Some small thing you longed for as a child, but never got. 🙁

Oh dear, Charleygirl and LauraNorderr, that puts my longing for a train set in perspective.

I just took it for granted that I was loved, although we didn't have much, and was surprised to find that some of my friends at primary school got smacked and slapped or sent to bed with no dinner. 😥

I keep reading all the posts and I can't think of anything I wanted. And I didn't have everything, we didn't have a lot of money, I can remember my Mum adding tomato ketchup to a tin of spaghetti to make it go further on a Thursday before my Dad got paid on Friday.

When I was a teenager I desperately wanted a Jeff Banks blouse with the voluminous sleeves and a Biba feather boa, but note sure they counts!

Me too Charleygirl although I was lucky to have a good father although he worked abroad most of the time.
We have to remember that we are not what happened to us but what we chose to become.

Love rather than the physical abuse that came in abundance. I was frightened at home.

If I achieved an A grade for my 11+ an aunt would pay for a bike of my choice. I did and chose a green Raleigh. I loved it. There was probably a choice of colours then green or green!

Nonny ..... I had a toy sewing machine and it was forever going wrong! I didn't know enough to sort it out myself so I had to wait for an adult to fix it. It didn't take long for me to stop trying to use it ..... I think I put it at the back of my toy cupboard and forgot it!

A toy sewing machine. I was promised that I could have one if I came above half way in the class at the end of the year. I came 23rd out of 40 children and so never got one! I don't think that I had any idea of how I could have improved myself a 9 years old!

I think my monkey must have been a Jacko or variation of. I’m pretty sure he had shoes instead of toes.

My mum's nan had a real monkey called Jacko.
Mum said it was a horrible little thing - they were petrified of it.

Who was Jacko the Monkey?
Jacco Macacco was a fighting ape or monkey who was exhibited in monkey-baiting matches at the Westminster Pit in London in the early 1820s.
😱

Here’s the ‘vintage’ Jacko from Chad Valley in the late 60’s/early 70’s. A soft toy.

The pics of the original Jacko monkeys...
Well, he looks like a maniac!
Like the Chucky doll in the horror films.

Were they all slightly different, because some look less homicidal than others?

Big Louis the experience you describe was similar to my own. I desperately wanted to go to Boarding School.

I did have a monkey. It played cymbals, but I don’t remember if it was called Jacko.

Did Jacko have joined together hands, so you could hang him around your neck and it looked as if he was cuddling you?

I always wanted one of those.

EkwaNimitee

Piano lessons and a train set!
The former wasn’t feasible for an army family always moving on even if my family could have afforded them.
The lack of a train set was more probably due to my being a girl . I did take over my brother’s Meccano in which he was barely interested

A train set!
I was so upset to find that my older brothers' Hornby train set had been passed to my male cousin, not stored away for me.

Piano lessons and a train set!
The former wasn’t feasible for an army family always moving on even if my family could have afforded them.
The lack of a train set was more probably due to my being a girl . I did take over my brother’s Meccano in which he was barely interested

I longed for a pony and a Barbie (real pony)

Just looked up Jacko Monkey online, plenty of pics.

The cheapest one I saw was £45, very battered and being sold for spares. Some go for over 100 quid.

Bit after my time, 1970s.

Lucyd, although I’m of the right era, I don’t remember the Jacko monkey at all! Has anyone got a pic they can post?

I wanted curly hair, as my mother made it clear that straight hair was undesirable. I had my hair done with curling tongs for special occasions, which looked awful. Looking at old photographs I think my straight fair hair was perfect.

I think those big tape recorders, were called Reel to Reel!
DH used to have one, but I don't remember the maker's name.

As I was growing up I always wanted a proper tape recorder. Can't think of the correct name but they had two reels and were quite big and square.

Grundig perhaps? My sister & I shared one in our early teens to ‘tape’ our top 20 favs from the radio. We sat quiet as mice while we were recording and groaned “Dad!” if he wandered into the kitchen!

Maggiemaybe

I had a black baby doll called Rosie, Crossstitchfan. I loved her to bits. I was inconsolable when I crawled into a clotheshorse and blanket den with her and when we crawled out her face was smashed beyond repair.

I had a black doll, not a baby one - not that I was ever really into dolls. I’m afraid I called her Topsy (autocorrect just changed that to autopsy!) - but this would have been in the mid 50s.

What hurt me most about not getting my much-longed for pony was the fact, as I explained in my earlier post, that my dad had arranged to buy my favourite pony from our local riding stables, but my mum went behind his back and cancelled the arrangement - then told me what she had done and said it was because I didn't deserve it. That hurt me more than anything. I never ever forgave her for that.

Crossstitchfan

Reading all these has made quite sad. It’s astonishing how things that hurt us as children are remembered 50 or 60 years later. I wonder how our parents would have felt if they knew how disappointed we were and how we are unable to forget the hurt we felt. In those days though we kept quiet and pretended everything was fine.

Goodness. While I feel so sorry for those who’ve answered that they just wanted love, or a happy family life, were the vast majority of us, who didn’t get our sparkly plastic high heels or our ponies, really “hurt”? Even my 4 year old grandson understands that he can’t always get what he wants, and nor should he. And “us lot” even had the Rolling Stones to remind us of that fact.

To all those who longed for a Jacko monkey from Woolworths - I was one of the lucky ones who got one and I still have him!
I had gone to Dumfries on the bus with my Mum and I was absolutely longing for a Jacko monkey and my Mum thought '
"Oh, wee soul. They're not that expensive and she doesn't get a lot". So Mum got the assistant to get a Jacko monkey down for me - seemingly I was skipping around, absolutely delighted. Unfortunately when Mum went to pay she discovered that the first digit on the price card had been hidden (possibly by one of the many monkeys) and the monkey cost more than she thought it did. She hadn't the heart to take it off me and said she cried on the bus journey home as she had so little money left for the rest of the week.
Jacko was well loved and had to had his body re-covered as it eventually rubbed away. I reckon Jacko must be about 60 now and looks pretty well. My little grand daughter is fascinated by him.