A bit of nostalgia. Remember these!

Teasmaids for a morning cuppa.

Just remembered, Mum scorching sugar on a tablespoon in the fire to make gravy browning if she’d run out of Bisto or Oxo. We lived miles out in the sticks and Mum didn’t drive so if she ran out of anything she had to improvise. Her favourite saying was” Necessity is the mother of invention”
Soot and salt for teeth cleaning when the tooth paste ran out.
Gibbs Dentifrice toothpaste in a flat tin..
Zebra black lead for cleaning the range.
Cardinal red polish for the quarry tiled floor ( freezing cold on the feet)

White dog poo!

I remember all of these, plus, Mums legs scorched with marbled patterns from sitting too close to the fire. The school mouse which we were looking after during the holidays escaping from its cage and chewing all of the books of Green Shield stamps which I was saving to get a complete set of stainless steel cutlery. I did eventually get a six setting six piece set and still have a few bits of it left, mostly used in the garden now.
Ironing my hair to get that straight CathyMcGowan look. Also heated rollers that fitted on the base if the iron and left to get hot.

Mum making up the fire in the living room first thing in the morning, the only warmth in the house.
Mum making our clothes, including raincoats, from kits of ready cut out pieces.
Going to tea at relatives on Sundays, or return visits from the same, when we had tinned salmkn sandwiches, orange jelly with tinned mandarin oranges in it (known as goldfish bowl jelly), with evaporated milk poured over.
Walking up the road with Dad to the off licence at the top of the road on Sundays for a bottle of Cidrax (spelling?) g alcohol free cider I believe, then going back later for the return deposit on the empties.
Country dancing lessons in the playground at junior school, to records on the wind-up portable gramophone.
Having a party-line phone and not being able to use the phone if the other party (who lived 4 doors up) was using it. Desperately inconvenient for my budding social life!
Catching the bus to school, with a conductor, and walking home 3-4 miles so that I could keep the bus fare.

Witzend
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. ??

I never knew stockings were professionally repaired. We just stopped the runs with a dab of nail varnish, and did a home darn later.

Valderma soap for spots
Goya Gardenia
Yardley Jade Garden
Max Factor Electrique
Dorothy Gray Midnight
(I still have the plastic containers from the above that the perfumed talc came in, along with a powder puff)
Anne French cleansing milk
Woolworths Evette make up
Outdoor Girl make up
Mum scrubbing dad’s work shirt collars with hard green Fairy soap on the wooden draining board
Mum scattering Ajax powder round the stone sink to clean it
Red Lifebuoy soap
Clothes drying round the coal fire on a clothes horse if it had been a wet Monday which I hated, as it made the whole room damp and the fire didn’t go properly
My dad blowing on the fire or putting sugar on it to get it to go

Most of these memories but also, when staying with my grandparents - way out in the country - no electricity or mains wster -
Pumping water from the well
Boiler in the outhouse, fire underneath' to do the washin
Reckitts Blue in the white wash
Heavy hand mangle
Outside loo
Very longvwalk to the village school in all weathers
Collecting the milk from the dairy as the cows were milked
Stone hot water bottles or a hot flat iron to warm the bed before getting in.
Later on at Grammar School - the French master's accuracy with a piece of chalk or the wooden board rubber

“elastics” skipping/jumping game played in school breaks

The tv repair man who came round to adjust the vertical and horizontal holds

That triangle tool which you needed to use on both sides of a can to open it - then how sharp the edge of the hole was when drinking

Elastics to hold up your socks which cut into your legs

“Loon pants” ads in the back of Melody Maker”

Triangle inserts in trousers to make flares

Going to a department store called Keddies in Essex to buy a bag of very fancy handmade chocolates with my Mum eating them in the car together and her saying dont tell dad

Dial a disc( teenage years)
Stickle bricks( loved them when I was a kid)
Spangles
Nestle Sweetheart( pudding)
Saturday morning TV- Banana Splits, White Horses, Robinson Crusoe, Arabian Knights
Bread man calling in his van on a Saturday morning and mum buying me a Paris Bun( I can bet a lot of you haven't a clue what that is lol, N.Irish large cakey bun with sugar on top, gorgeous)

MaggieTulliver I still use Ponds Cold Cream as does my daughter. She buys large jars of it in America. Wonderful stuff.

Neighbours constructing a ‘vestibule’ by the front door of our two up two down. The size of a postage stamp, but it gave us a little space to play in with our friends.
My father throwing buckets of water on the bonfire purposefully situated outside our front door and blistering the paint.
Boy was he popular!

I still play my LPs Oh and are you sure you meant LSD...hahahaha Was that supposed to be £sd

Wow! I feel ancient now.

My mother using the end of a used matchstick for eyebrow pencil.

Getting a goldfish from the rag and bone man and winning one at the fair. Our rag man gave us a live chick once. Imagine

From my mum.
If she hadn’t enough money for a pair of stockings, she would draw a line up the back of her leg with an eyebrow pencil, so
it looked like a seam.
Seamless stockings came later.

Listen With Mother.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Then I’ll begin.

Perfect.

I remember most of the above especially the hated liberty bodice. No liberty with them, i had to wear a vest under my bra when i finally ditched the liberty bodice, i alsp hated dr whites sanitary pads with loops, great cumbersome things, also the belt that they fastened onto. I used to squirm in embarrasment in PE in case anyone saw the pad.
It wasnt all bad, i remember toasted teacakes done on the fire, drying my hair on the fire, cooking on the fire and many others

Sorry we wore ours to school and towered above the boys
Ponds cold cream
The smell of old cigarette smoke on the top deck of the bus
Those two pint bottles of cider we used to neck by the river
Asking for “two threes please” on the bus home from school for me and my brother
Going to Robert Dyas with my dad on a Saturday morning
Wearing two pairs of tights to school - one under knickers and the other above to stop them sagging
Henna - what a slog to colour hair and the smell!
I could go on and on ?

What a lovely feel-good thread; thanks for starting it OP. Brings back so many memories
Double albums with arty covers
Platform boots (

Yes, I remember "Hartnell's In Love" - my darling mum bought it for me on my birthday - I felt so grown up

Grannynannywanny

^Heavy ceramic hot water bottles which could cripple you for life if dropped on a foot^
hollysteers was your hot water bottle like this one? I remember my Mum referred to it as the pig.

I was never warm as a child and slept with Grandma's stone hot water bottle. My shins were always covered in bruises from the wretched thing.

This is an amazing thread. So many long forgotten memories. It was a different world we lived in, not always great though. Those frozen mornings with the ice patterns inside the windows, scraping out the ashes and setting the coal fire which was my job from about 8 years old! (Yes - including the burning newspapers going up the chimney when I became engrossed in reading them while I was holding them up to draw the flames).

Strangely enough I went to my DGD's first Holy Communion last week and one little girl had the big hooped skirt. It brought back memories of our skirts and the paper nylon petticoats, the bigger the better. How did we sit down?