1950's Childhood.

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.

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.

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 !!!

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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

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

Long gone, but it was lovely.

Numberplease
Your comment about the the rhubarb with the sugar dip has just brought the smell and taste right back to me.

It is so sour my face has wrinkled up with the sourness of it. I have never had a smell and taste memory come back to me as vividly as that before.

What lovely memories, I can recall many of them.
Also, The School Friend comic and the School Friend Birthday Club with the little blue bird badge.
My lovely books, Jane Eyre, Little Women, and the rest of the series which I still treasure today.
My dad's moped and later his first car, a little black Austin I think.
Tripe and onions, spagetti made with bacon, plucking a goose at Christmas, feathers on the floor.
Passing the 11plus exam
Mothers block black mascara, Evening in Paris perfume, Dansettes, Elvis, BillHayley and Rock and Roll, Top of the Pops on Thursdays, and Juke Box Jury, Sugar soaked pink net petticoats .Cliff Richard in concert, coming home in a Police car as the buses had all stopped.
Running away from home.
Fred next door's garden, crammed with prize winning dahlias
The blood red paeony outside the back door
Parents who always seemed to be busy working.

Almost all of the foregoing
Reading them has brought back so many memories
The scorched legs
Liberty bodices - ugh
Icy windows and freezing bedroom
Stuart hibberd on the wireless
Reserving latest Enid blyton at the library
My only "owned" books were annuals at Christmas
Five bob postal orders for birthdays - straight into P.O. book
Lino on the stairs
Having school friend and girls' crystal delivered. - great weekly treat
Being given my ration book to buy paltry amount of sweets at Woolies

I've enjoyed this nostalgic half hour or so. It's good to remember but thank God for central heating and duvets .... and the ipad without which I wouldn't be reading/ writing this

We had a coronation party and we all went in fancy dress, my elder sister actually went as the Queen and I was a daffodil ... made out of green and yellow crepe paper. I still have the photograph as they hired a photographer to attend the party.
I lived in a house with a bathroom and electricity but an aunt and uncle still had gas lights and ash midden well into the 60s.
Steam trains and running to the end of uncle's market garden to wave to the drivers. My uncle getting a new Bedford lorry to take his produce to the shops in 1953 and it is still being driven today although mostly at rallies.
Welts on my legs from the wellies in the winter and shrunken wool mittens from playing snowball fights.

Thanks for this thread, it has brought back a lot of memories

I can remember nearly all of the things on it, my childhood came back in one big swoop!

Coke stoves in the corner of classrooms and the milk bottles being lined up to melt the ice.
Roller skates that strapped to your feet and extended to fit.
Taking empty bottles back to the shop to get a refund.
Playing hopscotch - scratching the squares with a stone and using a stone to play.

mrsmop you and others have great interest in this subject, and although it was not my error, I very much enjoyed reading the posts. Perhaps you should write a book about growing up in the 50's. I would definitely buy a copy.

Coal fires in railway station waiting rooms.
The smell of steam trains.
Arriving covered in black smuts.
Remembering to wear. dark clothes if travelling by train.
Mum licking the corner of her hanky and wiping the smuts off my face.
Oh yes I remember all this so well.
Just don't ask me what I did last week cos I've forgotten!!

We all left our back doors open.

AshTree - I can remember the four Marys names. Mary Cotter, Mary Field, Mary Simpson and Mary Raleigh (although someone on GN reminded me that it was actually Radleigh, I think). It's very strange because I can see them vividly in my mind.

Coronation book was Elizabeth Our Queen, written by Richard Dimbleby.
He was the TV commentator for the event.
We then sat at long tables outside and had sandwiches, jelly and blancmange.
Do kids still eat blancmange? Remember that?

I love blancmange, haven't had any for years...and milk jelly too
Did anyone buy a pennyworth of 'scrump' from the fish and chip shop - all the bits of batter that had dropped off the fish? Used to eat it walking home from Brownies/Guides.
Jackie magazine, was there one called Judy too?
Beano and Dandy
The pleasure to be had from a new drawing book and fresh crayons
Bunty Annual for Christmas, Guiness Book of Records annual too.....

Mrsmopp - I still buy blancmange to use in trifles. It's getting harder to come by though.