Genealogy Chat

If you go to www.yourmemories.*co.*uk/index.asp Remove* you can read some of my memories. Just put in my name. OR better still you can put yours down. (And let us know some of them could be little dimonds) Oh yes it could take a wile for them to get on the site I beleve its a one man site or at least a small team and they have to edit and list storys.

Muriel, It certainly does make fascinating reading and the more you read the more memories come flashing back. I too remember the boiling kettle on the open fire. My father made a special fork so we could toast our bread on the open fire, the only warm room in the house was our dining/living room. I used to love breaking off the icicles and sucking them. Elizabeth

You know there's the making of a book here. I started to read at the beginning with the one about surviving, but now everyone is adding real stories it's even better. Keep it up perhaps we can get them published! It would be good if we all added our age or the year we were born so that we can get a measure for when things changed. I remember boiling a kettle on the fire to save gas & dashing upstairs to the loo because it was so cold out of the one room we heated. We loved to scratch patterns on the ice INSIDE the window & snap the icicles that were hanging from the windowsills (outside) Jenny (62)

Those were the days, four black jacks or eight aniseed balls for a penny. Children lining up after school at the local sweet shop to get a home made ice lolly for a penny. Remember going to watch the Coronation at the local hall and the parties afterwards, free mugs, still have it in the cupboard today. Doors were never locked or windows closed when you left the house. Only allowed to wear my "best" clothes on a Sunday never got worn out. Having my socks and elbows in cardigans darned, wearing a liberaty bodice. Also that boiling pollace being slapped on my spectic knee I screamed the house down. Having a bath every Friday night in the kitchen, the old tin bath being brought in from the shed, the old gas copper boiler getting the water hot and my father pailing it into the bath. I was lucky I was the youngest so always had the clean water. Getting into bed with a stone hot water bottle. Also had a large bow of ribbon stuck in my hair. Milk at school which was either frozen in the winter or turned sour in summer. The ration books, I can still remember the taste of the orange juice today was really nice, cod liver oil and syrup of figs. Rationed sugar, being made to sit at the table all afternoon because I would not eat my pudding, tabioco (?) and stewed sour plums. Elizabeth

How about milk bread and condensed milk.( for thous not in the know, milk bread was the one that looked like it had been cooked in a corragated tin and was round) As a boy I (here we go!) could go to the pics had a bag of sweets and a drink and still had change from 1/- a shilling. I remember my dad saying things like that to me, and now I'm doing it. I could never remember how meny shillings made a pound. Good old £ s d. I am by the way 52 on march 4th

Tootie Frooties....loved those! Cough Candy which you can still get! The local 'tatties and veg' delivery man was my friend's stepdad so we used to go with him, sat in the back of his pickup truck. No seatbeats, hardly sitting down sometimes and no-one cared. The village postman on his bike and we always had a village policeman...always getting told off by him for something! Street parties for the Silver Jubilee, Bonfire Night and every other excuse for everyone to have a party And we were one of the first ones in our street to get a telephone. I remember the neighbours coming to have a look and staring at it in amazement!

Yes it was pure luck if your crisps had gone soft and the little bag gone soggy though, wasnt it! I remember half the kids in the street coming to watch the tv when we got ITV - the first thing I remember was the PG TIps tea advert with the chimps, but it was a cartoon one with a little van whipping along streets with the chimps driving it. And do you remember how the telly would go off for long breaks?

Old English Spangles were one of my favourite packs. Acid Drops, Pear Drops, Troach sweets, Tom Thumb drops, frozen Jubblies, Licourice sticks, catherine wheels Oxo crips Cow and gate drink and HUGE!!!!!!!! Wagon Wheels at the swimming baths. Free pass so you could go anytime.

I've just googled Spangles and there are websites devoted to the sweets. I don't know which is more sad, the websites or me Googling it!!!! :) Chris

I still buy Flying saucers.... But they're not the same :( Spangles.........I remember sucking on them until I could poke the tip of my tongue through the middle, as did all my friends. We had competitions on how thin we could get them! And wasn't there an amazing range of flavours!!!!! How old are we??? I admit to 47 :) Chris

I never knew what the bits of tape were for on the bottom of the liberty bodices until a couple of years ago. A friend who is even older than me said that they were to attach your suspenders to. That one must have passed me by.

I remember have an old pair of roller skates borrowed from a friend that had no leather tops and laces left so used an old pair of my mothers tights. However, one not so favourite memory was climbing trees (very much the tomboy) and falling face first into a bunch of nettles. Thank goodness for the dock leaves. Andrea

I remember finding live ammunition and throwing them in the ford (from German air-raids I think). Fishing for tiddlers by a fast running river. Riding my bike for miles and miles. Helping the milkman on his round and being paid with a bottle of orange squash. Same with the bread roundsman but no squash!!! Being told if you eat too many sweets you'll get sugar diabetes. Jumping out of trees hanging onto a knotted rope (until the POL-ice cut it down) and then finding another rope!!! Playing cricket on the green with real cricket ball - over the road was a 4 - hitting a car a 6!!!! Those were the days

I used to hate the Liberty bodices...after a few washes the rubber buttons seemed to go all sticky....yuck

Angela, I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one who got the warning about cold steps! Except my mother called it "kingcop". I checked up on it a few years ago and discovered it was a corruption of the words "kink cough" which was whooping cough. A fit of coughing make you "kink" - double up/twist. Seems odd that a cold bottom should lead to that but then for those of us that are known to talk out of it, our throats must be nearby, I suppose..... Jack

Pretty similar to Kim's but I do like the bit about our mother's and what they did during pregnancy and we're all ok!

you might enjoy this one, see if you don't think this is true????: First, many of us survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft! drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We did not have Play stations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no internet or internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live in us forever We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them! Little league had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS! Please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

I had ones of these sent other day but wasnt exactly the same is there any way can add it on here without typing whole lot out? Karin

Irene, YOU must get a book called The Annual Hop London to Kent by Hilary Heffernan its available on www(.)tempus-publishing(.)com Its got over 200 photos. I am going to get it for my Dad. As I said I got the Bermondsey and Rotherhithe remembered book by Stephen Humphrey and its brilliant - dad got his copy in the post this morning and he recognised the house he was born in, all the neigbours standing in the doorways, his uncles stables opposite. The house my sis and I were born in. It is brilliant. Do you remember those awful loos down hopping. Just in the wooden little hut with the place full of flies when you went in there?

I had forgotten about liberty bodices but never will I forget those London pea soupers and being sent home early from school. There were scary rumours going round our school about fog bandits who snatched kids in the fog I dont know who started them I just remember trying to hurry when I couldnt see an inch in front of my face. It was a good thing there were hardly any cars on the roads then you didnt know you had reached the road till you fell into the gutter. Maureen