how did you spend your teenage years

I used to wash old peoples hair in a Salon ... went to buy the Rolls ... swept up... I was extremely poorly paid ... I was deeply unhappy .. no money .. no hope... my Family were very poor,.. when I see people on Tv saying " I aint got no money " and I look at their rooms , they have no clue what being really poor is ... we couldn't afford toothpaste ....

That sounds like me. Not sure how I managed to graduate!

I was at school until I was 17 and had taken my highers. Then I tried to get in to the Academy of Music, and failed so worked for a year. I was paid 5s an hour which was great!

Passed the entrance exam to the Academy of Music that year and back to studying for the rest of my teens.

Worked in a shop till my training started in Libraries. Spent most of my working life in various libraries learning as much as I could! To work in a library then you had to be properly dressed & have done training, unlike now with all on computers books were the most important thing! Especially in my life as they are now along with music! Outside of work most of my time was spent on the back of a motorbike! All my friends were Rockers & we only went out with a boy who had a bike. No wonder our parents thought us strange! All with what they thought were ‘good’ jobs but off on bikes after! Loved my life then & lots of good happy memories!

At 14 i started as saturday girl at our local corner shop earning £3 per hour, during school hols i worked there full time. I then worked Saturdays at a local post office/corner shop then moved to saturdays at a local ish chemist. During this time I also worked as a Silver Service waitress at a large hotel attached to a concert venue. I was doing A levels by then and working around my college times and holidays. I didn’t pay tax as was a student. was rolling in it!

Meant to say that i’ve now been working for 45 years with at least another 8 to go.

Paperbackwriter There'll never be anyone like them in my book. I could bore for England about my Beatles escapades (and frequently do).

Hitchhiking with my bff all over England exploring different places. Then Barbara Mayo got murdured hitchhiking and I never did it again. Still remember her name.

I had a variety of jobs from 15 to 17 and then joined the W.R.A.C. I was in the Army for 2 years and then married a soldier. He was posted to the M.E. where I joined him after the birth of our Daughter, we came back when I was 22. My big adventure..

I couldn't wait to leave school, but had to do a term in the 6th form as I failed my maths O level. Had a holiday job in a garden centre, or nursery as they were called in the 50s. I hated it, so boring pricking out seedlings. Then I got a holiday job at British Home Stores. I really really wanted to be on the record counter but ended up being the dogs body in the cafeteria. When I eventually left school at 16 I had no idea what to do as a job. My mother saw an advert for a lab technician in the local path lab and suggested I applied, as my favourite subject at school was biology. I got the job not having the vaguest idea what a path lab was. But I loved the work from day one. Wages £3.00 a week and mum had 10s of that for my keep and £1 which was put into a Building Society account for me. I remember seeing a jumper in a shop window and saved up for several weeks to buy it. It was still there and I was so overjoyed with it. It was hugely expensive £5!
A lot of dancing at a ballroom dance school, but all we wanted to do was rock and roll, much to the frustration of Marcina, the owner, who preferred the foxtrot. Happy days

My first job, besides potato picking, was in the little cafe just up the street when I was 14. I waitressed there for a couple of years until they gave it up and then I went to the posh hotel in town doing breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. Silver service. My sister worked there too. This was only week ends and school holidays. I am an introvert so no partying or clubbing, especially as I lived in a small country town. My Mum did try to get me out of the house by making me go to the youth club with my cousin, but it didn’t take. One of my parents friends ran the junior football team and we were made to go to their “discos” in the village hall, boys at one side of the room and girls on the other! Band of Gold brings back memories of those. Then I went away to college and found my friends who I am still in touch with today.

Had a paper round at 13, my bag was so heavy on mag day, I had to peel it off when I was done. 1966 I left school at 15 and got a job in the claims department at Britannia Assurance in Moseley, Birmingham .£4.19s 6d per week. £2.00 to mum then into C&A for jazzy blouses and twist dress ready to hit the town in the evening with friends. Fortunately avoided the IRA bombings of some of our favourite hangouts. We all looked old enough to drink and no questions were asked.

I left school in 1960 and went into the civil service. I was paid in cash for the first 6 months of my probabtion but didnt last that long. I was sitting in an office reckoning benefit claims (manually) and hated it.

Left to work for the LA as a library assistant and spent most of my teen years qualifying as a librarian. My parents never knew how much I earned as I was paid by bank transfer and never told them my exact salary. I felt that every pound I gave for my keep went straight onto my sisters back. By the time I qualified and left home I was out earning my father by about 50%. He would not have been pleased to know that and I did not consider it my duty to tell him.

I also had a p/t job in the local chip shop from when I was 14. I was paid 3 shillings an hour cash in hand and that was good money back then. I averaged about £1.10 shillings to £2 a week which was almost as much as some people got full time. I continued to do that job all the time I was studying for my library exams. Flexible hours and a fish and chip supper after every shift.

Two of my school friends had weekend jobs in Terry’s cake shop under the famous restaurant in the centre of York (long gone now). They were allowed to take cakes home at the end of the day so I went along in the hope of getting a similar job. I did get a job but in the restaurant kitchens making numerous Welsh rarebits! It was hot and sweaty and no cakes!

Being a pain in the a**e - but, too be slightly fairer to myself, I was a very unhappy child. Oddly, I am generally a pretty happy person now, so obviously I must have grown out of it.

School until 18, homework, cello lessons and practice, piano lessons and practice, Saturday orchestra rehearsals, Sunday Church morning and evening.
Then university and freedom!! Well, just a little; took my cello with me. so glad the piano wouldn't fit on the train!

I had a Christmas job at Woolies for six weeks on the Haberdashery counter, hated having to add the purchases up on a note pad. The strangest things for sale were false curls to pin confront of your ears and triangular shaped sticky backed chest hair, it was the days of medallion men. I also worked in a friends families shops and baby sat. My first job on leaving school at 16 was in Barclays bank I earned £44 a month.

Spent teenage years very boringly - mainly at home studying to get into university. My only let-up from studying was playing tennis (at school and at a local tennis club).

Lizzie44

Spent teenage years very boringly - mainly at home studying to get into university. My only let-up from studying was playing tennis (at school and at a local tennis club).

We seemed to have a lot of homework in those days, compared to the amount they're given now.

Fell madly in love with a great guy when I was 14. Went to university on the back of his Lambretta when I was 16, graduated at 19, married at 20, still together after 59 years.

When I was 14 my mum left my dad and us for another man. So I had to learn to cook very quickly, I had a Saturday job at Woolworths so had a bit of money . I left school in 1966 just before my 16th birthday and went to Technical college to do a diploma in The Residential Care of Children. I was a housemother in a children’ home aged 18 then a nanny for a private family. Any money I saved, I would take the train from Brighton to London to shop at Biba and Bus Stop sales.

I managed to get into teacher training college in Leeds aged 19 as far from home as possible ! It was Carnegie School of PE and I loved it. I never lived in Brighton again !

Slogging my guts out in a children’s hospital but I loved it and out living it up having fun and being “naughty “!
We got £12 a month but lived in nurses’ home where we got a warm room and food provided! Those were the days.

I hated school with a vengence - had a paper roumnd from age 13 then a Saturday job in the Greengrocers - decimalisation happend and I spent most of the day over many weeks translating the £p into Lsd - the summer I had a job disbudding carnations in a nursery (it was miserable work during a hot summer!) but it paid for my horse feed. I left at 16 to work in a bank (I picked that because they shut at 3:30 each day and I naively thought I could go home then!)

I'll gop back & read others' stories as I love this sort of thread. I was miserable at school, I took O levels turning 15 and A levels turning 17. I loved it at home, I was a horse-mad farmer's daughter & really, we spent the best of our teenage years on pony & donkey-back, hacking along the many local lanes, doing all-day expeditions along bridlepaths to visit "non-local" relatives, giving ponyrides to the younger children, & talking, talking, talking.It was a lovely time of my life, despite school,& despite succeeding in those exams.