It wouldn’t happen now..

There was no question of turning your nose up at whatever your mother had cooked - certainly no alternative would be offered.
If you did make a face, my father would say crisply, ‘Eat what you’re given and be thankful you’ve got it.’

Aged 7 (me) being called out of class, put in a large, white van alone. Van drove off. Stopped after about 20 minutes, doors opened. A woman in a white coat told me to get out of the van, took me into a building where I was, what I now know to be deloused, put back in the van and taken back to class. No explanation. Parents never told. Not that they would be interested.

In the 50's, aged 9, I would go out shooting for the pot with one of my father's guns: a .410 shotgun for pigeons, and a .22 rifle for rabbits. You will be relieved to learn that I didn't normally go by myself. I was generally accompanied by an older relative: my big brother, aged 11.

We lived near the main train line into Paddington station and we kids around 8 to 10 yrs would sneak over the wall and put the old style pennies on the rail and they would be completely flattened by the train. Can you even imagine how dangerous that was 🫣

I was sent home, age 7, in disgrace from a friend's house for asking her, obviously pregnant mother, when her baby was coming.

I was subsequently smacked up by my mother for 'showing her up'.

Thank heavens things have changed, if I was being brought up now my father would have been sent to prison for physical abuse, my mother for abuse and neglect and I would be in the care system.
My childhood was awful but we were seen as a nice middle class family.
Nobody believed me when I tried to tell them.

Marital rape wasn’t illegal, domestic abuse was called ‘a domestic’ measles and polio damaging and killing children. I think looking back is often through rose tinted glasses.

My brother and I were allowed to walk alone from our aunt’s house T Horsley to the A3 turnoff and sit and wait for my dad to turn up. The mind boggles with all the dangers involved I was about 7 years old, my brother younger. We also walked a day for a couple up the road completely unknown to my mum!

Mine too Sago.

There were paedophiles, violent abusive partners and parents and Gregg Wallace didn't invent flashing. The big difference in the mid twentieth was that you didn't report them.

The attitude was "I expect you did something to annoy them and you deserved it" which applied to wives and children alike.

I suspect the police would have laughed at you if you reported a flasher and told you to just take no notice if it happened again.

Thank goodness we have started to believe victims rather than ridicule and shame them.

Around the age of 10 I'd wander off with a group of village children to a grassy slope covered in tussocks of dead grass. We had a wonderful time setting light to these and watching the fire spread. When it threatened to get out of control panic rose and we'd stamp out the flames, singeing our legs in the process.

Looking back it amazes me that no adults ever investigated as the cloud of smoke gathered behind the houses.

Yes, absolutely. There used to be a man in our village who would hang around the play parks and sometimes flash at women and girls. Everyone knew who he was and what he was like - but for some reason, no-one ever seemed to do anything about him.
And I remember once seeing a woman hitting and kicking her poor dog and telling her to stop being so cruel. Well of course, being a small village, she knew my mother and told her - and I was the one who got into trouble for 'daring' to speak like that to an adult. I must only have been around 9 or 10 at the time. The injustice of that smarted for years.

In the school holidays we would go off to the local woods and in May go home with armfulls of bluebells... luckily some have survived!

We would be out all day and no one bothered what we were up to.

mum was at work as was my sister so at 7 i often spent all day here there and everywhere mostly woods and quarry. I was also given mums shopping trolley and a list had to go to do the shopping, let myself in after school with a key in the loo window and put the tea on potatoes to boil oven on for meat plus boil veg and on saturday would fry sausages for me and dad's lunch. spending most of my life alone did not seem wrong to me

I lived in Germany when I was 7-10 years old. By the time I was 8 I was taking my two younger brothers on the bus to the swimming pool. Spoke no German apart from please and thank you and don't understand but the lovely German people looked after us and told us how to buy and use our tickets and made sure we got on and off at the right stop.

I spent days playing on our many local inner city bomb sites, horrible and even dangerous places, but we just accepted them. Anything was better than being at home with my father…

My mother had a breakdown when I was ten and as the eldest, I took over the care of my two younger brothers,
shopping etc.

We lived by a river where there was a ferry to the other side. A canal ran parallel to the river. At a very young age, at around 6, we used to ask the ferryman to row us across the river. I think it cost about 2d. Then we’d mess about by the canal and later get the ferry back. Wonderful days. Our parents never worried where we’d been as this was quite normal behaviour for children in our small town.

From the ages of 8 and 5yo my older sister and bro were sent on their own in the school holidays to stay with family. They were put on the train at Paddington and someone met them at the other end. Imagine that today!

Another friend, in her 70’s now, attended a UK boarding school from the age of seven. Each summer her aunt deposited at the railway station and she travelled on her own via the Orient Express all the way to Yugoslavia, where her parents lived, then back again in September. It’s extraordinary to think about!

We are rightly shocked at what people did in the past but in fifty year’s time our descendants will feel just the same about what we do now.

Absolutely watermelon, that always makes me smile.

Watermeadow I should say, i haven't had enough coffee yet.

My elderly sons and their boyhood chums have thanked my for my liberal attitude towards their wonderful freedoms they had while they were boys together.

watermeadow

We are rightly shocked at what people did in the past but in fifty year’s time our descendants will feel just the same about what we do now.

Maybe corporal punishment in schools will be back. Capital punishment re-introduced and women's equal rights withdrawn. I hope not but I won't be around to see it.

We may be seen as weak, wishy washy and 'too woke for our own good' (if such an expression still exists).

It won't be those issues it will be things we think are the right thing to do. Or things that we give no thought to. I suspect we will look back at liberal attitudes towards phones for children for example in the same way we look back at smoking and children.
In terms of women's rights I suspect we will look back at the cheering on of only fans, porn, etc as absolutely horrendous in terms of women's rights.