1950's Childhood.

I remember that little golden coach! I wonder what happened to mine?

Long gone, but it was lovely.

I missed the Coronation because we were living in Malta. Children were given the usual mugs etc., and I still have my Coronation Celebration Book.

We used to dress up and play at being the Queen and Prince Phillip. I remember clomping around in my father's shoes....I was never the Queen

Thinking of the Coronation, we didn`t just get mugs with toffees in, we were given little pictures of the Queen, if you wiggled it about it changed to the Duke of Edinburgh, and a little toy golden coach with white horses. I`m told they`re worth a fortune now, wish I still had mine! Oh, and a record played on the radio all the time called, I think, "There`s a golden coach with a heart of gold", summat like that, anyway!

Toasting pikelets on a long toasting fork in front of a red fire.
A stick of rhubarb and a newspaper cone filled with sugar to dip it in.
Another newspaper cone filled with a mixture of cocoa powder and sugar. Those treats kept us happy for hours, as did half a pomegranate and a pin!
The Whitsuntide Sunday school marches, and a lorry for the littlies when they got too tired to walk any further.
The week when we got both electricity installed in our house, and a new kitchen fireplace, still with an oven, but enamelled instead of needing blackleading. Trouble was, they started one at each end of the street, but met up at our house, so we had it all going on at once. It was lovely getting electricity, cos if we broke a gas mantle..........WATCH OUT!!
Coal being delivered, sliding off the back of the coalman`s lorry onto the footpath outside our gate, meaning all hands on deck to shovel it into buckets and take it round the back to the coal place, carefully picking out all the pieces of shale and tossing them under the hedge to be used as chalk for the hopscotch pitch.
The tripe and cow heel man coming round every Saturday lunchtime in his van, and getting the horrible job of going out to the van for my mother`s order, I hated the stuff, can still smell it now when I think about it, YUCK!!!
The creepy looking containers of sticky looking black stuff in the pantry, we were told never to touch them, found out later that they were the batteries for the radio, someone came and changed them each week.

Oh yes! Can't remember all their names, think one of them was Fieldy. They all had shortened versions of their surnames as nicknames. I used to love it when they did a picture story of various classical ballets - I remember particularly Giselle!

AshTree - Oh yes all those free gifts. We were easily pleased! Was it Bunty the Four Marys were in I can see them now? I used to be really fascinated by them. I think we have discussed them before on GN.

KatyK I had Bunty every week from its first edition (free gift was a little brooch of a black and a white Scottie dog) and collected ALL the cut out dolls and outfits. I had a huge bag of them and amused myself endlessly on rainy days .
annodomini and did you call the chips 'fourpen'orth of chips'? Funnily enough we were only talking about that the other day when we bought fish and chips.

Oh the memories here

I can remember so many of the things mentioned on this thread.
Others that come to mind from my own childhood -

A tin bath in front of a coal fire - there were 6 children, cleanest in first.
The smell of tar and the trundling of steam rollers in the road
Bunty comic with cut out dolls and clothes with tabs to fold onto the doll
Leaving the house after breakfast at weekends and walking for miles and coming back at tea time
Babies in prams outside shops
Watching the steam trains at a local station
Being made to go to the gas works for a pramful of coke when my mother couldn't afford coal

The fox-fur Granny wore to church
The mint imperials she doled out to keep us quiet in church
Picking and eating rasps in her garden
Shelling and eating peas at the back door
The tiny screen on our first TV set
4d worth of chips on the way home from Guides
Pressing 'button B' to see if any pennies came out
The Coronation!

Yes we had a party a couple of streets away. Mrs. P has a photo of her street party, she can name most of the people in it still.

Does anyone remember going to a party for the Coronation 2nd June 1953 ?
I was six and can remember it as clear as day, especially receiving a tin of sweets with the Queens face on it. It got lost over the years and I would love to have still had it and a few other items from that era......but thats an entirely different thread !!!

I was banned from playing on bomb sites - so I did !
Making all sorts of stuff in the shed, steam engines from tin cans, electric shock machines, anything I shouldn't.

We used to have 2 junior children holding each hand of an infant child and pulling them down the ice slide! They loved it but I can't see it happening today!
Boys wore shorts, whatever the weather.

All of the above.

Instead of bomb sites we were in a new development in Northants.

We played on the new houses being built next door and along the road from our new house.
Building dens in the brick stacks.
Running around on the 1st floor scaffolding.
Pushing over newly built brick walls before the mortar set.
Riding on the back of a "digger" and being driven to the tip by "Donald" the digger driver.

What stands out of other's lists.
The red blotchy legs and freezing backs.
Prince Charles and Princess Anne savings stamps.
Milkman's horses
Rag gand bone men giving out Goldfish.
I also played with DDT ant powder.
Feet xray machines.

I wonder what the current generation will remember most about their childhood in 50yrs time.
Are "we" happier and less demanding people after growing up in the post war austerity years and do we appreciate what we had more than people do now?

The mind boggles about risk etc, but Oh Boy! did we did enjoy ourselves.

Making a big slide, the length of the school playground, on frosty mornings.

Famous five, Secret seven, toothache, chilblains, gaberdine macks that were down to your ankles so they lasted a long time, magic painting books, teachers with huge bosoms and booming voices. Times tables, spelling tests, lace up clumpy shoes, learning to knit in school. Baggy navy blue knickers with a pocket in them.

Janet and John reading books.
Singing 'Onward Christian Soldiers' a lot at school.

Being sent to the nearby small holding to buy the veg.

Paper cut out dolls and outfits with tabs and you could have lots of changes.
Knitting Nancy made with a cotton reel and 4 nails.

I remember Two Way Family Favourites accompanied by Sunday dinner roasting in the oven
Mrs Dale's Diary
Payton Place and not being allowed to watch it but mum's friends all came to see it
Corona delivered but not allowed to have Cherryade
Biscuits bought loose from a tin with a glass lid
Jacket potatoes cooked in the Parkray's ash pan, nothing tasted better
Toast & dripping
Sliding down hills at Westbury White Horse in cardboard boxes - my sister ripped her dress!
No jeans until I was 11
Being sent to my room for misdemeanours long forgotten but no punishment as would read for hours!
Piano lessons with a lady who's husband was decidedly 'odd', not in a sinister way, poor chap
Fibbing to my mother that I'd not been anywhere near the river though every Saturday a group of us made dens on the bank and came home covered in mud
Oh, life seemed so simple then

Two Way Family favourites on Sunday morning inevitably linked with the smell of the Sunday roast chicken.
Clearing off out for the day in the long summer holidays. Nobody worried where we were. Mum saying she knew we would be back when we were hungry.
A picnic of jam sandwiches and a bottle of Timer was a real treat.
There was a sloping field nearby and we used to lie down and roll from top to bottom. It was our roly poly field.
Are today's kids the poorer for missing all this? I wouldn't swap places with them.

Waiting eagerly for the bread to be finished so we could have the waxed paper to sit on to make the banana slide faster.
Walking up the Dandy to go to the tarn, crossing the railway line on the way.
Church on Sunday morning and Sunday School in the afternoon.
New dresses and Clark's sandals for the Sunday School Anniversary in May.
Going into the woods in the dark with Dad to watch the bats.
Picking buttercups to take to Nana to put in the little china log.
Picking mint from the garden for mum to make mint sauce.
Toasting bread and cheese over the coal fire.
Being free and happy all day long.

We had a tin bath in front of the fire and I remember once (when I was quite little) having an accident and being surprised at the things that were bobbing about in the water!

Mum was not pleased as she wanted to get in after me!

Tilly lamps and spiders in the outside toilet which was down at the end of the garden.
Newspaper squares instead of toilet paper.
Codliver oil and malt...yuk, and thick National Health orange juice which made my nether regions very sore!
Next door neighbours had gas mantels and wore clogs. Mr T used to drown kittens in a sack, in an old oil drum
Lino on the floor, dolly tub and rubbing board, and mangle.

Happy times though.

I was a latch key chiild as soon as I could go to school. My mother was a ward sister in the hospital across the road and she popped over for her tea break at 4pm when I came home, left at 4.30pm and I was on my own until my dad came home around 5pm.

Either one of them had to switch on the gas lights in the living room and light the fire in the winter.

We I assume could not afford to heat up hot water because I rarely had a proper bath. It was a good scrub up at the kitchen sink.

Usherettes at the cinema with their torches, nearly blinding us.

Feeling that the cinema seats could be flea ridden and it was not very comfortable to sit.

Most Saturdays it was cowboy films so I saw every one available. Hate them now!

3 of us sat in a shed, our den, built by her father and we stayed there the entire day most days during the holidays. If not there, in the local woods, splashing around in the burn. Home early evening when we felt hungry.