I cannot believe I used to…………

I kept a red mini dress that I had loved as a twenty year old ; it fitted so well - years later I found it in the attic and was horrified to think that I had leaned over a desk to answer the phone at work - luckily I bought expensive matching bras and knickers in those days. I fear the bra was probably on show too as the dress was soooo short!

GrandmasueUK

Wear a bell around my neck and paint on freckles!

Oh yes, me too. I was the full hippy. Still am underneath.

Have enough energy to work, rest and play. Now only have enough energy to rest.

Wore a Liberty bodice.
Love, honour and obey were uttered by me at my wedding.
Didn’t swear till I was in my 30’s
I wore blue mascara for a couple of years.
Didn’t wear trousers till my Father died. (he didn’t think ladies should wear trousers) He’d say that trousers were worn by women and females and never ladies.

Chestnut

I can't believe I used to hitch hike on my own, London to Edinburgh. Late 1960s. It was mostly fine and the people were nice. I had a couple of incidents but I was so dismissive when they tried anything, and it somehow worked. At that age you think you're invincible.

I regularly hitch-hiked with friends but only ever once did it alone. It was a bank holiday and the bus I'd intended to catch wasn't running. I was picked up by two workmen who gave me a stern lecture about not hitch-hiking alone ever again. As they said"We are ok but not everyone is!" I took their advice however I did often pick up hitch-hikers when I was driving alone as I hated driving long distances alone - still do hate long journeys but now I just take regular stops for naps!

Made me laugh this post, Oh yes I wore blue eyeshadow, hitched around Wales on my own and abroad (with a friend), skirt never short as my mother saw to that. But creep in very late without shoes on and throwing stones at my sister's bedroom window as I had forgotten my key. My dad would have gone mad at that time in the morning! Now can't wait to get an early night! Oh happy days!

I can't believe I used think teachers/nurses/doctors had a vocation. That MPs/policemen/newspapers were honest and worked for 'the people'. Etc. Etc.

Belong to a mountaineering class, climbed Tryfan and the Snowdon Horseshoe, including Crib Gogh. Even looking at videos of it scare me now. Also went caving in South Wales, squeezing though very small gaps - I was small and thin at the time, and knew if the big lad in front could get through, so could I - I'm so glad I did it when I could!

I bleached my auburn hair nearly white my mum and her sisters were fuming at me. I looked like Dolly Parton without the boobs and all because of the names I was called. Duracell head, gingernut, have you rusted, etc and when I was a teenager is was awful. Now I'm thankful for my red hair, it's so thick and have hardly a grey hair and I'm 55.
Took my jeans in so tight I had to lie on the floor to pull up the zip and when I came home my poor mum had to pull them back off me.

Last girl in class to start periods (mortifying at the time)
Ditto wear a bra - snooty woman in shop telling me there were no bras that small.

Bottle brush hair like Bowie.
Weighed 7st 8lbs at 19!!! @ 5'7"
Henna'd hair red at 21 and never looked back until now when it's 1"all over and box dyed......
Hitched everywhere!
Wore 4"wooden platform clogs and lune pants
Drank 9(yes) pints of cider at Manchester students Union every Saturday night between 7pm and midnight ,@ 9pnce a pint!....1972-75
Married at 20 after a year "courting"
Had 2 boys and was back at work by age of 32!!! Working on to age 50 when emergency hysterectomy changed me forever....
Now weigh 15+ stone riddled with arthritis and 2 hips that ain't mine!!! But , probably actually fitter Inside than ever! Don't drink no smoking eat well/healthier.

Wore 6 inch platform shoes without falling over and a black floor length mac and blue eye shadow with white on the top part, thought l looked the bees knees, how wrong can you be!

At my first job when I was 16, my skirts were so short someone said to me one day 'I see you've got your belt on but you forgot your skirt'.

Rake every ashtray in the house for butt ends to make into rollies when my late DH and I had no money to support his 20 a day and my 60 a day habit. (Quit smoking in 2005)

Put up with a misogynistic, self-righteous, judgemental partner - pre meeting DH - for 7 whole years before coming to my senses.

Be able to run, ride horses (which in fact you need to be REALLY fit to do) and think I was fat at size 12.

I also was a blue eyeshadow user

I can happily believe that I wore most of these things:

skirts so short that I had to squat rather than bend down,

green mascara and eye shadow, never wore blue being brown-eyed.

3 inch high heels

platform soles

clogs in the summer of 1973 when they were all the rage

a pillar box red skirt and waistcoat ( I have never worn red since)

Travelled alone from Glasgow to Esbjerg in the west of Jutland aged 16 - my first journey anywhere alone with no idea where I was going to spend the night after the audition at the Academy of Music I was attending. Found somehere respectable and cheap to stay and next day took the train to Hamburg to visit a school-friend who happened to be studying there.

Made my way from the main station to her address in the suburbs alone and without a city plan of Hamburg - a place I had never been to before, but I did speak fairly creditable German. Understood the subtext to the question "Are you Swedish" and just said "No, I am not" repressively as Scandinavian girls had a reputation in Germany then for being easy to get into bed!

Come to think of it, I never told my mother about that incident!

I feel furious that young people are being brought up to believe that the world is a dangerous place these days. Our parents tried to do that too, but at least we had the sense to go out and see for ourselves and found the world far less scary than they said it was.

I do know there are different dangers today, but facing them is part of maturing from teenager to adult in any day or age.

There were rapists and murrderers when we were young too, but we had been taught to defend ourselves. I clearly remember kicking a man where it hurt most, screaming and then running like hell in high heels!

On holiday in Spain, had a holiday romance with Juan a lovely Spaniard. I cannot believe I would ride pillion on his motorbike and once or twice we zoomed along some roads that had a sheer drop down the mountain (well they looked like mountains to me at 17) and I actually saw a crashed car down the bottom of the so called mountain. My mother would have had a fit if she had known what I got up to on my holidays.

Myself and a friend accepted an invitation to "a party" from three lads we met in a club, drove with them to a flat to discover the "party" was us and them. Fortunately for us, they were only interested in showing off their dance moves and called us a cab when we left. It never occurred to either of us until much much later how stupid we'd been. Different times? This would have been around 1971.

Not quite on topic, but a bit of nostalgia.

I remember Cadbury's chocolate bars for 6d old money, late 1950s early 1960s. All but one type was a grid of chocolate pillows, either ten arranged as two by five or twelve arranged two by six, I don't remember that detail, and each pillow was filled with the same flavour of liquidy stuff. I remember that one type was strawberry, one was coffee, there were various others but I forget the details.

The odd one out was a remarkable treat. It was a one-piece chocolate slab but with about six or seven moulded shapes, each different from the o, thers, each of which contained a different stuff. It was a mini-bar version of a box of milk tray chocolates. Amazing for 6d.

Thinking back from my present knowledge, someone would have needed to have made a mould for the machinery to produce that. Quite a work of art really. I wonder if they still have it in a museum-like collection somewhere.

I worked 47 hours a week when I was 15, for the princely sum of £3.09p per week.

.. Fancy the drummer from the pop group Slade . Don Powell was his name.
Everyone else was into Donny Osmond or David Cassidy .. I was definitely different back then

...to have my hair thinned! My hair was so bushy my Mum used to thin it regularly with one of those thinning combs. Now I am desperate to try to get some volume to my hair.

...be allowed to boil milk at the age of 6 to make my sister and I our breakfasts whilst my mother slept. I hated hot milk with the skin but my mother insisted that we didn't have cold milk. Nowadays this wouldn't be acceptable but I never burned myself. The only time I did was on one of those gas igniter guns and I was being supervised at the time!!

Wearing a roll on to hold up my stockings when I weight eight stone. Commuting to work in stilettos, including shopping in my lunch hour. My feet surprisingly ok, actually the only part of my body I’m not horrified by!

Smoke. I used to love a ciggie with a drink, or without one. I hate to think how many I got through. Gave up in year 2000.

Soaked my paper nylon petticoats I sugar water to make them stiffer.

Sunbathe with my legs soaked in olive oil and vinegar.

Wore black crinkly wet look boots with a shiny red wet look mac - I thought I was so cool but must have looked like a lady of the night.
Played Maggie May on repeat for hours on my Dansette record player, blaring, with the windows open. Parents at work - it must have driven the poor neighbours mad.
Practiced snogging using my David Cassidy and Bay City Rollers posters.
Went to bed with pink calamine lotion on my spots and another who sellotaped her hair. Crumbs I must have looked a sight.
Hid my now DH behind the doors of the vanity unit in the Nurses Home where I lived when the home sister was doing her rounds after lights out!
Smoked, INSIDE the house - in fact smoked at all.
Gosh, great thread and thanks for the memories.