1950's Childhood.

Going locally with friends to pick raspberries for pocket money. My mother grumbling that it cost her more to supply sandwiches and drink than I brought home in hard cash but I was out of the house all day with my friends.

Wearing garters to keep my stockings up in winter.

Clarks sandals in summer, lace ups in winter.

Special outfit to wear to Mass each Sunday.

Bedroom decorated like a B&B, not allowed to pin anything on the wall.

Stone hot water bottles

Same menu each week, must have fish on Fridays.

When we had a car, very late 50's, we could drive to the nearest town to buy fish and chips. Being Scotland, we usually had white pudding.

It never seemed to rain!

Mrs Mopp! I still have that book. The coronation mug was broken yrs ago.

KatyK I am fairly sure the four Marys were in School Friend. Does any one else know for sure?

I once bought 4penny worth of chips when walking into town after school to meet my parents. (I was about 7yrs old or younger.) My mum did her usual shocked look as she seemed to think that eating chips in the street was common. Another put down from her. (I have mentioned before on GN about my mother being a failed snob.)

I thought The Four Mary's were in Girls Crystal?I always liked those stories too, I do remember Jackie but was too old for it by that time.Also Bunty and all the other comics too.About half of the memories here I can remember, I suppose that we all had different upbringings town/village etc.There is already a book about the 50's called something like Tin Baths And Dripping.
Poking sticks into large half dried cow pats
Picking bluebells and taking them home, also any other wild flowers we came across.
New dresses and cardigans and sandals for Whitsun.
Making liquorice water and taking it in a bottle along with apples for a picnic with friends and playing games by the stream/in the woods/farmers fields etc.
Helping put clothes through the wringer/mangle in Grandma's garden.
Pinching black currants and gooseberries and eating them in Grandad's fruit garden.Ditto tomatoes and grapes in his greenhouse.
Mixing cocoa and sugar in a cup and eating it with a small spoon.
Sprinkling white sugar on buttered bread, yum.
Putting Blanco on gym shoes.
Freezing house in Winter, and Jack Frost windows.
Painfully chapped hands and chilblains.
Free range dogs and cats.
Free range children.

Add to the list:
Pubs that were really only for men( although certain types of women went in there now and again!) pubs only served drinks, no food, except those deep in the country who would only do things like ham and eggs if pushed.
Trolley buses.
Sweet shops (part of newsagent) that had a penny section where children had to wait patiently to be served.
Bars of toffee that lasted ages.
Seeing (out of our reach both in height and in price) large boxes of chocs with pics of kittens and tied with pink ribbons.Always wanted one of those!

Men who whistled all the time.
Eating bags of 'scraps' free from fish shop and just bits of crispy batter.
Trip to cinema with parents once a week ( it was cheap back then.)
Being bored to tears in said cinema once a week.the films were not aimed at children.
Metal roller skates that made a heck of a racket when skated on.
Hoola hoops, who could keep it going the longest?

The Four Marys were in Bunty.
I thought they were and have just checked. Started in 1958.

Being bathed in the copper
Using the mangle for sheets and my nan getting cross when the buttons were pulled off the shirts
Flit spray
Putting fertiliser pellets in the ground next to the tomato plants (Plantoids?) with my nan
Riding up and down the road on the petrol tank of my uncle's motor bike
Listening to Journey into Space (re-listening this century on Radio 4 extra)
Reading the Eagle comic and being rude about my sister's Girl's Crystal
Using the scaffolding on the new housing estate we moved to as a climbing frame
Jumping in a puddle only to go in up to my neck in very dirty water as it was an uncovered manhole
Jacko skates
Playing out all day and not allowed to hang around indoors
All sorts of other mischief as well

Bursting tar bubbles in the road in hot weather.
Not allowed chewing gum, so scraped other people`s throwaway up off the pavement and chewing on it, I know, YUCK, YUCK and YUCK again!!
Feeling special at junior school for owning my own bottle of ink (Quink, blue/black), instead of having to use what was in the ink pots on our desks, clogged up with bits of blotting paper.
The only sweets available without coupons(points) were lollipops. We`d go in the shop and say "Are lollipops on points?" and the shopkeeper would say "No, they`re on sticks!" Standing joke between us and her, it was used for ages!

Liquorice wood - great for the teeth!
Lemonade powder in palm of hand, consumed with dipped in forefinger
Gobstoppers
Dolly mixtures
Collecting and swapping "silver paper" at school, collections stored loving between book pages
Dolls that broke when dropped
Wireless valves that took ages to warm up
Uncle Mac on children's hour
And so on .......
I'm 75 now so maybe some of the above had disappeared by the 50s

bellanonna I remember all those too and I'm 73. Do you remember glass wireless batteries full of acid that had to be taken to the ironmongers to be recharged? What did you call the lemonade powder? We called it Kali (pronounced kaylie) and dipped liquorice sticks. Tasted pretty disgusting, really.

Girl comic on Wednesday.
Listening to Dan Dare on Radio Luxumberg. The advert was "We are the Ovaltinees little girls and boys"
Popeye on Thursday TV.
Collecting and swapping beads.
New blue cardigan with bobble tie ups for summer holiday.
Penny and twopenny box of sweets.
Saturday cinema where it was so noisy you couldn't hear what was being said half the time.
Satchels and wooden two tier pencil boxes with a space for a rubber that never fitted somehow.
Gymslips and navy blue knickers.
Navy mac with hood for school.
long socks with garters and lace up shoes yuk.
I have straight as a die hair and Mum insisted on me having a perm which I HATED with a vengence.

Oh nelliemoser of course they were. I had School Friend every week and my sister had Girl. Mixing up my comics!

Memory playing tricks now. Yes it was Bunty according to Google. Anyway back to memories of the 1950s....

Lilygran - no I don't recall the batteries being recharged. Maybe I just didn't notice.

I think we just called it lemonade powder, but don't think we used liquorice sticks, although we did dip them into sherbet powder which fizzed deliciously in the mouth.

My mother forbade me to buy liquorice wood, but I did, although it was a bit weird.

I hated liquorice wood but pretended to like it as everyone else did!

Paper nylon petticoats that you soaked in sugar water in the bath to stiffen them, worn with net petticoats, full skirts, white socks and sandals.
Kayli which made the palm of your hand yellow (and tongue too, probably!)
Caramac
A navy blue 'reefer coat' for school which I hated

Long hair in plaits tied with wide white ribbons.
Boys in the playground pulling my hair.
Playing two-ball against the wall.
Doing handstands against the wall.
Wanting the loo in class & being told to wait till playtime. The agony!

I well remember the wireless batteries, ours were kept in the pantry, and we had warnings of serious consequences if we touched them.
I loved liquorice wood, but not when it was well chewed and stringy.
I had straight hair as well, for special occasions I had to have "rags" in overnight to make ringlets.

Most of the memories mentioned but my gran's house was lit by oil lamps and I still have the little one which burned by my bed at night.

Paraffin heaters - can still smell them. Don't remember them giving out much in the way of heat though.

School dinners - lovely except for the tapioca/sago/rice.

The Esso Blue man who used to fill our metal container with paraffin for the heater. He drove a small van and the paraffin came out of a container with a little tap (much like the modern day wine boxes).

Ugh, that 'frogspawn' - tapioca!

The fully feathered Christmas turkey hanging in the cellar, and then watching my mother pluck it and gut it. Horrible, but didn't complain when it came to the table!

It was a regular thing to help my mother to pluck chickens on the kitchen table. It never bothered me. They were always hanging in the butchers complete with feathers heads and feet. Rabbits too, with their stomachs split open - i used to think they were all looking at me with their open staring eyes.
At least we knew where meat came from!

All my dresses were made by my mother and I hated standing on the table while she measured and pinned and then re pinned - it seemed to take hours!Hems had to be deep so that they could be let down as I grew.

My granny's house had the old gas fittings, though by then they were disabled. She used to put small oil lamps in the loft in frosty weather to prevent burst pipes. We lived in annual expectation of her setting fire to the house. She must have had a charmed life!