass doorstep, now I'm imagining an entire step made of brass. Is that what it is?

I never see those deep red doorsteps any more, was it red paint?

It was Cardinal red polish, baubles! My mum used to polish our front doorstep tiles with it. Woe betide any of my friends who trod on it on the way in....! I don't know where I went wrong...DH polishing the knocker and my mum polishing the step....sometimes I give things a bit of a 'blow' as I pass them or at the most a flick with a duster, or whatever I have handy!

Steamrollers - noisily chugging down the road
Gas lamps indoors casting shadows up the stairs and passages - scary
Dolly & tub - still have my nan's though one of the peg legs is a bit dodgy. I don't need to use fortunately!
Mangles - used to love helping my nan with mangling
The boxes in small department stores in which the money is put and is whisked away and then comes pinging back with the change
Seats in the grocery store where you can sit and let the grocer do all the running around!

I'm 68 years old but gas lighter - don't remember those, but then I lived in Canada during my early childhood. Memories from then: the ice box at the side of the house, the iceman and his horse coming by a couple a times a week. He had a leather cape, he's lift a huge block of ice with a pair of tongs, heft it onto his back and stagger up the front path to the ice box. There'd be lots of chips of ice that we would dive on to suck or chuck. The milkman and his horse, the latter with a nose bag with his food, as the milkman went from house to house the horse would patiently walk alongside. So many things we had then have now been adopted here. Lunch boxes, ours were metal , Halloween and carved out pumpkins - our parents didn't come around with us. We went door-to-door on our own. If we didn't get a treat we'd trick, we'd toilet paper your house [getting a boy to lob loo paper over your house] or we'd car soap your car windows. Little asbos that we were!! Saturday morning comics and movies, tootsie rools,lifesavers, oh henry bars, cracker jack etc. [all these sweets still available in the US]

What about brass stair rods...I noticed gally had those because I want some!

Those big stone pop jars that we used as hot water bottles, to stop us freezing to death!
Little Tilly lamps that we hung in the outside toilet to stop the pipes freezing up.

I think I must have had a very cold childhood

Lots of old and interesting things

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=stone%20hot%20water%20bottle%20pig&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CD8QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oldandinteresting.com%2Fwarming-the-bed.aspx&ei=WfJvUKJi46fRBaK9gLgN&usg=AFQjCNFboMprWtVOmaQPl0Gr2eoq_Dbnkg&sig2=jNDc7dXqwuImtl8kjvsAtg

The late Mr.G used to reminisce about those stone hot water bottles; said he used to stub his toes on them in the night and also got chilblains!!
Grannylin I think my (newly polished) stair rods are fixed for life now - it took ages to get them into place over the new carpet!
I remember my Mum's Mrs Mop (Kitty) polishing the tiles and steps with Cardinal polish. She used to give me a rag so I could help her.
I remember crouching on the playground playing Jacks. In fact I still have them although the little rubber ball has disintegrated.
We had a 'pig bin' into which all leftovers were put. Strange isn't it that Fife Council have just 'discovered' Pig Bins after all these years and have issued us with the modern version in brown plastic. It all goes in with the garden refuse and gets macerated!
The pay-booth in Sainsburys. Mum would go from counter to counter buying half a pound of butter which was patted into shape and then wrapped in greaseproof, a quarter pound of biscuits from a box with a glass lid, bacon cut from an actual beast and then it would all be paid for at the booth.
The knife grinder who wheeled his barrow along the street every few months.
The Gypsies,(toothless mostly) dressed in long skirts and shawls selling wax flowers and pegs at the door and subtly threatening you with damnation if you didn't buy!
It sounds like Victorian times but all this was in the 50's and 60's

MacFisheries shops.

Horse-drawn milk cart. All the kids waiting with a bucket & shovel to collect the horse's droppings to take back for the veg patch.

Bags of coke or coal being wheeled home in an old pushchair.

Gulleys at the front of butcher shop windows where the blood ran off the slab and gathered.

The rag and bone man with his horse and cart. The man who sat on a bike and sharpened knives and such. Three deliveries a day by a postman in full uniform, complete with a smart hat. Schoolchildren wearing smart uniforms and not eating and drinking in the street/on the bus [because the school had strict rules.]

Marelli

Your DH sounds a good old soul. He would have gotten on well with my mum. She loved 'doing the brasses'. Her favourite was the fender and horse brasses. I feel bad to this day I gave the brasses away but I HATE cleaning brass, too messy.

the demise of cowslips, primroses and violets on the banks and hedgerows.

Obridges cough medicine.

xmas/ sugar mice paper chains etc.

school satchels, boys wearing school caps.

My favourite. The beautiful silver cash tills and money shoots in shops.

The cool box outside in a shady part of the garden to store the weekend's meat and cream etc in. It was wooden with mesh sides.

Lady next door had an outhouse at the bottom of her garden with a copper heated by a fire underneath I can remember the chimney stack smoking. She used blue for her whites, and hard green soap to scrub the washing.

Lady down the road who made cream down the bottom of her garden - we would potter over with a bowl and buy it for tea - bread jam and cream -- utterly divine.

Monica the milk lady who had a black van and sold milk ladled into our jugs. I can remember the smell of the van.

People having a singsong around the piano.

playing in the road and pig bins

Going to the farm up the road to get (really, really!) fresh milk.

Taking our food slops to the small holding over the road and throwing them over the wall for the pigs.

Taking the 'order' to the shop on my way to school and it being delivered shortly after by a boy on a bike. The order was always the same and always cost the same! The grocer's had one of those enormous black and brass coffee grinders in the window. We thought it was a real treat to be allowed to turn the handle - bit of clever marketing from the owner!

Lots of children potato picking in the summer AND not being allowed to join them - they seemed to have such fun. I have told you my mum is a snob haven't I?

Our television which was huge (!!) at least a 12" screen which had an integral radio and massive knobs that looked like gold cake cases.

My birthday cakes, which were always victoria sandwiches (with strawberry jam in) and icing on top, decorated with fruit pastilles cut in half and balancing precariously round the top edge! One year my present was red ballet shoes!

The greengrocer's horse drawn cart coming on Saturday morning and being allowed to have monkey nuts, which cost 3p.

Car drivers doing hand signals (not that sort!) for "i am slowing down, turning left or right" etc, then later cars had orange indicators that popped up out at the side of the car.
Big improvement as there was no need to open the window to indicate, - the rain used to come in!

mrsmopp

Oh yeah, my first car was a Morris Minor and I had to do that.

Anyone remember seeing nylons being MENDED?

In Hale, near the railway station (you see less of those these days!) a woman sat in a shop window, using a tiny hook to hook up the ladders in stockings.
It must have done her eyes in!

Yes! A lady sat in the window of what was the roller skating rink on Abington Square in Northampton. It was a full-time job....repairing nylon stockings.

The local blacksmith, who had his forge next to a row of wooden shops. Precarious but there was never a fire. In the winter, he would let us get warm before we trooped back come with the bags of shopping.

Wash tubs with rubbing boards and possers, and mangles. I used to love turning the handle on the mangle and seeing all the water come out.

The funny thingy in which the Co-op staff put cash and a bill of sale...it was sent hurtling across the ceiling on a track and finished up in the office [upstairs]. Change was returned with a receipt and divi wotsit. I remember it well. The highlight of a Saturday traipsing round the shops with my mother.

My Grandad was a knocker up in the 50s and 60s. Always an early riser he used to give several of his neighbours a knock at 5 am every work day morning. He collected his payment, a pint or two of Guinness every Friday in his local. He suffered with pernicious anaemia and had been told to indulge in Guinness as much as possible as part of his treatment or so he said.

Ella...when not catching fingers between the rollers.

Oh when, I'd forgotten the blacksmith. It was lovely and warm in there. We had a shoemaker next door to that. He had lasts with (rich) people's names on!

We also had a farm in the middle of the village which a butcher's shop on the high street. It had been in the same family for years and (luckily for them!) there were always two brothers in each generation, one of whom ran the farm (called Farmer Clarke!) and the other, who ran the butcher's (called Butcher Clarke) Our order always included lights which mum cooked for the cat (yeuk!!!)

Oh we'll I remember the mangle! Ours was huge when I was a child, and kept outside with a large galvanised container under it. The water was then poured back into the wash boiler in the kitchen.
My first washing machine was a top loader with an electric mangle- such progress. I remember feeding the shirts through it with those wooden tongs, only for the buttons to snap in half as I did so. Evening spent sewing new buttons on the shirts!

Taking Yorkshire pudding to local baker on Sundays. He would cook several at a time in his vast oven. Picking cooked pud up and calling in the Bold Dragoon to have large jug filled with ale.

Allie I have a wooden egg shaped darner with a groove cut out of it for darning nylon stockings. I also have a little leather case full of spools of flesh coloured silk again for darning stockings although I don't think it would be fine enough for the nylons of the 50/60s. Both are interesting little items.

I can still remember Mums divi number 74509 if I had been a very good girl (rare) I was allowed to collect the divi money and keep it for myself. In fact I still have the original dividend book. These days the CO OP use a plastic card not half as nice as the original book.

45009. (but I can't remember my own, sook!)
Penny in the slot to use a public loo. I expect young people these days would be puzzled by the term 'spend a penny'.

Several Saturday morning cinema bits....

Frozen Jubblies, cost 3d.

Hundreds of us standing to sing the National Anthem before the films began. The Manager stood on the stage and if he saw one child turn to put their seat down before the very last notes had played, he'd make us sing it again!

The smell of sour milk in the foyer, from the bags of unwashed milk bottle tops brought in to raise money...for blind children I think?

I remember mending stockings and then, later, tights. I also remember putting odd stockings that didn't need mending into a saucepan and boiling them up together so that the colour became even and you had more matching pairs.

My mum's co-op number was 499638. So I haven't got Alzheimer's yet. [smile [relief emoticon]

My nan used to save her co-op receipts (yellow, about the size of a raffle ticket!)on a bill hook in the pantry and if the Co-op didn't get the divi right, she went and told them!!

Her number was 77738 and my Mum's was 103303.

Is it a sign of something when things from a long time ago are clearer than what I had for breakfast? Or the fact that I bought a pot of cyclamen to put on the side of the raised pond we had taken out about 2 months ago?

Parish's Food, Scotts Emulsion (ugh yuck), Malt Extract, Syrup of Figs, Lux soap flakes, runner beans preserved in salt, eggs preserved in isinglass, soft cheese from a muslin bag hanging over the sink, M&B (May & Baker) pills (before the days of penicillin), milk kept in a slate-lined hole in the ground outside the back door, bread delivered by bicycle. I used to have to paint my throat when it was sore with something purple on a brush. I can remember its taste but not its name.

Spending a penny. Went to Harrods a few years ago and it was £1 to use the Ladies Powder Room. I was appalled and wouldn't go in, grumbled to my friend that the worlds gone mad - it costs a pound to spend a penny. She knew what I meant!
I bet it's a fiver now!!

this sounds crazy now, but I used to go to the Bakers in our village for my Mum and neighbour sometimes on a Saturday to collect bread and cho swiss roll which my twin called "black cake" and the old lady who ran it would serve us with a ciggy hangin out of her mouth!!!

Not sure if would buy from her nowadays!!

things have change quite a bit in that direction.

I worked at a bakers for 4 years due to boredom, but it was fun and lively and the lady who ran it was lovely, one of the girls smoked and she occasionally went outside for ciggy.

Times change for the better on that score.
Except does anyone else get fed up of walking past huddle of smokers outside pubs and clubs???!!!

Daisyanswerdo Would that have been gentian violet?

Dasiy used to buy lux flakes for my babies washing yonks ago!!!!

and my late Mum used to does me with Parishes food!! had iron in apparently.

gosh makes you think!

anneandgraham I have never liked a huddle of smokers outside a pub or an office block and have always felt very cross about cigarette stubs on the pavement, in spite of being a smoker myself. I know every rubbish bin and public ashtray in the town where I live and I can honestly say I have never dumped a fag end in the street. I gave up smoking on 1 December last year [pats self on back emoticon] and I truly hate the mess and the lingering smell [guilty, previously bad person emoticon].

congratulations abesentgrana that is big achievment, I should know as gave up number of years ago, took me several attempts, you deserve huge pat on the back!!! also

My (now retired) GP would always be smoking whilst seeing patients. That's almost impossible to imagine nowadays.

I had Mandels Paint on my throat, it had iodine in it - and i still have it in the original bottle! It still works too.

Gentian Violet, my dad used on my eyelids when they were sore, and I got in trouble in school because they thought it was makeup.....
It was used for burns - if anyone has read 'One Pair of Feet' they used it in the hospital on victims of an industrial explosion.

Greehshield stamps! It was quite fun collecting them but you had to collect a vast number to get a decent 'gift'.

goldengirl I went to a fancy dress party where we had to go as a film title. I went as The Collector having sewn a mass of Greenshield stamps and cigarette coupons – you don't see those these days either – all over my skirt. Not relevant to this thread but my first husband proposed to me that night. (He went as Bring Me the Head of Fredrico Garcia .)

In the mid 50s at Clacton small boys with push carts meeting the trains at the station, to transport your luggage to the guest house.

A rag and bone men with a horse and cart who would give out goldfish in exchange for old clothes.

In winter my Nans outside toilet with its smell of damp newspaper and the little paraffin lamp under the valve of the toilet cistern to stop it freezing, and adult sized Potties under her beds.

My mum being very embarrassed when buying those awful sanitary towels. These were taken from the top shelf of the wool shop, and then very discretely wrapped in brown paper to take home.

AA men with motor bike and side car saluting you if you had an AA badge.

nelliemoser gosh what memories that brings back, I can remember the s towels being wrapped in paper, such discretion in those days.

nowadays we just chuck them in the supermarket trolley!!

Cannot remember barrow boys but think does ring a bell, we did not live in Frinton when I was small just for last 28 years.

Yes my Mum had a mangle in the back yard!! gosh how on earth she coped, no washmachine and twins (me and brother) plus another one, she used to heat water in copper no constant hot water must have been so hard.

And, as has been mentioned in other threads, but no here, I think (sorry if I am being repetitive) waking up with ice on the insides of the bedroom windows. Also the foil tops of milk bottles on the doorstep popping off or bulging because the milk was freezing.

And what about the heated brick wrapped up in a sock or cloth to warm your bed. Didn't it hurt when you stubbed your toe on it!

do/es anyone remember dibs and the game of jacks

Jacks, yes, but not dibs.

Have I got this right? Jacks were metal and spiky and you threw a little rubber ball. Dibs were square and ridged and you didn't have a ball. I think dibs came first.

Dibs sounds like what I would call five stones but I have never heard the term. Is it regional? Yes, jacks were spiky and you bounced a rubber ball.

i remember i used to buy dog bones from the butchers and tell him they were for the dog,,,,,but i used to take them home and make stew, i would go down the market and wait around till they sold off the veg at ridiculous prices and that would go in the stew,,,,i used to top it up and it would last a few days, my freind used to have bread and milk for tea sometimes,,,,,,my mum never gave us that but we had oxo cubes for soup,,,,,,,,my mum would also boil potatoes then we would have a can of tomato soup poured over them, lovely dinner. we would have bread and jam for tea perhaps a boiled egg. i remember her beating up evaperated milk with margerine to make it go further, we had jelly ......................where is twink perming solution gone with the perming rollers,,,,,,,,,,my freind often used to perm freinds hair,i dont think you can buy perming stuff now adays,,,,,you have to go to the hairdressers,,,,do they still do it, ?i think they should bring back cooking good food and baking,,,,all the stuff you buy in the shops have stuff we dont know about,,,,,just to keep it on the shelves for longer,...baking is great,,,,,one thing i do like about being retired,,,i can be at home and cook and bake,

meriotgran,,,,,,yes thats right jacks were like a metal silver thing,,,, and yes dibs were the ridges little wooden cube

Sunday best ( when you only wore your best clothes)

New Easter hats for going to church.

mrsmopp my granny had a mangle like that, and I helped her mangle things when I was evacuated there during the war.

(slightly off topic - anyone heard this rhyme?
'My mother had a mangle
She filled it full of stones
She made me turn the handle
and it nearly broke my bones'.........?
I couldn't imagine what this could be like until I visited a 17th century house in Bristol with my sister....see
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_mangle !!)

There was a mangle on one of those antique challenge shows the other week. It sold for peanuts. I wonder how many children were hurt by them? We always had one in the brewhouse. I used to go to the corner shop and buy a few woodbines for my mum; they would put them in a paper bag for me.

I have twice seen people demonstrating a mangle on TV and both times they were turning the handle backwards with the wrong hand!

We still have a mangle in our back garden!!!! It was Mother in Laws and well used by her!!! My hub rescued it from her garage many years ago and it stood in our shed looking very sad!!!He eventually took it apart, painted it dark green and now it stands resplendent in all its glory and reminds me of what 'wash day' really used to be like.
I worked with a country lady, many years ago, whose favourite saying was 'I never laughed so much since granny caught her t..s in the mangle' Painful or what
p.s. it has been disabled so that inquisitive grandchildren cannot mangle each other.

I had a mangle when I was first married, wish I still had it now my hands can`t wring things out very well anymore.
When I was a child, we had batteries delivered and changed every week, for the radio, but they were kept in the pantry. We were always warned not to touch them, under pain of death, but I never even wanted to, they were large containers, open, and full of gooey looking black stuff, acid maybe?

One of the most useful things when my children were small (in the 1960s) was the Wright's vapouriser. Whenever they had a cold or a cough, these little nightlights heating the block infused with the special fluid kept their airways clear and so they were able to sleep. I suppose they were discontinued because of the flame, but they really were safe in their saucers of water. Have they been replaced with anything so effective?

Hairdressing salons with a long row of hair dryers and we were sitting under them with big rollers in our hair. When your hair was dry, out came the rollers and you were back-combed and lacquered ready for Saturday night on the town..

Daisy - couple of drops of Olbas Oil on the pillow at bedtime is very effective.

I was an 11year old 'milk girl' on a horse and cart during the summer holidays. Was 'paid' a pint of milk and a pint of orange juice daily, but made lots of money on a Saturday when we collected the money and got a threepenny bit tip at most houses. I learned how to carry twelve empty milk bottles at a time - 2 tucked under your arms and 10 fingers in the others and sometimes got to drive the horse and cart but not on the main road.

A few years later, when hurrying home for lunch, I inadvertantly said 'cluck, cluck' to the fruit & veg cart horse, who was waiting patiently while his master delivered a sack of tatties. Well of course he set off up the road with me in hot pursuit, desperately trying to remember the word for stop. He had made it to the grass at the pond before I shouted Whoa! He stopped and I sauntered casually back down the street to tell a bemused man where he might find his missing horse.

daisy you must be younger than me, our Wright's Coal Tar vaporizer was a metal lamp into which liquid coal tar was poured. I agree it did a great job.

My mother used to deliver milk from a horse and cart, whilst in the Land Army, which is how she met my father. He made her a milking stool (3-legged of course) and, as thay say, the rest is history.

When my mum was a little girl, two older brothers made a "swing" by tying one end of a rope to the fence and the other to the mangle. They sat her on the rope, whereupon the mangle fell over and broke her leg. My grandfather then carried her, stretched out in his arms, a couple of miles to hospital.

My Sunday best coat always had a velvet collar and sort of bonnet thing to match. We used to wear liberty bodices and wooly vests in the winter. Long socks with nicker elastic garters that made marks on our legs. Ribbon bows in our hair all different colours to match our clothes presumably.

What a wonderful flood of memories. I remember all of those in Lancashire especially donkey stones,rag and bone men and knocker-up
.
Some other things.
Mum had a small iron which was hollow and heated by inserting a small shaped brick made red hot by heating in coal fire.
'Walking days' -church events with banners,ribbons and flowers
Clog irons and sound of miners coming home in early morning.

Anyone remember Allen Hanbury's Glycerin and blackcurrant pastilles in the lovely blue and yellow tins. still have one of the tins in my garage.

Those capsules that the shop assistant would put your money in and it would whizz along a wire to the office and then whizz back with your change and receipt.

Oh yes, Maniac - I'd almost forgotten Walking Days... my granny used to take me to watch the parades.

Washing Blues (small muslin packets of blue powder which dissolved in water (a lovely deep blue) and then white clothes were dipped into it after the final rinse to intensify the whiteness.

White doggy doo!

granny23 I love that!

The bread man used to deliver my nans bread, and cakes at the weekend, and the fish man, came round on Fridays as well, and the grocery van, you knowm those big vans you could walk on to
happy memories

Those flimsy airmail letters that you wrote on, then folded along the right lines and licked the flap to close them. Thank goodness for email now!

Maniac yes! My granny always kept a tin of Allen and Hanbury's glycerin and blackcurrant pastilles in her bag. I sat next to her in church and she'd get the tin out some time during the service. The pastilles were delicious but did rather stick to the teeth. I've still got a couple of the tins. I remember the whizzing capsules in the grocers' shop too.

Do you ever see a shop these days that's called a drapers? (And they were the ones with the whizzy metallic capsule that carried the money to and from the cash desk.)

Fish and chips wrapped up in newspaper!

I'm reminded of being taken to see 'mummy' by Nan, in Sainsburys, 1952ish. As a divorcee, mum worked full-time & Nan brought me up. Sainsbury then was a narrow, long shop; Mum worked on the butter counter, & I can still recall the tight, white turban the girls had to wear. Using two wooden paddles, the butter would be speedily patted into an oblong, some kind of picture would be impressed on the half-pound slab, then wrapped in grease-proof paper. The walls of the shop were tiled, large colourful farmyard scenes incorporated in the design. A long-forgotten motto of some kind was prominently displayed; it always felt cool in there & fresh-smelling. I was about 4 years old. Mum never stayed long in each job - her next one was as a 'nippy' in Lyons Corner House. I thought she looked like a film-star in* that* uniform; a smart black dress, white frilly apron & a very fetching cap. Mum had very black, shiny curly hair to shoulder-level; people said she looked very like Ava Gardiner, & she really did. I don't take after her!

absent, the money 'whizzer' I remember best was in the huge Coop butchers in the middle of Derby.

Roscoff onions delivered by the "Onion Johnnies! from Brittany - would appear here (well up the West Coast of Scotland!) every year. Great onions and lovely (I thought Old then, but maybe not?) man. Do any still come across to this country?

You are all so much more eloquent with your descriptions than I am, I just called it 'money shoots in shops'.

I used to save my money and go to Jollys in Bath to buy sequins and the like, nowadays they are the sort of thing they throw on tables at parties for decoration. I loved the sound of the 'shlupp and wheeeze' of the shoots, sadly now adays that is just the sound of my breathing.

Buying flowers by the dozen.
Prams
People haymaking and stooking.

We lived in the countryside and I remember, only once or twice, a very exotic looking gentleman in a turban coming to the door with a suitcase of lacy underwear, ribbons etc in very gaudy colours.

I was desperate for some frilly undies but I'm afraid he got short shrift.

Housewives in their crossover pinnies and headscarves worn turban-wise, concealing their curlers - each making sure that her doorsteps were whiter than her neighbour's.

we used to have a baker deliver his' oh so lovely freshly baked bread' in a basket, he would deliver using his horse and cart, I can still smell the aroma of his bread, he would come into the kitchen with his basket slung over his arm with all shapes of bread, have a chat with my mother and then be on his way, also the coal man delivered the coal by horse and cart and cos we were quite poor, as children would follow the cart and pick up any coal that dropped from his cart. THOSE WERE THE DAYS ................. so long ago ,,,

LaGrand Ah Yes exotic gentlemen wearing turbans selling door to door from a suitcase were the only Asian people I saw in my childhood.

"The street singer wandering through the streets in Kennington {London)
where we lived. A favourite song was "Just a song at twilight"!"

Actually called Love's Old Sweet Song, I believe... by James Lynam Molloy, words by G. Clifton Bingham

We used to see the Clydesdale horses pulling carts down to the shore, and bringing them back full of seaweed to fertilise the best potatoes in Scotland (Ayrshires). Loved those heavy horses.

The 'penny' 'tuppenny' and 'thrupenny' trays of sweets in the newsagent shop.

Mr D the old, (or seemed so to us) and grumpy newsagent couldn't disguise his annoyance when faced with a request for the tuppenny tray as he knew it would take the child an age to decide which of the many different sweets priced at two pennies she would have.

Those lovely chunky thruppeny (3d) bits!

Wasn't there toothpaste called Kolynos? Gibbs Dentifrice came in tins, and their advertising was something about defending Castle Something-or-other and a picture of a tooth-shaped castle (or a castle-shaped tooth).

POGS Where I live in the North-east, you see loads of young mums with proper prams, even some Silver Cross ones. We're backward up here.

Or very rich! Those Silver Cross prams cost a fortune....

Nowhere in the North-east is rich Ana.

I had a second-hand one in the 60s in London - great with no car and two small ones who both fitted in! I walked everywhere with it and even brought a gasfire back on it once!

Come to think of it my mum had one for my sister (1949) and she was having a sleep in the garden - another thing not seen now? - and she woke and managed to tip the pram up and came crawling up the garden....

Oil stoves with a frightening pattern on the ceiling. The outside loo in winter. Syrup of figs and cod liver oil. Gibbs toothpaste in round tins (I used to lick it). Liberty bodices (anything but). Dreary Good Fridays. Butter pats and the smell of the dairy. Trunks to pack with everything for the holiday which were sent in advance.

Thank you feetlebaum. That was all that I remembered of it!

No, I didn't really think they were, absent. It was a joke.

Silver three
Emmy bits and farthings . Expensive clothes marked in guineas and ladies ALWAYS wore hats and gloves when out.

With hatpins!

Lovely decorative hat pins. Vicious weapons if necessary. You easily kill with one!

Never, ever a black bag with brown gloves or shoes.

What I don't miss is the performance of washing hair. It took forever to dry and you either made shampoo by melting soap or bought some powdered stuff and mixed it with water. And if you went to the hairdresser, you went face forward in the basin and then got cooked under the dryer. And sleeping in curlers! I was watching 'My week with Marilyn' the other day and the character played by Emma Watson said she couldn't go out because she was washing her hair. It brought it all back.

It was always Friday night wasn't it, Lilygran? I had a friend who used to add vinegar to the water to rinse her hair. Her hair was lovely and shiny and silky but she smelt like a fish and chip shop for the rest of the week.

You could buy beer shampoo, too!

My father went through a phase of plastering his hair with some stuff called Bay Rum. It was disgusting so we were all glad when he stopped.

Lilygran

The smell of TWINK home perms and the rollers with the tissue paper with them. Mum sitting under the hairdryer with the plastic hood. Not that there may be some on G.N who might still have one of those

Beer shampoo came in a little barrel shaped container. Sometimes we rinsed our hair with real beer - until we got a taste for it, that is. Home perms - 'Which twin has the Toni?' My mum had trained as a hairdresser and used to perm her friends' and relatives' hair. We'd come in from school and find the house stinking of perming lotion!

Oh, yes. Home perms!

Friday night was Amami night!!
Some kind of setting lotion I think it was...

POGS, I have a hair dryer with a plastic hood-sit under it every week to dry my hair and ,incidentally, to have a bit of 'me' time.

Mamie The light patters on the ceiling from paraffin heater were part of my childhood.I found them very comforting.
We also had outside loo -very cold and spidery.No Andrex toilet rolls.Cut up newspaper instead.!

Hunt

Putting my mum in my mind now. She too would give herself 'me time', just see her doing her knitting or reading a book.

My Mother had the me time when she was under the hair dryer, head bristling with rollers, and the hood, she always looked over heated at that point, it never looked very comfortable.

I think my mum's 'me time' was in her nightly bath. She used to read in it and if she couldn't find her glasses we always knew where to find them.

Maniac, I was terrified by a goblin who I believed lived in the paraffin lamp in the outside loo!

Mamie

Ahh, the outside loo. Lovely. Fight your way through the cobwebs, Izal paper if you were lucky or newspaper. Pitch black, freezing cold and scared to death what was crawling around the floor. Happy days, not!!.

Paraffin heaters remind me of the time my dad left one on in the hall overnight. I got up - always first up - next morning, opened my bedroom door and found the hall, stairs and dining room covered in black sticky soot - it showed up every single cobweb!!!!! Needless to say it only happened the once!

We used to have a man come round on a bicycle selling garlic! He must have pedalled over on the ferry because we lived on an island. Whether he was French or not I don't know. I do know that my mother bought the stuff but I don't remember her ever using it. Her cooking as she was proud to tell me was 'good, plain cooking'- and salads galore.

What about pea - soupers?? The fog we used to get before the Clean Air Act.
We don't get those any more.
I had saved up my pocket money for ages to go to see Adam Faith at our theatre. But on the night he was on there was thick thick fog and the buses stopped running so I couldn't go. Mum had to physically stop me because I said I was going to walk it and she yelled at me "Look outside - you can't even see the garden gate!!!"
I later asked the theatre for a refund and they refused, saying the weather wasnt their fault. Oh I was devastated.! Cruel world!

The Co-op mobile shop which came round our estate. I can still remember what it smelt like inside (nice). The Sainsbury's man in his brown uniform who would take our order and deliver it a few days later. Who needed the internet?

Soot. We lived opposite the steam railway line (Victoria to Margate) and the window sills were always covered in soot you could write in! My mother was always scrubbing the front door step and wiping the window sills. The road was a cul de sac and I loved seeing all the boys on their bicycles arriving to train spot. We all played in the road, there were only four cars in our street; the taxi driver, the painter and decorator, my Mum the district nurse and one lucky person who had one because he could afford it!

What WAS the point of Izal loo paper? My German helper called it "grease proof paper" and could never understand why we used it, when they used a sort of recycled paper. Newspaper even, was more absorbent. Please tell me, it has worried me for 50 odd years. (Very odd, some of them!)

I have no idea, Ariadne! My grandparents used it - my granny did buy some of the new-fangled softer paper when it came out, but granddad didn't like it......

My in-laws were still using Izal-type loo paper in 1970 when I first met them - for reasons of economy, knowing them!
The staff loo I used at the college where I taught from 1985, was still using it until staff protests got too much for management who, no doubt, had their very own Andrex.

Oh yes, Izal toilet paper, I think I preferred newspaper, and the outside loo with the bench seat, spiders and a little yellow paraffin nightlight which was supposed to stop the pipes freezing.
The treat for the week was feeding wobbly carrots to the shire horses delivering beer to the pub next door. I can even remember their names - Donald and Sidney, Bill and John and William who refused to go as a pair. It was the start of a life long love of horses. (Now I can't remember the name of someone two minutes after being introduced)

Why didn't Izal and/or newspaper block the toilets? Given that everything these days seems to block them if accidentally put down them.

Nothing stuck to it!

crimson the toilets where you used newspaper often weren't water closets!

Chocolate Wagon Wheels were loads bigger and sherbet fountains had liquorice straws and we could buy loose sherbet in paper cones and WalnutWhips had half a walnut inside as well as on top (only had those at Christmas) and gob stoppers really did.

We used to call Izal and Bronco "skiddy" - they were best for comb and loo paper recitals though!

My mum and dad moved into a multi storey block of flats and my dad still used newspaper . A friend of my ex husband's once remarked on somewhere he'd been where they still used newspaper and my ex was so embarrassed to realise he was referring to my parents. He was SO ashamed of me.

How dare he - what is there to be ashamed about?

Silly isn't it. I find it quite funny now.

My auntie and my step-sister both worked at the IZAL factory at Chapeltown, near Sheffield, back in the 1950s, we used it because they got it free!

Apparently, according to a recent BBC prog about servants, Izal loo paper was purchased for them to use, while their employers used the soft stuff. Mind you, my mother-in-law was still using it in the early 70s, considering it to be 'hygienic'. Since it was non-porous, perhaps she had a point. The roll used to sit on the cistern hidden discreetly under the frilly skirt of a Spanish-type doll.

We used it for tracing paper as well as for comb and paper 'music'. Andrex is no use for either. I still insist that soft loo paper is the 20th Century's greatest contribution to the comfort of humanity.

The other contribution is constant hot water on tap. Luxury - even when you restrict it to a couple of hours in the morning, as I do.

We had the shiny stuff too - in packets of separate sheets, held in a ceramic dispenser on the wall - I think Bronco was the brand...

We are having lots of roads being repaired in the town , today I saw a steamroller . I don"t think they can lay roads without them, flattening etc.

Nonu Are you sure it was steam powered?

A night-watchman sitting outside a wee hut, warming his hands over glowing coals.

Children under 14 out on their own.
Wet fish shops
Brown overalls
Dachshunds
Isinglass for preserving eggs (eggs were seasonal once!)
Running boards on cars (they must have been so dangerous!)
Guard's vans on trains
Soot
Turn-ups on men's trousers

Diptheria
TB
Polio

Refreshers (loved them!)
Spangles
Barratts Sweet Cigarettes (amazing, a packet of white sugar stick, each with a scarlet tip! Get children used to the idea)
Mackeson Stout
Concorde Wine
Babycham
Dripping ie beef fat (yuk!)

Dripping - yum!

Can you still get Horlicks sweets?

Sweet cigarettes were delicious!

You can still get sweet cigarettes! One of my GDs recently sat in the back of my car pretending to smoke one, and when it was down to the last half inch casually threw it out of the window! I blame her father...

Seeing a baby in a pram (with a cat net on) left outside the shops/front door/in the garden.

isthis Eastcoast still has a guard's van on their trains. TB is on the increase in this country. Refreshers are still around.

Antimacasters (sp)

Sweet ciggies not allowed to have the red end anymore!

Ah! I thought they looked different! They still come in a cigarette-type packet though.

they just call them candy sticks now

No artificial flavours either, so they probably don't taste as good.

(I'm sure we don't get them round here!)

Can liquorice pipes still have the red sprinkles on them though?
Used to love liquorice - pipes, Catherine wheels, shoelaces, whatever shapes they came in.

Yogagran my mother used to love bread and dripping! (Stomach heaving emoticon) that might have contributed to me being vegetarian.

I still would love a slice of toast with beef dripping and marmite [drool] in the Black Country bread and dripping or lard was called bread and scrape!

Bread dipped into the meat juices from the Sunday joint.

Oh yes!
Stop it. You're making me hungry. I'll watch that California girls utube again to bolster my willpower!

Yes I am off to watch it too mmm it did taste good though didnt it!

Bread and dripping used to be a great treat in our house. If I was really lucky we sometimes had golden syrup sandwiches The thing I miss is the horses. Ever4yone seemed to have a horse and cart - the milkman, the baker, the coalman, the greengrocer and the rag and bone man. Now and again we would see barge horses being walked down to the canal and I remember once seeing a long line of real Romany caravans - all horse drawn of course.

Oh yes! I remember it too! (Cue Hermione and Maurice in Gigi!)

Coin in the slot TV sets ( a form of hire purchase).

All the lights and everything going off suddenly because the 'shilling' had gone. Followed by a frantic scramble in the dark to find a shilling and feed the meter.

Our first TV after we got married was a coin in the slot. At the end of the month they`d empty it, take out the rental fee, and we got the rest back. Ours took 2 shilling pieces, not one shilling.
Going back to the liquorice, at Christmas we used to get liquorice selection boxes, not chocolate, must have kept us regular!

Thin white bread, margarine and sugar sandwiches when I got home home school. Cheap, cheerful and of no nutritional value whatsoever.

Gaberdine school coats with, if my memory serves me correctly, detachable hoods and linings. Mine was navy, wouldn't mind a long version now - sans hood!

Deedaa We don't have delivery horses any more but we do have the occasional pony and trap trotting smartly through the town where I live.

Three dairies delivered in our avenue... two with horse-drawn floats, and the Co-op had a battery-driven box on wheels, with the milkman where the horse should have been, on foot... We were United Dairies, and the horse was called Rosie...

There was a knife-grinder who came round (I wish there still was) on a pedal tricycle arrangement - the same pedals drove his grindstone - an amazing Heath Robinson contraption!

The coalman delivered coal and coke into our back-garden sheds, humping the sacks up the sideway - my job as a child was to count the sacks as they arrived.

Mention of the steam-roller here; what elegant machines they were! I liked the way the boiler made a noise like my mother's Sunday joint in the oven when it would spit fat...

baubles my mother bought me a gaberdine school coat when I started at the grammar schoo. It was very expensive and came down to my ankles but I wore it till I was 16 (I think I may have moved on to a duffle coat in the 6th form where the rules were slightly relaxed). The detachable lining was great and I wore it under all sorts of coats long after I left school. Have to agree about the hood!l

Glassortwo -Re antimacassars; now that the young'uns all plaster their hair with gel and wax, perhaps they are due for a comeback.

I had a school gabardine coat, too. We were allowed to wear duffel coats later, but only if they had black or navy toggles! My Dad painted mine black (took them off first, of course|!).

Feetlebaum, re the coal deliveries, my step-father worked as a miner, so we got cheap coal, when we needed some we posted a card through the delivery man`s door, and the coal lorry dropped the coal off at our front gate, cue all the family out with buckets and shovels to get it round the back into the coal place, after removing all the bits of shale which went under the hedge to be used as chalk for hopscotch.

Does anyone remember going to the Greengrocers for "two pennorth of "potherbs"?

A carrot a parsnip, an onion, I think that was all. Mum would put them into a saucepan with the remains of the week end leg of lamb and bone.

Yes , lamb was cheap enough to buy a leg in those days. we were a family of five - not unusual then!

I remember riding on trolley buses and tram cars in South London in the 50's. My brother and I taking the weekly wash to the launderette. To go to the Wimpey Bar was a treat.

The old gag was buying a sheep's head 'and leave the legs on, please'

In Cornwall in the sixties, many people where I lived didn't have proper ovens, so would have their joints cooked for them, either at the bakery or at a café, where 'Uncle Perce' would supply a roasted pig's head... sounds gruesome, but tasted gorgeous! (Where do you think brawn comes from? Another name for it is 'headcheese'...)

My mother used to make clippy mats in the evenings from cut up old clothes. That was after he darning was completed. I remember her being delighted when something called Indestructable Socks came in. But they weren't. My father used to Walpamure the walls every so often too. Not very efficiently.

And when I went with my mother for church cleaning once a month, I used to collect all the candle drips and bring them home to melt down and make candles for Christmas.

Oh, and rabbits were so cheap, we used to cook them for the cat. Then there was myxomatosis and the poor old thing had to have Kit e Kat.

I remember so well the funerals here, when I was a kid. A bit like the traditional East End funerals- horses, black wooden herse, with the old farmer, Monsieur Berthoud, leading, with his distinctive limp - family walking right behind, and other mourners behind them- with the drummer beating the funeral march. We were taught to stand by the side of the road when they came past, and bow our head in respect until they'd gone past, on the way to the cemetary.

Employment bureaus such as Alfred Marks, Reed Employment, Brook Street Bureau. When I worked up in London to utter the awful expression one of my sons keeps using "back in the day" they were everywhere, you could walk out of one job on Friday and be fixed up with a new one by the following Monday, full employment, those were the days!

Where on earth do you live banana ? s=Since those days they have almost completely succeeded in inserting themselves between employers and applicants. Huge number of them and companies like Reed even advertise on TV. Many large firms outsource to them, so that e.g. Reed employs half their clerical staff. My SIL works for one of them and they directly employ half the workforce in a highly successful car plant.
Maybe they are less likely to have a shopfront on the highstreet - they will be in office accommodation nearby perhaps?

I had a gabardine for school. Grey. As was the pinafore dress the lisle stockings the blazer and even the knickers! The school was the friary, built on the site of a Franciscan friary. I also had to have agrey overcoat for Sundays . Oh! And 2 hats. One for every day and another for Sundays (grey) also a pair of 'best' shoes for Sundays!(black) oh and grey gloves.
I didn't wear grey again until recently and then only rarely.

absentgrana yes, I remember my auntie darning her nylons, over a 'mushroom' which I still have in my workbox.

JessM, I'm probably thinking of the secretarial ones on the high street.

I've just read through all eight pages and can remember 95% of what's been mentioned so far
My contributions- 'starching' net underskirts with sugar solution in the early 60s
and, whatever became of Rum Babas from the 70s? I live in hope that one day someone will start selling them again.

trishs - If you watched the latest Great British Bake Off, they made Rum Babas as one of their first tasks.

trish they are easy to make. I love them.the only trouble is :- calories

I remember underskirts with bones in - a short crinoline! They took up a drawer each....

I remember when underskirts started to go out of fashion and I went to school without mine under my summer uniform dress. It felt like I was wearing my nightie flapping round my legs.

Frost on the windows inside.
Putting clothes on in bed to stay warm.
Dad lighting the fire before we got up.
Sitting on the kitchen table when our basement flat was flooded every winter and being piggy backed out to go to school.
Cocoa before bed with custard creams.
Collecting horse droppings for nanna's rose garden which was about three feet square on top of the midden.
Standing at the bus stop freezing on winters day after swimming lessons with hands wrapped round hot oxo drink.
Winding up the gramophone at parties.
Being bathed in the tin bath to be clean for Christmas Day.

Learning to write my first letters at primary school on a slate, then progressing a year or two later to wooden pens with scratchy nibs and desks with ink wells, and ink!

baNANA & jeni, I hate cookery programmes on tv (apart from Nigel Slater) and the only baking I participate in these days are the Christmas cakes we make every year, but I might yet be driven to try if you are telling the truth about them being easy.

The ink monitor with a tray of filled inkwells, cos we weren't allowed ink unless we were writing....

Trish, and those said inkwells were always stuffed up with soggy bits of blotting paper!

...that clogged up the nib of your pen....

.... but you could use your ruler to catapult them to the ceiling, where they left a blue-black smear ......

Yes!

Not in Miss Roots' class you couldn't Elegran or at least, not more than once.

Yes they have evolved a bit banana - we don't have a "normal" high street here in Mk, so not sure where they hang out generally. But on the internet, as well as offices.
Oh it was pretty miserable trying to learn joined up writing with those dippy pens wasnt it.

More like joined-up splatters, with gaps where the ink ran out mid-word.

I saved up my pocket money and bought my own bottle of ink. You were really somebody if you owned your own bottle of Quink, mine was Royal blue.

Especially if you were left handed! I used pencil for much longer than anyone else in my class because I smudged the ink.

Quink! Even just the name brings back the smell and the inky fingers!

Virol. I used to love it. Anyone else remember it?

Children's Hour. Uncle Mac. "David" reading Rudyard Kipling stories. The most gorgeous, reassuring voice anywhere!

Chilblains. Do they still exist? I was racked by them. Neither of my children has ever had a single one. I think perhaps central heating banished chilblains!

Scratchy wool blankets. Indeed any wool blankets.

Chilblains and scratchy wool blankets DID NOT MIX!

isthisallthereis, I read some terrible things about Uncle Mac on the internet the other day !
(http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n21/andrew-ohagan/light-entertainment)

Think y'got chilblains from toasting your toes in front of the coal fire . We all had red blotchy marks on our legs from doing that.

Wow! What a thread!
We do see people in Sunday best here. They are either Caribbean or African families. Some pretty stunning African outfits sometimes included.

Darns (i remember learning how to do them, possibly for brownies)
Corsets and rollons worn by nans and mums
Styes
Really bad acne
People with leg irons
Streets with no parked cars (can see clearly in my mind's eye, new yellow ford anglia belonging to my mum's boyfriend.)
People going out for a "run in the car" just because they can
Dads on the beach with their trousers rolled up and hankies on their heads
Women carrying their children "Welsh fashion" - with a big welsh shawl wrapped around mother and baby.

Chilblains,I suffered from then all through my childhoods he treatment was to. Bathe them in your own urine...many hour spent with my feet in the po....

Remember the corned beef coloured legs with scorch marks,most of the older ladies had them ..with their stockings rolled to their ankles and their bunions cut out if their checkered slippers...

Taking a drive along the M. 25 , !

Gum boils treated with borax and honey
The smell of methylated spirits..to light the primus stove on picnics...to light the hurricane lamp in the outside lav after lagging the pipes with strips of old army blanket enhanced with the smell of damp izal toilet roll...condensation dripping on your head throughout any procedure in the outside loo...

Old people with rickets!
I looked for a picture on line, to show my daughter, and all I found was children from poor countries - no old people with bent legs, but I remember seeing them, and my dad explained.

The little boy I played with next door got polio in 1847 and ended up with a leg iron.

Good grief Alie you're wearing well!

Thanks...I think! 1940 vintage.

Forgot to say Whoops!

Isthis, you actually LIKED Virol? It was VILE!!

Eugh! I hated Virol. The other stuff that made me gag was Smith's Cremola. It was like cold semolina and I think was supposed to boost our calcium levels but I couldn't swallow it.

Virol- yeuk, just the word makes me want to puke.I had tried to erase that memory

I loved Virol! I noticed you can still get something like it at the chemist's - but I don't I need it any more, as I'm really quite 'robust'!

There are some strange people in this world!

Mustard poultices.

School milk in those bottles. A third of a pint each. In winter they froze and the tops were pushed off due to expansion. But the milk wasn't wasted as we thawed them on the radiator.
I had some kind of pink powder, strawberry flavoured and I used to put it in the milk for a milkshake. Probably just coloured sugar.
Were you a milk monitor? What were your duties?

Going to LOOK at M1 (not the M1!!). Being taken by a really sophisticated boyfriend, in his XJ6 for a meal in the upmarket restaurant overlooking the runway at East Midland Airport.

And the sour smell of the school milk crates {yuk emoticon]
I used to get given extra milk that was left over by Miss Williams. because I have pale skin - no pink cheeks.
Taking a walk along an empty, new motorway, just before it opened (but it was 4 yrs ago in Ireland - and the motorway is still nearly empty!)
I don't remember seeing rickety old people, but there is a gransnet member who remembers having patients in the midlands when she was a young gp.
But I lived by the seaside in wales - if I had gone up the valley it may have been different. My MIL grew up in the war in the midlands and says nobody used to go out and sit in the sun.

What was the name of that pink powder mrsmopp?? I can taste it now. No trace of fruit, entirely chemical!

I don't want to hijack this very enjoyable thread (ominous words) but I have been wondering what our grand-children would include on a list if they were have a similar thread many years in the future.

What would they miss?

ipads - they were so big and clunky weren't they? And slow!
The NHS - can you believe my grandma and grandad used to go to hospital to get things fixed and there was no charge "at the point of delivery". And they had their own GP down the road! Does anyone remember GPs?
They had shops too. Not just out of town megamarkets and internet deliveries like now. So impersonal when you think about it. Shops disappeared in the 2020s didn't they? Or probably earlier, I don't remember.
The Royal Family - before they were finished off by the Great Scandals of 2018. But I understand they're quite happy on Mauritius, not that we hear much about them.
Ash trees - I've got an old photo of one somewhere.
etc

trishs Some time ago on a similar nostalgia thread I mentioned that "Uncle Mac" was a paedophile. The women of my family were talking about it in hushed voices on some occasion and I didn't take a lot of notice but grasped the essentials of what they were talking about. It upset some Gransnetters when I posted this piece of information as he was such a figure in our generation's childhood. Shades of Jimmy Savile.

He has been mentioned in the press by a BBC presenter (John Humphreys? maybe, can't remember.) using a pseudonym,Uncle Dick!

Ella46 John Simpson, I think.

trishs have only just got around to reading that article you kindly posted about historical child abuse in the BBC. Bit of a long rambling article but horrifying reading all the same.

I never much cared for Uncle Mac as a youngster. The voice on the radio I greatly loved was David Davis:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-david-davis-1345488.html

btw a famous story that I was told years ago about "Uncle Mac" is that, after the end of one broadcast, he gasped "Thank God the little b*ggers have gone!" Unfortunately the microphone was still live and his remark was broadcast.

But a paper from Monash University attributes a near identical story to George Saunders, "Uncle George" an Australian children's host, adding "there are numerous variations of the story (American as well as Australian) and it may well be apocryphal."

I guess not the George Sanders who starred in All About Eve.

Was it Nesquick that you were thinking of isthere?

Hmmm possibly.

Do Mums still give their children a "cats lick" when in a hurry to go somewhere?

Can't remember what it was called but it looked like pink sugar, some kind of sherbet I would think. To encourage kids who didn't like milk to drink it. It was a shocking pink colour. Don't think Nesquick had been invented.
Never did me any harm...lol...

Oh yes a cat lick!
Mum would wet a hanky with her tongue and wipe it all over my face! I'd be squirming, saying, "gerroff" and mum would be saying "shurrup!"

Terry`s Neapolitans, mmmmmm! They were lovely.

Oh yes! They were - don't they make them any more?

Does anyone else remember Neapolitan ice cream with white, pink and green stripes? I think it was greengage flavour, but no one I know seems to have come across it....

I remember it Ana I didn't know it was greengage although I'm not sure I would have known what a greengage was then. It was made by Walls I think, or possibly Lyons.

No, I wouldn't have known either, must have been told! I do know it wasn't mint flavoured, though - yes, it would have been one of those two makes.

I thought it was apple Ana but neapolitan ice cream was such a treat they could have told me it was grass and I wouldn't have cared.

Ana I remember having red, white and green Neapolitan icecream in wafers as a child, from Ramo's Italian icecream parlour on Blackpool prom. My dad told us it was the nicest icecream in the world!

The green stripe of Neapolitan ice cream was almond or pistachio.

whenim64 You have to go to Rome for the nicest ice cream in the world. Absentdaughter, then seven, and I disagreed about the exact flavour – there was a choice of 140 – but we did agree about the quality of the flavour and the texture.

absent I agree Roman icecream is fantastic, but a very close second was the icecream we had at the original Ben and Jerry's in Manchester, Vermont. The development kitchens were dishing out freshly made caramel and pecan nut icecream for us to try and it was divine. Never tasted anything like it since.

I believe the best ice cream in the world is supposed to be Vivoli in Florence. Sadly I wasn't there long enough to find out but Nico's in Venice is pretty damn good

We went to buy an ice cream in Venice but the seller had a really drippy nose so we didn't fancy it. I could still heave thinking about it 30 years on.

absent do you mean that pistachios were invented that long ago - crumbs

David's in sorrento!

People have mentioned old people with rickets and children in leg irons. Back in the fifties I was in hospital for a year, most of the time 'attached' to my bed. I was lucky, I wasn't in a 'plaster bed' like the person in this post http://margueriteheptonhospital.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/colin-welbournes-further-recollections.html., but some of my friends were encased in plaster from head to foot.
Some of my fellow ward inmates spent years there, with their parents and relatives only allowed to visit weekends. Siblings under the age of 14 weren't allowed to visit at all. Children spent most days outdoors, even when it was snowing, sometimes sleeping outdoors, and the hospital was between a remand home and an open prison! I can't imagine parents of today letting their children live under the conditions that I and many more children in the past had to cope with. My account of my time at the hospital is here http://margueriteheptonhospital.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/patricia-senior-nee-tasker-recalls-her.html

I was going to say that the green stripe was almond, but Absent beat me to it! Modern Neapolitan ice cream is nothing like the original.
And no, Ana, they don`t make Terry`s neapolitans anymore, but then Terry`s is no more, either.

The thing about the Neapolitan ice cream wasn't just that it was lovely but it was a treat. For us it was a Sunday only thing - Sundays were different and reserved for treats. Tinned fruit with evaporated milk - only on Sunday! Imagine children being excited by that now. We always had a family walk on Sunday afternoon and often round the harbour in Heysham. There was a railway station there with two vending machines. A huge treat was a packet of chewing gum, or a chocolate bar. There just doesn't seem to be that attitude now, things seem to have stopped being special. Ah well.

Berthillon, Ile St Louis, Paris. You can avoid the queue by ordering it in a café.

Thanks for sharing that trishs It seems almost archaic.Easier to follow if you tick the'converts links automatically' box under your message

Re fireworks - how about those ric-racs/jumping jacks?

I used to be scared they would jump into my wellies.
And in the 60s I was in a cinema and someone let one off! I left.

Thanks Grannylin, if there was an edit button I'd do that now ;)

I remember the machines that used to be on railway station platforms where you could print out your name on a long strip of tin by dialling the letters on a huge disc, like the modern Dymo machines but HUGE

Was it not pistachio?

Jumping jacks were terrifying!

I still have an aluminium strip from one of these machines Yogagran.
I wrote a love message to my then girl friend. Now my wife of 57 yrs.
The machine was on Waterloo Stn. near where the lost property office used to be!
Doesn't time fly?!!

yogagran and gramps Yes, I do remember those aluminium strips! They were even more exciting than the chewing gum machines (I think I had a deprived childhood!)

What a lovely thing gramps that you still have that strip, so romantic. I wonder if you've been to Waterloo Station recently - it's enormous, they've managed to add a whole new level with lots of shops and restaurants. The clock is still there

The Fairyland ride at Blackpool, always my favourite attraction there in my childhood, alas no more. It was opposite Central Pier, on the corner of, I think, Chapel Street.

numberplease I just met you on the 'where are we' thread! Blackpool eh? I used to go there to the Mecca Ballroom - I'd told my daughter that and she told me to watch '999 what's your emergency' about the Emergency services in Blackpool - wow, it's certainly changed! Happy days

Sel, last time I was in Blackpool was 1989, and that was the first time in about 15 years, due to us moving across the country. At that time, I thought it was even shabbier than it used to be, but I believe that a lot of changes have been made recently, for the good. But there`s still no Fairyland!

I was at school in Blackpool about 1951-5.
Never went up the tower but remember there was a zoo underneath it?

Yes, I used to feel so sorry for the animals in that zoo, it was far too small and confined, glad it`s not there anymore. As far as I`m concerned, the only thing of beauty in Blackpool is the gorgeous Tower ballroom, I can remember going to see Reginald Dixon on the organ, as a child I was absolutely overawed at the organ (and Mr. Dixon) coming up out of the stage floor!

Some lovely posts here! Very nostalgic.

What about dances down the local swimming pool? They used to board it over - nice and bouncy to dance on! I doubt health & safety would let you get away with it these day.

If you're interested in recording memories - or helping someone else do it - this is an interesting idea for Christmas: www.yourstoryforever.co.uk/

Dancing! I still love dancing.

It was very much the Twist. Twist and Shout by the Beatles and Let's Twist Again by Chubby Checker. I even won a twist competition when I was away on holiday in Wales with my family. I think I was 14 or 15, can't remember what the prize was.

I missed out on the jive, and certainly on the jitterbug! There's a group of young people meet every week near where I live to dance Jitterbug!

Oh, the twist! I'd had a fall - tripped on the edge of a manhole cover - as a student and my knee was bruised, bloody and wrenched. After an evening of the twist at a student ball, it was completely recovered!

Why has no one mentioned the street singers after the war, beautiful voices
that carried on the air, men walking slowly in their old army greatcoat singing such wonderful songs that lifted a child's heart and stopped women working.

Numberplease

you couldn't be that young girl from Glasgow who I met in the tower at Blackpool, and who promised to love me forever and never wrote?

What year would that have been Cannybairn? I`m not from Glasgow, but when I was 15 I met a nice young Scottish lad whilst walking along the"front", and he went round the pleasure beach with me as well, think he was called Brian.

When I was a child Indian men in turbans went from door to door selling household items from a suitcase.

I loved the Twist! Did you have one of those twist dresses that were straight shift type but covered in little fringes that moved when you 'twisted'?
Some girls were overdoing it a bit and sprained a muscle in their side- were taken to hospital with suspected appendicitis?
I am sure it was good for the figure though!
So was the hula hoop!