Sunday memories

Yep, mine was not pretty action packed too. Packed off to Sunday School, maybe Mum went to church, Dad had the excuse that he had to write up whatever Rugby match he'd been reporting the previous day.
In the afternoon the obligatory Sunday walk, tea with the GPS and that was it. When I was older, doing my homework on the dining table with (I think) Round the Horne on the " wireless"
Don't actually recollect much "fun" but that was Presbyterian Scotland when you didn't cut your grass or hang your washing out on a Sunday.

We were certainly not allowed to have any fun. I went to Sunday school twice a day but I think it was the thing to do as my parents were not churchgoers themselves, then the walk after tea weather permitting but never allowed to play with friends. My father died early one Sunday morning, at home, when I was 11 and I dreaded Sunday for many years after that.

We went to Church in the morning, Sunday School in the afternoon, and Church again in the evening. All the Grandparents went except my maternal grandfather, who attended on high days and holidays.
We always had a roast of some sort, and I was sent down the garden to pick peas or beans, and then prepare them for the pan. We listened to Family Favourites on the radio too. Then whatever show was on next. I remember Round the Horn and Jimmy Clitheroe. Sunday was a day of rest and the only "work" that was allowed was a little light dusting. The shops were shut so Sunday Sweets were bought on Friday or Saturday, I loved it when it was my turn to choose, my two sisters and I took it in turns. Happy days, but quite boring.

Just remembered that when auntie to me to the bus after Sunday school we would get an ice cream ( choc ice) from a vending machine outside the local cinema. It was our little secret!

My mother was Catholic my father Church of Scotland so they went their separate ways on a Sunday- me being dressed in my Sunday finery and dragged to Mass every week. We lived about 3 miles away from the nearest town, did not have a car so had to wait for a bus and they ran infrequently.

Home for Sunday lunch and then not much was done afterwards. I always found Sunday evenings to be long unless I went out to play with my 2 best friends. I was packed off to bed very early in preparation for another week at school, which I hated.

Sunday school in the morning - dead boring and scary (blood and torture), and really an excuse for parents to have a bit of peace - or more!! - perhaps this is the time when little brothers and sisters were conceived!

Nip into the bakers, which opened on a Sunday to catch the church returners, to buy a cream bun with half the collection money - ducks as shaft of lightening lands on my head!

And yes we too listened to Family Favourites over roast dinner - I could not understand why someone with the address "BFPO" had all the requests and thought it very unfair!!

During the whole of my children's childhood, right up until they left home, Sunday rituals were: roast chicken dinner, tea of freshly made rolls in front of the fire with jam and cheese or pate, and always I would make a proper sponge cake to go with it. The children (and their OHs) still talk about those yummy Sunday teas.

Church only once for me on Sunday morning [that was enough.]Always a roast for lunch though, and a nice pud. I remember Round The Horne as well,and The Navy Lark, also The Glums and The Clitheroe Kid.
in the evenings, Sing Something Simple, the opening notes of that sent me spiralling down into depression.By the time they got to 'Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, a kid'll eat ivy too' I had almost lost the will to live.

roses that made me laugh, that bloody song used to stick in my head and I didn't know what it was for years!
I used to go to Sunday school and hated it, and I don't remember any special dinners, but I do remember all the radio programmes. Family favourites was comforting for some reason and Sing Something Simple was a family joke for many years.

We all had to go to mass in the morning (except my mother who wasn't a RC). Because communion had to be taken on an empty stomach, we weren't allowed breakfast beforehand - particularly frustrating if Dad got up late and we all missed the 8.00 o'clock mass. The next was at 10.00 o'clock, meaning we didn't get to eat anything until well after 11.00 .
No Sunday School - RC churches didn't seem to do this and I was always quite envious of my CofE friends as it sounded like much more fun than going to Mass!
Always a Sunday Roast and a good homely pudding to follow. We children would often be commandeered to do the washing up afterwards .
Our only radio had broken, and it was a treat on Sundays to sit in the car while Dad cleaned it, to listen to the radio! Life with the Lyons was a favourite. Sing Something Simple, I think, too.
Later (equipped with a new radiogram) late Sunday afternoons were taken up with listening to the 'Hit Parade'
And, of course, the evenings were always bath time

Luckygirl we hadn't heard of pate in those far off days and when it started appearing in the shops I heard one woman say to her friend "what is this pate?" To which her friend replied "high faluting potted meat"

Loved Sundays, a special day, Sunday School with small brother, in the morning, while our Mum was in church, then a nice dinner, with the same programmes others remember. After dinner our aunt, uncle and cousin came in the bus, sometimes our other cousins were with us from Kenya on our uncle's sabbatical, and we had makeshift concerts. In summer one of us ran to Mary Crolla's the icecream shop for a 2/6 tub of freshly made icecream, which we shared out with strawberrries.. Listened to Children's Hour, and when a bit older went to evensong and fellowship, where there were others my age.
Happy memories of good days, no school, no restrictions on reading or playing either at home or outside. Best of all were runs in our 1939 Rover, shared by grandfather, dad and uncle. We all piled in, goodness knows how, tok a picnic and went to places like Loch Lomond. Wish I could have these days back!

The only day when I felt bored, and extremely grateful for the pile of books I would have taken out of the library the previous day. My father insisted on us being quiet - not a natural state for us four girls. He liked to sit in his study and sleep read the papers and we were not allowed to disturb him.

The day started with us having to be dressed and clean, ready for breakfast at 8am. As my mother didn't like that either, it was a sullen affair. As we got older and rebelled and turned up in pyjamas, the rows started.

We children were then packed off to church (but not the adults, note) where we were eventually thrown out for disrupting too many services (whispering mainly) and finally, for a sister discovering that if she placed her hand at a certain angle, she could direct the sunlight off her watch face straight into the eyes of the vicar. He complained to my father, and banned us all. Hooray! Only then my father shouted at us and threatened us yet again with boarding school. He tried to get us into Sunday school instead, but they refused to have us. Apparently my father wasn't willing to give up his Sunday to accompany us to church and monitor our behaviour, and was quite annoyed by the vicar's suggestion! I think my father's behaviour, on reflection, was quite appalling, using the church as a babysitter, although I do realise that they were quite happy back then to do so, in the hope that they would save our immortal souls.

Then, on to lunch. We all dreaded it because this was the weekly battleground with my father on the issue of table manners and topics of conversation that he found acceptable. As my mother had tea with us quite happily throughout the week with no problems whatsoever she must have felt like cracking a tray over his head many times, as I think, looking back, she must have seen it as a criticism of her child-rearing abilities.

If the weather was nice, occasionally we would go out for a picnic, or a walk, or even play shuttlecock in the garden with him if he was in a good mood, while my mother did some gardening. One of us (we were on a rota) would have helped with washing-up while she cleared away and dried. If wet - just dire, quiet reading of books only, board games if we were quiet about it, while he had another nap. The worst time though was if he wanted to play Monopoly, then we all had to play whether we liked it or not. I hate Monopoly to this day.

Tea tended to be something on toast, or sandwiches, salad and cake or ice cream.

I used to be quite relieved to be allowed to go to bed and pick up a good book again. As I grew older, homework became a very good excuse for getting out of all the forced family togetherness. Looking back, I think my father forced himself to do something he didn't enjoy because he thought he ought to, and we sensed it.

Sunday was just another day in our house, no church or special things going on, occasionally we had a roast but not often, or we would take the tube over to my Nanny Ealing's house (the other grandmother was called Nanny Bridge St) and have tea of ham salad and jelly and custard they were 'Chapel' so had been to church in the morning and my Mum used to fib and say we'd all been to Sunday school when we hadn't.

We kids were allowed to play out at the local 'Rec' but we used to sneak on to the local bomb site and play in the basements of all the houses that had been blown apart.. we had no clue how dangerous that was in those days.

Brought up by my grandparents, pudding on Sunday always apple pie and rice pudding

Tanith no 'elf 'n' safety then for kids was there?

I remember being made to eat the roast beef and having to sit at the table until I'd finished my portion. This piece of meat would go round and round until it was just a pulp but I still couldn't swallow it. The worst of all was Kalbschnitzel in breadcrumbs when we were stationed in Germany. No wonder I'm a vegetarian!

Sunday was always what seemed like a huge roast, then utter boredom. My father would always sleep on Sunday afternoon and my mother would listen to the radio and knit. Everyone I played with seemed to go out somewhere on Sunday afternoon, or to Sunday School which I flatly refused to attend. When I was old enough to go off on my bike on my own, I would be out on it straight after lunch. Then it was always ham salad, tinned fruit and cream and sometimes a fruit cake for tea. My parents were older than most parents of the other children I knew and it wasn't their habit to take me out much on a Sunday. I did enjoy Sunday radio programmes - Family Favourites, Take it from Here, Life with the Lyons, Life of Bliss, and especially Round the Horne, which I still listen to as I now have the programmes on DVD. Oh and we did have a lovely ice cream man who used to come round about four o'clock.

The Billy Cotton Band Show always seemed to be on the radio when we had Sunday lunch. It was such a palaver 'getting the table out' (it was a drop-leaf one) and finding enough chairs if an unexpected relative turned up.

Ann I used to love potted meat as a child. It has quite a different taste to any pate I've ever had. Can you still buy it in Stockport? I've never seen it up here.

Yes Jane, you can even get it in Sainsburys and Waitrose, but it's not like the proper stuff that the butcher sold!
Butchers are like hens teeth round here

On Sunday morning we would get the Woolwich ferry over the river to see our Nan and Aunties. They were all very generous with money.
Sunday afternoon would be Sunday school in the chappel at the bottom of the garden. We couldn't get away from it, they owned our house, and would just walk into the garden and get us if we didn't go.
After that was tea and then, like Tanith, playing on bomb sites.
We did have a TV from 1953 but I don't remember what was on Sunday night.

On the way home from Church on Sunday mornings we would buy cockles and winkles from a stall outside the pub.
We got home to a roast cooked by my atheist Grandad and would pick the seafood out of the shells with a pin and eat with crusty bread for tea.

My Sundays were dominated by going to Mass and sometimes it was back again in the afternoon for Benediction. Both my parents were staunch catholics so it was wall to wall church for us which is probably why I don't go much now. We usually had a roast dinner - my father identified with the foreign half of his family in a culinary way, so we had slithers of garlic in lamb, when garlic was considered odious and beef had to be rare, he was of the opinion that the English over cooked absolutely everything, meat, vegetables the lot! At tea time he did his speciality with was fresh crab dressed with olive oil and fresh lemon, we usually ate this with crusty brown bread and we would have fresh watercress and celery on the side. My mum baked a cake, usually a Dundee. Looking back, I can see that a lot of what I ate on Sundays was actually very nice food, but at the time I thought it was boring, what I longed for was something new and exciting like Findus beefburgers, but I never got them!

I remember my parents watching interminably boring programmes such as The Brains Trust, or my dad would play opera or classical music for hours on end. That all changed when the Beatles arrived - miraculously both parents embraced their music with gusto, started buying their records and watched anything they were on like Sunday Night at the London Palladium. It was from 1963 on wards my black and white world turned technicolour

Thank you Lona, I'll have to try it next time I'm over there!