1950's Childhood.

We were slapped on the back of the legs, hit across the hand with rulers, 'slippered' with a gym shoe and refused permission to go to the loo (and when you were allowed to go, you had to ask for one sheet of Bronco toilet paper). No nuns! In secondary school, the preferred sanction was a board rubber accurately thrown at the offender. Then there was corporal punishment, ie caning that was entered in the book. These were good schools with good reputations.

Yes - school was a tougher place in the 50s - being rapped on the knuckles with a ruler was normal practice; and silence in class was the rule. And the board rubber would be thrown at you if you misbehaved.

The ghastly mess of dipped ink pens - all those blots and squashed nibs!

I remember being table head at junior school and told by the headmistress I would have to eat everyone's leftovers (gristle and lumpy custard included) if I allowed them to leave anything.

My first school was a CofE school run by nuns, not catholic - boy did those nuns scare me to death. My parents took me away from it thank goodness.

This has been a very interesting thread.

I remember being told eating apple pips gave you appendicitis.

Those nuns.....it seemed that everything (including breathing heavily) was a sin, I didn't stand a chance of redemption as a 'non-Catholic' in a convent school - two thirds of the girls were fee-paying N-Cs and condemned to everlasting hell according to the nuns. They didn't seem to mind taking the fees off our parents though!

AlieOxon, yes I remember the local pool being closed because of polio.
KatyK, those nuns have a lot to answer for. I believed it all at the time too. Apparently they "knew" we all had black stains on our souls. Luckily so many fascinating things over these 10 pages. Brought back lots of happy memories.

Mishap re your 'cabbages boiled to death' .... the inevitable small slug or similar found in them

I never heard that rumour about ice cream, but we always gave the bottom of the cone to the dog anyway, and she didn't get polio or TB!
"Step on a crack, break your grandmother's back". Happy to report that my grandmothers' backs remained intact.

We played for hours with a piece of string - Cat's Cradle.
We played for hours with a piece of clothesline - Skipping.
We played for hours with chalk and a stone- Hopscotch.
We played for hours with 5 small stones - Jacks.

Who needs expensive toys?
Did you have a trolley made with old pram wheels and a plank? Steered with a piece of rope?

I never heard the ice-cream thing, but I remember in 1947 all the swimming pools were closed because of polio.
The boy next door, my friend Laurence, got it and had a leg brace after.
We went to visit him in bed!

I was told that if an earwig got in your ear it would burrow into your brain and you would need to have surgery to remove it - I spent many nights with my hands over my ears in case one got in while I was asleep!

I believed that chewing gum thing too! I also believe that potatoes would grow out of my ears if I didn't wash them properly In my strict Catholic school we were told that if we didn't cross the road in a straight line it was a sin. The number of times I worried myself sick over that one and couldn't wait until I went to confession to be absolved.

Found it. theglyptodon.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/polio-caused-by-ice-cream/
I remember my mum refusing to buy ice cream when I asked because she believed it was a risk.

If you swallow chewing gun, it sticks to your heart and you die.
Yes, we believed it. Is it not true??

My friend, who is now 63, still won't eat the very bottom of an ice cream cone as someone told her when she was a child that it could cause TB. Only the very bottom, she eats the rest

I seem to remember there being a scare at one time that ice cream was linked to polio. Anyone else recall anything?

Anybody remember temperance bars? We had one near our swimming baths and we would call on the way home for vimto, bovril, or sarsaparilla which was hand pumped like beer and was absolutely delicious. He sold a range of fruit cordials as well, which he made himself. He also sold Horlicks Tablets, which you can't seem to get in this country anymore.

We used to go to our local pictures on Saturday mornings and on the way back we would go to a little sweet shop where we would buy a cup of 'pop' for a penny. It was so diluted it was tasted like water but it was SO exciting to us. The same shop sold bags of broken crisps for a halfpenny. If it was your birthday on the day you were in the cinema, your name would be read out and you would go up on to the stage and be given a lollipop. I could never understand why, on one occasion when it was my birthday, I wasn't called up. It was only in later life that I realised that someone actually had to tell them it was your birthday. I sat there hopefully waiting and oh the disappointment when I wasn't called up

My uncle took me for walks on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes we would go to the fields and farms, watch the cows being milked and listen to bird calls which he would identify for me. Other times we would walk down to the harbour and shipyard to see what was going on there - sadly, nowadays, there is little activity apart from the ferry to the Isle of Arran. On the way home, there was the ice cream shop owned by my uncle's Italian friend. Ice cream between two wafers was a 'slider' which you had to eat before it started dripping down your wrist. 6d bought you a 'slider' with marshmallow wafers.

A bun for a penny - brilliant!

My sister and I came out of school each day, and the bus fare home was a penny. But by the bus stop was a bakery where a warm currant bun was a penny. So every evening we had to decide, would we get the bus, or buy a bun and walk? Big decisions! The buns smelt wonderful...Of course we always got the bus if it was raining! If we were later getting home, Mum would say, "So you bought a bun then? You'd better eat all your dinner, then." Hoping the bun hadn't spoiled our appetite. This memory is so vivid.
I was 5 years old, my sister was 7.

Most of the ice cream you got in the fifties seemed to be Walls, which I didn't like, but locally to us we had a man who had a small business making his own ice cream. He had a little shop which was open on Sunday afternoon, and also a van. It was wonderful ice cream. Not so much creamy, although it was made with cream, but rich and milky. When he died, having no heirs, the recipe and the business died with him. He was, apparently, offered a lot of money for the recipe when he was alive. The nearest I've come to the taste of it is that which I make myself in the an cream maker. It's such a faff to make that I only make it when I'm feeling nostalgic for it!

Mishap re "paper games" children still make and play these. When I was teaching children would come up to me at playtime and present their folded paper showing some numbers or a colour or a word. They folded and unfolded the paper, there was another choice, more folding and eventually a flap was lifted and you were told your fortune. Some '50s things remain!

You were lucky to find shops open on a Sunday mishap. In the small town where I grew up every where closed on a Sunday. We had to go to Church both morning and evening and to Sunday School in the afternoon. We had our "Sunday best" dresses and were not allowed to play out in them. We mostly stayed at home in the house or the garden and did as we were told!

I have just trawled the whole of this thread - and what a delight it is!

Here are some of my memories.......

- Butlins at Clacton - I got smacked by a Redcoat!
- The nuns at my infant school - I was terrified of them as they floated about in black and seemed to have no legs!
- The wooden relief carvings of the stations of the cross around the chapel walls - they were gruesome - I hated them!
- chapel caps
- paper games where you folded paper and wrote things on - can't really describe them, but I am sure you know what I mean!
- Autograph books - all the rage for a while
- Golden Lion ointment on a boil on my bum!
- being pushed in a wheelbarrow through the rows of sweet pea canes by my brother - oh that scent!
- sewing blue gingham aprons at school
- Meccano
- cream buns on the way back from Sunday School bought with some of the money that was meant to go in the collection!
- furry or knitted bonnets for the winter
- bowls of dripping in my Nan's pantry with the drilled metal front to the doors.
- cabbage cooked to death
- London Nan's basement with the mangle and the knife sharpener; and her bathroom with the terrifying gas geyser!
- seaside Nan's kitchen - I would run through it in terror as it was here my grandpa committed suicide in the gas oven - I could not look at it!
- sitting on the front doorstep in the sun demolishing a pomegranate
- the terrifying steam trains as they came into the stations - I would bury my head in Mum's skirt.
- having cowpox for weeks after a smallpox innoculation (which we had because Dad worked on boats from smallpox areas of the world) - and having hepatitis - I remember being in bed for weeks and listening to the rag and bone man and other street sounds in a bit of a drug-fuelled haze.
- Two Way Family Favourites - I could never understand why all the requests came from a strange address (BFPO) and thought it unfair that the same one person kept getting their requests accepted!
- biking to the cockle sheds
- the little canister on a string that used to whizz across the ceiling of the shop to the person in a high up booth doing the change and the receipts.

It brings it all back!