Funny things that your children would be appalled by

@Skydancer When I was about 10 I was allowed to have a pet. I wanted a tortoise. Tortoises were piled up in a wooden crate outside our local pet shop. I chose one and the shopkeeper put it in a brown paper bag and swung it round at the corners as they used to do with sweets

Your posting has brought some fond memories back to me. I always had pet tortoises as a child. Never less than two and often four. And as you say they were treated very badly in the shops - almost as though they were not living things. I used to watch them having sex in the yard. My mother thought they were fighting. When I left home age 22 I had to rehome four of them. Fortunately I found a woman who had a sort of animal sanctury including 80 odd tortoises. Nowadays I believe you need to have a permit to buy one which is much better for the animals.

Was it cardinal polish which was used on the doorsteps? I seem to remember that's what my mother used. Oh, and the doorknobs, letterbox etc all had to be shining with Brasso too.

Our holidays were known as the 'Factory Fortnight' (Black Country). Each town had a specific two weeks - West Bromwich's was the last week in July and the first in August - so that the seaside towns nearest to us (in my family's case, Rhyl) had business all summer long and weren't overwhelmed.

Having a dirty step was a social disgrace in working class communities.

At 85 my mother still cleans her step, the path and the pavement outside the house. Any litter in the road outside the house (she's at the closed end of a cul-de-sac) is picked up and binned, weeds removed. My gran did the same in her house all her life.

When I was about 10 I was allowed to have a pet. I wanted a tortoise. Tortoises were piled up in a wooden crate outside our local pet shop. I chose one and the shopkeeper put it in a brown paper bag and swung it round at the corners as they used to do with sweets.

We used the last of a tin of Duraglit Brasso the other day and the Wilko price was still on it at £1.49- the new tin we bought was a fiver!! Must have been at least 20 odd years old though that tin😮

We had a brass edging to our front door step and it was my job every Saturday to clean and polish it with a product which I think was called "Brasso". Like biglouis says, it was a disgrace to let the step become dirty.

There was no corporal punishment at my infants school and I was never involved in anything to “merit” it, but in both infants and junior they weren’t averse to shaking, and general rough handling, chucking the blackboard rubber across the classroom and hoping it only hit the back of the classroom wall and other fits of tantrum displayed by a fed up teacher, a few times a boy (shorts trousers) got slapped legs.

In older groups the only male teachers- there were two, would administer the slipper to - boys mainly, rarely girls.

Sarcasm, and derision and shouting were used far more widely in secondary schools then though, it was just as effective and long lasting and kept the kids down so to speak just like Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

Babs03

Does anyone remember ‘the wakes’, sorry I know is a bit off topic, and suppose it could have been peculiar to Lancashire where I was brought up, live near London now. Anyhooo, back in the day we had the wakes about mid July for 2 weeks, it always coincided with school hols. For these 2 weeks the factories and mills would close, as well as many shops and the workers would all take their hols at the same time. Some factories/mills would organise coaches and guest houses in Blackpool etc., for the workers for the two weeks. Our town, Accrington, would be like a ghost town. We usually took off to North Wales, 2 weeks in a guest house in Cricieth with my nana who always shared a room with me and my sis and snored like a steam train, she also wore corsets and bloomers.

They were known as the trades holidays here in Scotland - and still are (though not to the same extent). It was always the first two weeks of July in the Edinburgh area, then the second two for the Glasgow area.
And we had corporal punishment in both primary and high school. In fact, I don't think it was banned here until the 1980s. My FiL used to make the leather belts for the schools, and I know the private schools were allowed to carry on using it for a short time after it was stopped in the state schools.

All the things that Macadia mentioned in her opening post.

Plus the fact that children were allowed to play out in the streets without a second thought by most parents. We were told "come home by X" and apart from that our parents took little ntice of us.

Street games were normal for socialization of children. You learned the "rules", about fairness and how to fit into a group. The older children looked after the younger ones. There was an entire rich lore of street games and now that is entirely gone.

There were no artificial play dates then. You went to your friends house, knocked the door, and asked politely if X could play out. If you were really lucky you might be invited into someone's yard or even house to play. You learned to mind your manners and always say "Thank you for having me" to your friends mother.

Another thing I can remember happening when I grew a bit older - say 10 onwards - was that I was often told by my mother to wash the front step. We scrubbed them with a stiff bristled brush and carbolic soap. It made your hands all pink and crinkly. When you had finished the step you threw the water over the pavement and brushed it into the gutter to clean it. Having a dirty step was a social disgrace in working class communities.

The teachers in my primary school were very generous with the belt. (Tawse).
It was always kept in the bottom drawer of the teacher's desk.
I was most surprised when I moved on to my secondary grammar school run by nuns, where there was no corporal punishment.

Some of you will not be surprised that I got it for talking in class.

Leather strap - not rather!

There was definitely corporal punishnent at my primary school! It was either the wooden ‘ pointer ‘ over the knuckles, or the ,rather strap on the palm. From the time that my mother went out to work full time when I was nine, I did all the shopping. There was a list and money on the table for me most days when I got home from school. We lived on a street in a flat in a block of four tenements. There were no other houses on the street. Even on dark winter evenings, I had to go along this street to a shop on a busier road to buy my parents’ cigarettes. Ironically, my mother hated being out alone in the dark, and if she did go out, she’d tell my father roughly when she’d be home, and he always went to the main road to wait for the bus that she’d be on. It’s hard to understand now, why they thought it was okay for me to go out by myself in the dark at ten years old.

Messiness I remember the sanitary belt , I also remember when I had my first period , my mum wasn’t prepared so she gave me a butchers muslin ( she used to buy them from the butchers bleach and wash them and used them for everything) I had to fold this great big cloth up and put in my knickers till I could get to the shop to buy a towel and belt ! I remember I was about 10 and wasn’t sure what was happening my gd would be horrified now

Does anyone remember ‘the wakes’, sorry I know is a bit off topic, and suppose it could have been peculiar to Lancashire where I was brought up, live near London now. Anyhooo, back in the day we had the wakes about mid July for 2 weeks, it always coincided with school hols. For these 2 weeks the factories and mills would close, as well as many shops and the workers would all take their hols at the same time. Some factories/mills would organise coaches and guest houses in Blackpool etc., for the workers for the two weeks. Our town, Accrington, would be like a ghost town. We usually took off to North Wales, 2 weeks in a guest house in Cricieth with my nana who always shared a room with me and my sis and snored like a steam train, she also wore corsets and bloomers.

Both my grandparents had all their teeth removed for their 21st birthday, using chloroform. Apparently this was considered to be a valuable birthday present, saving a lifetime of rotten teeth or dental bills. They must have been tough. I vividly remember the false sets in a glass next to their bed.

I remember the smell of cigarettes in the doctors office the very few times I had reason to go and the health visitor having a cigarette with me in our living room after having a baby. This was 1980.
Going upstairs on double decker buses or to the back of coaches to join the other smokers. Would never smoke outdoors though🫤 Mad wasn’t it.

Stuffed heart for dinner

Early 50s I lived in a caravan with gaslights, they hissed. (London housing shortage because of the bombing.) There was an inside toilet but the pail underneath the van had to be emptied everyday whereas the house we moved only had an outside.

The same happened my mum. It was supposed to cure her arthritis!

When my mum was around 50 she had all her teeth removed by the dentist using gas. I was ten years old and accompanied her home to make sure she got home safely! I told my own dentist this and he was amazed and shocked

Another one who survived a childhood on a family farm! I was just 2 when my brother was born & Dad used to look after me - I was put in the food trough while he milked the cows so they wouldn't tread on me. I used to go all round the fields with him on the tank of his BSA bantam motorbike or on the tractor (no cab, helmets or ear defenders back then). When I was about seven, a group of fruit-pickers children & us got on the tractor to play, managed to let off the brake & rolled down a steep hill & into the hedge. As a baby I was rocking in my pram & the brake gave & I somersaulted down a 10ft flight of stone steps & came to rest upside down in the wainhouse. Broke my arm falling off my pony (no saddle) & wasn't taken to hospital to get it plastered for 3 days.Don't know what safeguarding these days would make of it?

I must have been about 7 or 8 when my Grandad used to send me to the local shop to get his pack of No. 6 cigarettes when I got home from school. It was only a 5 minute walk but it was across quite a busy main road and down a disused railway line through a field.

In our local sweet shop there was a halfpenny and penny tray.

My grandad would send ne to the paper shop for a " Pink" and tell me to keep the change (1d = penny)

.... sent to post office across main road on a bend!! Age 7 🤦‍♀️. Looked after little sister age 11 made her scrambled eggs!! 😊