Blast from the past

She also pinched, and used up, the only bottle of "perfume" I`d ever owned, it was 4711, a present from my Grandma, I was about 10 then, she was 8 years older.

Yuck, I hated that malt extract! One morning my stepsister (we hated each other) offered to bring me breakfast in bed. I should have been warned by how we felt about each other, but I was so thrilled to be getting breakfast in bed, it didn`t occur to me to be suspicious. I actually asked her for bread and treacle (Tate and Lyle`s golden syrup), it looked OK when it arrived, till I bit into it and found that she`d spread the bread with malt extract! Did anyone get stewed ants for dessert at school? It was supposed to be stewed apricots, but there were always more ants than apricots!

Radio Luxembourg used to fade, pop and crackle on the crystal set I had because I didn't have a radio. It was almost useless. Heating was confined to a coke stove in the kitchen which would glow dull red and put out almost enough heat to smelt iron, but only if you were facing it. Lighting was by gas, a gentle yellow glow from the mantles which you had to change from time to time. No electricity in the house till the early 50s nor main drainage, and this was in Surrey within sight of Windsor Castle. We often wondered how they got on there. But we had good, simple food and plenty of it. Puddings and pies, soups and stews, plenty of fresh stuff in the summer.

All the family had vegetable gardens or allotments and stuff would be preserved in Kilner jars. Thick slices of bread and butter or jam or dripping. Steaming great bowls of rice pudding or semolina. Every morning a spoonful of NHS cod-liver oil (horrid) orange juice (quite nice) and sometimes rose-hip syrup (delicious). And something sweet and black in a jar, was it yeast extract, no, malt-extract. A bit like Nutella - very nice. At school the intensity of marbles matches, conkers, flicking cigarette cards, or school-yard football and ball games. The girls playing hopscotch and singing games in the round which seemed to go on for hours. It was certainly a very different sort of world. Much simpler and I don't recall much unhappiness. Perhaps we were lucky, because there was real poverty and sickness about.

I scared myself half to death reading 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' under the covers by torchlight! Couldn't shout for help either as I would just have got into trouble for reading when I was meant to be asleep!

Listening to Radio Luxembourg under the bed clothes so that you would know what was number one in the charts.

When it had snowed, we made long 'slides' in the school playground. I was a bit afraid of falling over but took part all the same. As soon as the staff noticed what we were up to, the janitor would come along with a bucketful of ash from the furnace - spoilsport!

The hob nailed boots must have been because we were mostly farmers kids and they were very suitable for the life the boys lived.
It was going to the toilet that I hated in the winter. It was down the yard and always stank as it all went into a bucket and as for being cold ............!
At night we had a po under the bed but for emergencies only. Pot ones were best as they were a little warmer than enamel ones.
I don't remember washing a great deal either except for 3 of us in the bath at the same time on Sunday night. All our water had to be pumped by hand from the well so we didn't waste it by washing !
As kids all this was normal and it was only as an adult I realised what a hard life my mother had. No wonder she always appeared tired but she did live until she was 101 so it didn't do too much long term harm !!

tiggypiro Hob-nailed boots? No, I was lucky enough to have Clarkes shoes (after putting my feet in the green X-ray machine at the shop). But my mum bought little metal things called 'Blakeys' that you nailed on to the soles of your shoes to save wear and tear and you could make sparks from those on the pavement. I also remember the patterns of ice inside on the windows and freezing cold bedrooms. Once in bed you stayed there with your hot-water bottle tightly clutched and your clothes folded-up down the bottom of the bed. I had a little torch and used to read under the bedclothes. I hated the blackness of the night but looked forward to breakfast - egg and bacon, or corn flakes, sometimes a kipper. Can't remember doing much washing as a child in the winter, it was too damned cold!

The difficulty in moving your arms once you had been shoehorned into your gabardine raincoat on top of your blazer! Trying to carry your satchel plus violin plus keep your school hat on as you stood on a draughty station platform. I used to travel 2 miles by bus across runways on an RAF station to the local railway station and then 10 miles or so on the train to school. I was 11 and travelled on a non corridor train by myself.

When I was in the baby class (five rising six year olds lol) we had to put our heads on our desks and have a nap after lunch.

Isn't this reminiscing wonderful and doesn't it make us seem old but I am so thankful for having the memories ( and still being here to recall them).

Did you have to thaw out the mini milk bottles on the hot pipes that ran around the classroom on mornings like we had today? I hated milk then and still do Urgh.

papaoscar and Pompa - did you wear hob nailed boots ? I remember the boys in my very rural primary school going across the school yard making sparks from their boots. I remember my knees being red raw in winter as there was always a gap between my socks and skirt. And fingers and toes being numb with cold and the awful pain as they thawed out.
'Jack Frost' patterns on the inside of the windows and putting clothes under the quilt so they were also not frozen in the morning. Happy days ???

The Co op at Beamish museum still sells bags of broken biscuits. The last time we got quite a lot of Broken Garibaldi biscuits(dead fly biscuits)

Pompa , I'm sure we could sue somebody for the damage done to us by those hairy shorts. No win, no fee. I'd settle for half a mill to go away...

The navy mackintosh I had when I started at the Grammar school must have had a good 9" taken up by my mother, and nearly as much on the sleeves! I was still wearing it when I left at 17 by which time it was a mini!

Couldn't afford Startright shoes, I usually had to have something cheap from Curtess.

Papa, oh how I remember those awful shorts and chafed thighs in winter.

I always seemed to have navy mackintoshs that had an extra hem taken up that provided growing room.
I was once bought, as a Christmas present, a white party dress with blue dots and blue velvet sash. Problem was I never went to parties.
My shoes were usually by 'start right'

Some kids came to school with blue and red dye all over their faces. I wanted some but couldn't have any because I didn't have impetigo and need the special medication. Poor kids didn't have to pay 6d for school dinners but got a cardboard food parcel to take home to their mum. Imagine the stigma. On the other hand if you had a penny or two you could call into the bakers on the way home and buy a couple of stale buns, or even better, a bag of broken biscuits from the International. If you were lucky you might find a broken custard cream or bourbon. Ah, those were the days!

Oooh, I remember the red ringed calves, school socks never reached the top of my black wellies.

What ancient junior school memories this thread is bringing back. Long lines of wooden desks. Silent classes except when repeating tables or reading in unison. Cold, harsh classrooms and teachers only relieved by school dinners. Marching two by two down to the dining room. Sat at wooden benches in silence. Saying grace and then lining-up to be served. The food was prepared in a central kitchen and sent out in huge round metal containers or trays. When they took the tops off the smell! Awful! Stringy, gristly meat, watery gravy, grey, lumpy potatoes and smelly cabbage with big, hard stalks. Horrible! Vile, lumpy custard and tasteless spotted dick. Don't think I'll linger too long back there!

Agus, thanks for the memory! You and red patent slip ons and nylons for a school party aged 12? Wow. If only.

My first pair of non Clarks were a kind of cocoa-coloured post-winklepicker square toed slip-on. Aged 14, around 1959. They didn't fit very well. But I loved them. They were cool. Yeah.

I think we all still wore vests at the Grammar school I went to, but certainly not liberty bodices by then!

I think Clark's shoes were on the school list as mandatory as well.

I do wish DD wasn't so against vests (not woolly, scratchy ones!). Not that my DGDs seem to feel the cold at all - I just feel it for them....

Re Clarks shoes, I wore them, DDs too and now GDs. I bought GDs their annual Clarks winter boots a couple of weeks ago. My Father seemed to be obsessed with, a good leather shoe that polishes well, with a good shine!

anno I bought a pair of Clarks tan leather brogues last year, so comfortable, I went back a few weeks later and bought a black patent pair.

My first pair of non Clarks onmyown, 1962, I was 12, were red patent slip ons along with my first pair of nylons for a school party. Woohoo

papaoscar - sorry to hear about your coarse, rough hairy school short.

But warm lisle stockings? - not at all. In the winter, cold knees and long grey socks with aforementioned Clarks shoes ("and don't get them scuffed on the way home!" - I did!) and when it rained, wellington boots that chafed dreadfully mid calf.

This was my village primary school footwear, when maybe most of the other children had poorer footwear. I was different.

Then, as an 11+ scholarship girl my mother persisted with woolly vests, liberty bodices and Clarks shoes. My newly found schoolfriends didn't wear this stuff, maybe as townies they had more modern, less rough-cast all-weather styles. Again, I was different. (Still trying to fit in - but in recent years succeeding!)