Our childhood experiences

I'm a 1952 baby, oldest of 3 who were all born in the same NHS hospital in London, miles away from where we lived. We had no car until I was 16. Mum was at home until the youngest was five.
My best friend lived in a prefab until mid-60s, when they were demolished, and she moved to a high-rise flat. We both went to the grammar school, which I loathed. I think that loathing shaped my life, as I was considered smart at primary school, and stupid at grammar school.

I was born in a mining village in South Wales, part of a very large extended family. My father and his 4 siblings, his mother and her 4 siblings all born in the same village, many Aunts,Uncles and cousins. A wonderful childhood. The school was in the same street as our house, the Chapel two streets away, twice every Sunday and Band of Hope every Thursday.
We played in the street, sledged on heavy canvas on the tip, squeezed under the school gates in the summer holidays so we
could slide on the school roof, until we were reported, had the cane.
It was the happiest, safest place in the world until 21st October
1966, that day I stood and watched parents and grandparents digging for their children’s bodies, murdered by the National
Coal Board .
I have never felt that safe again .

I can't even begin to understand how awful that was for you Anniebach.
I was 19 at that time and remember being shocked and upset. I cried every time the news came on.

Annie
It’s something we will all remember always.
My husband and I both remember the horror of watching the news as children.
Heartbreaking, a total disgrace.

I was born a few months into WW2. My father was a schoolmaster, a reserved occupation, so he didn’t have to go in the army. The war ended when I was five. I remember blackout curtains, dried egg, ration books and the Spitfire, which I thought was a enemy plane because it sounded so horrible.

I went to private schools from the age of three. I loved school, apart from maths which I loathed and was very bad at. I especially loved poetry and music. From the age of seven I was at girls-only schools.

When I was nine I was sent to ballet lessons, triggering an obsession with ballet that lasted until I was about 15. It totally dominated my life. When I was eleven I presented a bouquet to the famous ballerina Alicia Markova, on stage at the Liverpool Empire. A highlight of my life!

My nice life was disrupted for a while by mastoiditis at the age of ten. I was extremely ill and in hospital for some weeks.

Oh Annie, I'll never forget seeing Cliff Michelmore on TV trying not to cry.

I had a very odd childhood. Born in the '50s to impoverished parents. We lived in a council house. Dad was an artist who had me painting from the age of 3 and I used to help him use goldleaf on special frames while mum worked as a waitress to make ends meet. Mum would shoo me out of the kitchen to 'Go and paint with your dad.' My favourite smell is still turps! I had no idea this wasn't a conventional childhood. As mum worked evenings and dad worked as an auxiliary coastguard for some extra money he would take me on duty with him and sit me by the ship to shore radio and I heard men on ships at sea saying naughty words. Then I would look through the huge coastguard binoculars on a stand and see the mountains on the moon. All this before I was six. Bizarre. I loved it but I've never managed to conform since.

Wow.... these are soooo interesting.

Ok.. this is my childhood story.

I was born 1964 in a hospital in Leeds area that is no longer there. I was adopted at 6 weeks to the most precious mum and dad. My mum had her own hairdressing business so from a young age i would stand on a foot stool and help to wash customers hair. My grandad and grandma owned a farm and as I'm typing this out I can still capture the smells ( some pleasant and some not ! Haa )My grandad bought me ponies and showed me how to milk cows. Every year we had a huge bonfire in my grandads field and all the neighbours contributed the food which was placed on a long table affair in the field

He built 2 bungalows in 1 of his fields, 1 for him and my grandma and the other for my mum, dad and me. When my grandad suffered a stroke I remember it really affecting me, i was so upset to see him this way and so i thought by moving his left leg repeatedly, that it would help him get better, obviously those were the thoughts of a little girl.

I spent an awful lot of time going for lovely walks with my dad, my mum never came with us because she would be looking after my grandad who was in the bungalow next-door.

My mum and dad didn't adopt anymore so i am an only 1. I don't know if i wished I had a sister but I remember laying upon newspaper, tapped together with sellotape, dad drawing around me, me painting it and calling it SALLY !!!! haaaaa, so i don't know what that was about!

My dad made lovely things from wood, he made me a sledge and in winter when snow lay on the ground he would take me and the sledge to 1 of my grandads fields and push me down the slope, he made a swing which hooked up in the garage, he made me a pair of stilts which i have to this day.

I never saw my mum sitting down, always in the kitchen or round at my grandads. Always amazing homemade cakes, biscuits, EVERYTHING.

I could go on for hours and hours but rounding it all
up I would say I had an absolute perfect childhood.

❤

One little hospital-related snapshot...
In 1961 when I was four and my brother was two, he had surgery for a collapsed rib cage.
I don't know how long he was kept in for but I can remember being taken to visit him. I wasn't allowed onto the ward but he came out, in his little pyjamas and tartan dressing gown, and sat with me on a narrow bench in the corridor.
A kindly nurse brought me peanut butter sandwiches.

At home my Mum would talk encouragingly about "missing N..." to try and reassure me.
However I was quite happy being an only child again and replied,
"I like missing N..."
Which wasn't quite what Mum had expected 😂
(He did come home safe and sound!).

My mother having been X-rayed (!) when pregnant with me, went into hospital for the births of my sister and me because she had a narrow pelvis. When the time came, she thought she wanted to go to the loo and I was nearly born in the toilet!

Both my parents came from simple East End families and couldn't wait to get out of London and have a big garden of their own. They put off (not entirely intentionally, as I understand it) having children until they were well enough off to afford their own house. Our first house was in Enfield. I remember an infinitely tall Victoria plum tree in the garden with a swing attached, and "helping" my father dig a pond at the end of the garden. We later moved out to the middle of East Anglia which was Dad's area as a "travelling salesman". We always had a car (company car) and a telephone as he was practically working from home.

My mother was a brilliant housewife and we always had good food (as much as possible from our own garden) and nice dresses to wear at birthday parties which she sewed. My parents were intelligent and although my father had left school at 13 (I think) they were keen on educating themselves further and especially us. We were all very musical and would sing rounds and harmonies to our Dad's guitar accompaniment.

I love reading all your stories and I’m so glad I started this thread. Thank you for your contributions, they are fascinating, conjuring up images of times long gone.
I hope some more Gransnetters pop along to tell us about their early experiences.

I won't add to the thread as it's a nice thread and my childhood was horrendous. However, Annie my heart goes out to you and all who suffered in that horrible disaster.

I bizarrely just had a flashback to my parents and the neighbours two doors up drinking on the front lawn with the neighbours dog and the neighbour getting so tiddly he fell off the wall into the rockery

I was a 60's baby, born into a nice family on the surface. All that glitters isn’t necessarily gold.

My story reads like something out of a Kathleen Cookson or Victoria Holte type story.

It was strange, disturbing, my dad was violent, my mom couldn't leave him (it was a time when women didn't especially ftom my mom background) and full of secrets and lies.

My dad died when I was 18 which was no loss. I loved my mom dearly though and we had a loving all be it codependent relationship.

I certainly bought all that into my adult snd recreated it. I finally broke free of the cycle. Got into good recovery and very happily remarried

We will leave it their as I don't want to ruin a happy thread. I'll leave it with the happy ending of meeting my 2nd husband.

Mine is like a fairytale of the witches and warlocks before meeting my Prince charming 🤴👑🤴

Maywalk sorry I didn’t see your question before. I was born in 1943 👋waves to Hellogirl.
I was sent to convent schools and so was mostly taught by nuns with a few lay teachers mixed in until I went to grammar school in the early fifties when it changed to mostly lay teachers with a few nuns mixed in.
I’m so sorry that you had such bad experiences with nuns.

My dad had a motorbike and sidecar and I have a very clear memory of sitting on my mum's lap in the sidecar going somewhere or other.
When I told mum I remembered it, she blanched. They'd got rid of it and bought a car just before I was born!

I was born in East London in 1948 in a hospital with the highest infant mortality rate in the country. My mum, dad, sister and I lived with my nan and grandad together with an aunt, uncle and cousin and another uncle. After 6 months my mum took us 2 to live with my nan in Yorkshire and tod my dad she'd come back when he'd found somewhere to live. It took dad to 6 months to find a 2 bedroom ground floor fat with a small garden, an old range in the kitchen and gas lighting. No bathroom but we did have an indoor toilet!!! I went to school, down my doad, the easter after I turned 5, mum took me the first day and I went on my own from then, at 7 I went to the junior school about a mile away that I also went to by myself from the start. My brother was born when I was almost 4 and he slept in mum's room, when I was 9 the flat was modernised and a bathroom put in in the old scullery and a kitchenette was also formed out of that room. At age 10 we moved to a 3 bedroomed house with a larger garden. But I still went to the grammar school that I had been allocated to from the flat. Uniform was so expensive there was no chance of buying a second lot! Dad worked for British Rail as a publicity officer and Mum went to work in the freight office when I was 7, so holidays were always quite exciting, we went all over the place as we got free rail travel. My sister and I looked after our baby brother, including cooking dinner, chips on a gas stove!!

Dad got his first vehicle when I was 14, it was a moped, he got the bug from my boyfiend who had a motorbike, he then progreesed to a motorbike and sidecar so we could all go out in it, I was always pillion passenger. Finally he got his first car when I was 17, I didn't even know he was learning to drive. He just turned up at the station to pick me up from work!!

I was born at home in the early '50s. Mum was rushed into hospital because of haemorrhaging .saved by" Joyce ", who I later found out was the consultant who had done a home visit. We lived in an end terrace three-bedroomed house until I was 2. I can remember the outside loo and the lighting was by gas.
We then moved into a lovely three-bedroomed semi with all the amenities.
I loved a journey by steam train and did one every year to an aunt who lived in the Midlands. Also, the closed line which is now a road that ran alongside Basenthwaite Lake.
Holidays were always with cousins at Butlins or Blackpool saying" hello "' to all the neighbours as it was Stop fortnight at the local pits. My father did not work at the mines and got fed up branched out and we flew to Belgium.
I can vividly remember the mining disaster and the awful scenes on T.V. It worried our village because we were surrounded by old pit heaps and they were all checked "We were told".
I lined up at school the term before I was 5 and the teacher counted how many she wanted and the rest went home. One little boy sat in a wheelbarrow all the time looking back he was probably autistic.
I went on the bus at 11 to the local Grammar school and life changed forever.

My mother birthed me in a private hospital and stayed there for 2 weeks with me. I wish there was that sort of care now for everyone. The memories of retained placenta and cord wrapped round the baby unfortunately happened when I gave birth to each of my children 30 years later! There was a laundry strike at the hospital when I gave birth, so we just had newspapers on the beds and cots. Anyway, back to the memory of childhood. I remember standing on the pier watching paddle steamers racing to be the first to moor, and to catch all the tourist passengers. I knew the names of all the paddle steamers and the companies from the colours on the funnels. I remember my mother sent me to buy a jar of jam from the grocer just down the road, but over a railway bridge. A steam train tooted at me so loudly that I dropped the jam jar and it smashed glass everywhere. I was mortified and decided to run away from home. I walked for miles until I got to a lighthouse and stopped. I didn't get told off at all when a policeman and mum and dad found me by the seashore. I was so glad to be home and forgiven.

I was born in 1955, and adopted at 10 weeks old. My birth mother was married but not to my father, he found out, hence my adoption.
So I was bought up an only child, my dad had a long standing illness, so we were not very well off. We did occasionally go on holiday, when money allowed. But it was a happy childhood.
Jump forward 67 years, the children of my birth mother have found me. This year has been truly wonderful.

Born 1955. In a rented house whilst Dad commuted to London in a huge steam train. He’d had ALL his teeth removed @a v young age & I now do anything to keep my own teeth !I remember NHS school dentist always trying to find a filling to do ( don’t we all?! )
Money was tight. Never had a car nor telephone till I was in my teens .Bought lots of clothes @ jumble sales & that’s never gone away !Top loader washing machine / trips to the drier @ launderette.
Left in car with bags of crisps with blue salt packets whilst parents in pub
Sorry could go on & on 🤣

born in 1955,sadly it was like WW3 violent father, terrified mother.Yes there was good relations, friends, happy times, but the shadow of returning to a family that was warm and safe was sadly not there.It has affected my life in so many ways,and to date i am still at times struggling with them ,but hey ho!

Oh Jennyluck how wonderful for you! Do tell us more about the children of your birth mother finding you. It must have been amazing for you

I was born in 1946, adopted at 6 weeks old and had a good life with my parents. They were a lot older than the parents of my friends which meant my life was more restricted and revolved mainly round Chapel and associated activities. I was very lucky that they were comfortably off and I never suffered any deprivation even during rationing. My parents loved me in their way but were not demonstrative no hugs or cuddles. I found this difficult then with my own children and had to struggle to overcome it.
I was so much luckier than other children in my situation at that time and I will always be grateful for that.

@Anniebach, what a terrible thing to have witnessed. One of my cousins was born on that day and my parents remembered the tragedy unfolding while simultaneously hearing the wonderful news of a new addition to our family.
I was born in December 1964 in the Norfolk bungalow that my parents had bought as their first home just un

Hi there. I had pretty much same problem with a mother with narcissistic disorders. She was really cold and I was left like you to grow up alone. My father left when I was 14. She remarried and then got divorced when I was 18. It’s super hard to have a parent like this. I’m sure you done well in life like me as e had to rely on ourselves. Thanks for posting. 😀