1950's Childhood.

My mother used to say "It's them Russians - they've got a weather machine!" Perhaps the sputniks were their weather machine!!

Anybody remember the deafening BOOM! whenever a plane broke the sound barrier?

Oh Yes!! We lived in Devon at the time (it must have been the 70s then) and it was as regular as clockwork every evening at 10pm. They were not supposed to break the sound barrier when travelling near land - but they always did!
Then we moved near to Heathrow and the sound of Concorde taking off was just deafening.

It was a double boom boom if I remember correctly

Yes! We were also in Devon but I thought it was at 3.30

My memories of the breaking sound barrier are from the 50s, when I was at grammar school at Ecclesfield, near Sheffield, so yes, they did do it over land quite a lot.

I remember that sound too - a huge bang.

I also lived near a factory where they tested aircraft engines and the screeching sound was unbelievable.

Perhaps it was twice a day whitewave, and I didn't notice the first one (noisy children!)

Apparently it boomed when coming back and decelerating as well - I always thought it was on acceleration, so perhaps one going out and one coming back!

Knitted swimming costumes that sagged down to your knees when they got wet, so you walked like a penguin. And do you remember those "ruched" swimming costumes?

Oh yes, equally awful.
Although I suppose the ruched ones didn't sag so much!

I have an old knitting pattern for one of those swimsuits (should put that on the 'hoarding' thread )

Many of my 50s memories centre round the beach, as we lived near the sea and spent all our hols at my gran's near Exmouth.

I remember the donkey rides and the roundabout on the beach. And also the chidren's activities that were sponsored by the comics Robin/Swift/Eagle/Girl. They each roped off sections of beach and had games and songs and sandcastle competitions. I imagine such activities would now be difficult to arrange because of all the safeguarding procedures and parental permissions etc. But back then, Mum and Dad were more than happy to shovel us into the enclosure and stroll off to read and sunbathe.

And I remember Lobby Ludd - the News Chronicle promised ?£50 if you spotted this character wandering the prom - you had to go up to him and say "You are Lobby Lud and I claim my £50." Presumably you had to buy the News Chronicle in order to know what Lobby Ludd looked like. We never did win £50, but my Dad was always on the lookout.

I've just looked up about Lobby Lud, and it was £5 - and you had to be able to show him your copy of the News Chronicle to claim your reward/

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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

A bun for a penny - brilliant!

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.

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

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.

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

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

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