If you have not already seen this........

Sep 13, 2006
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CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THOSE BORN BEFORE THE 1970's

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots 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 van - loose - was always great fun.

We drank water from the garden hosepipe 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 cakes, white bread and real butter and drank 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 Playstations, 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 text messaging, 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 played with worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

Made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out any eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Local teams 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!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

and while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

PS -The BIG type is because your eyes are shot at your age
 
May 12, 2006
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And us two,

Val & Frank

ps Did you ever have jack frost on the inside of the window when you woke in the morning ???, because your parents hadn't turned up the central heating !!!!
 
Mar 28, 2005
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Yes I remember that Frank,we could always tell when it was cold outside when my dads false teeth were frozen in the glass on the window ledge
 
Mar 14, 2005
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Hi Garry,

My big event of the day was to listen to Dick Barton special agent, I beleive Snowy and Jock where his sidekicks.

Royston
 
Sep 13, 2006
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Royston

A little before my time, I am vintage '58 so I was one of the kids leaping over the settee when the first series of Doctor who came on.

I never understood Captain Pugwash humour until I was MUCH older.

I can remember the Kennedy assasination, Winston Churcills funeral and avidly followed the Apollo missions.

Now, I am just old enough to be the grandfather of a page 3 girl.
 

Damian

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Mar 14, 2005
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What was central heating????

We had one coal fire, in the living room, that was it, it was great drawing in the frost on the INSIDE of the bedroom windows.
 
May 4, 2005
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Likewise, no central heating. Breakfast in the morning sat in front of the open gas oven door with my porridge balanced on the folded down door of the grill.My mother would probably be locked away now for exposing us to the fumes and danger.
 
G

Guest

I remeber a "grey" childhood, The TV was black and white and so was a lot of the clothing.

Grey school days in Grey sgorts and black shoes, grey classrooms with iron framed desks with fixed seats for two and Grey slates and white chalk do do are first work on, and the dust as we rubbed it of, about the only colour in the classroom was the blue ink in the ink well when we got a little older.

Psycho teachers who hit, caned, slippered and launched all manner of projectiles from chalk to heavy felt and wood blackboard rubbers.

We got technology when I was about 8. The first electric pencil sharpener! We were all able to try out with supervision at the side of the teachers desk that it was clamped to.

All the cars seemed Black and Grey more or less and men rode black tanked and framed motor bikes wearing ex WW2 Surplus.

Family Favourites and the Archers ( Gay Free ) on the radio and Friday Night is Music Night.

Being told at school that my Dad would die if he went to Suez ( he was on stand by as TA ).

Not understanding Cuba Crisis and Death of Kennedy.

Understanding a topless dress as we sneaked a copy of the Daily Mirror ;-) and my friends older brother charging kids to lift them up in the swimming pool changeing room to sneak a peak into see naked women through a small hole.

Sombre day and sombre music as people shuffled around heads bowed for Churchill's winter funeral, silence as we crowded around a small TV to witness the final journey of a great man.

Remember it made the news as it was being broadcast via satellite. A state funeral for a "Commoner" http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/30/newsid_2505000/2505981.stm (look see here, you'll see why life was grey)

Wet summer hols and 8-9 hour car journeys as Dad had to stop to clean the grey grime from the windows and also the ritual annual de-coke of the car engines, Grey lorries belching black and grey diesel and derv smoke and Grey men in hats at a seedy Grey transport cafe when the car blew a hose and we waited for the AA man on his sidecar outfit dressed in boots and Plus 4 outfit and the AA men saluting as they spotted the badge on the grill when you passed. AA must have been the most colourful thing about road travel in the 50's and early 60's.

Kids falling around laughing when a boy came to school with a "dolly" (first site of "Action Man").

Street cred of becoming a local celebrity and folk hero, firstly when my Dad bought a NEW new (Cortina Estate) car and second when we got a Scalextric set.

Some difference to a 9 year old with Camera Mobile, Internet enabled laptop and his own colour TV and recorders plus DVD player and Ipod.

My friends and I tried communicating over numerous neighbours gardens via a stretched ball of string and two cans with a spiked hole in the end before we saved some pennies and got an ex WW2 morse code tapper attached to a light bulb on the end of a holder made from glueing 4 wooden teleprinter paper roll spindles together. We could lay in our beds and see each other lights through our home made periscopes! Then getting our morse code book and trying to decipher the message.

Cutting Edge days or what!
 
Sep 13, 2006
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Euro - nice piece.

Something else

I can not remember getting told off for getting my clothes dirty except when it was my Sunday best or we were going round to see relatives.

My first camping experience was going to Scotland in a Standard Atas van (we slept in it) and getting the top of my thumb severed in the sliding door.

Do not remember it but still have the scar.
 
G

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SNAP Garry.

I had the end of my left thumb lopped off. Looks OK but has no feeling :) A more glamorous but non camping accident.

I rememeber not being aloud to move in my Sunday best as we were vistitimg elderly aunts and uncles and had to wear a tie and had my wayward hair Brylcreamed (YUK) by my mother.

"SPEAKING WHEN SPOKEN TO" is another childhood memory for many from our youth. THOSE WERE THE DAYS ! kIDS TAKE NOTE PLEASE ;-)

Late 50's in Hampshire as the RAF broke the sound barrier day day after day practicing for the annual Farnborough air show, the chickens wouldn't lay to my grandmothers horror and all the windows and houses rattled. Where were the H&S busy bodies then.

First denim Jeans that ripped first day on as I fell from my soap cart and the second pair that ripped the next day and not being allowed out to play in long trousers for a long while after. I was the first kid with denim Shorts ;-)

Camping in a feather filled cotton sleepimg bag that soaked up a tanker full of water when the rain came through the ageing canvas tent :-(

Doing a 150 mph+ past Bedford in a family accountant friends Ferrari on the M1 that had no traffic on a sunny summer evening with no seat belts.

By far the worse experience for me and some school friends as 8 - 10 year olds was party clothes and having to thank and kiss on the cheek my Dad's bosses daughter (YUK).

I got over it and kiss her every day now ;-)
 
Sep 13, 2006
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I had to be very careful not to have hair sticking up as my as some female relative would spit on their hands and then use it to smooth the hair down.

Another camping memory as a boy scout - being woken up in one of those tents with the tie up doors to a cow licking my face.

What lovely experiences!

p.s. Dads first towcar was a Sunbeam Talbot 90 - That would be cool now!
 
Mar 14, 2005
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Vera Lynn In town tonight, Paul Temple, Valentine Dyle etc.etc.etc. also listened to Lord HAW Haw giving propaganda about where the jerries were going to bomb next.

No ice cream and no bananas. we sometimes got orange juice

When I get in a queue today I say the last time I queued was for bananas during the war. also MY dad said bring back the good old days!!!!
 
G

Guest

An old aquaintance told a story of Mid 60'S school days camping trip and being woken by the flash from an "Instamatic" camera. The ex army surplus tent had not had the lace up door tied off and some of farmers sheep had got in out of the rain.

He was photographed in his canvas camp bed with his arm around a large ewe snuggled up to him until the flash recorded the event for the school magazine. Leaving him being called "Sheep @@@@@@" for the next four years by pupils and staff.

25 + years later attending a business conference a voice boomed across the conference room "SHEEP @@@@@@". The old head boy!
 
G

Guest

Brother inlaw in South Africa has just reminded me of those 1950's days of safe driving practices.

He says he always felt safer sat on an aged relatives lap with their arms to keep him secure rather than seat belts or air bags :)

I remember travelling sharing the front seat with an old uncle and sitting in the foot well to give him a break, those were the days!

We both remember pre bungy and pre roof box days with holiday luggage on roof racks with huge black rubber feet or those boot lids tha flapped down to put luggage on out in the open.

All the bits and bobs coverered up with the likes of brown paper or an old tarp and tied with string and following cars with all the stuff flapping about and the odd misile bouncing to the side of the car as our fathers swerved to miss the cascading holiday deris.

And there were the dim tail lights that you could hardly see and who remembers those dodgy "Semaphore Trafficators" on Moggy Minors.

Even if you could see them, they might not pop up or they could be stuck up, both at once some times. Or could be broken as you exited the car not noticing they were stuck out.
 
Jan 19, 2008
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⇦ A child of the 40s/50s. When I was a child central heating was a thing of the future as far as households was concerned :O( My father was a miner so at least we had cheap coal. I remember rationing and especially clothing coupons. My mother made my brother and I dressers for the side of our beds. They were upturned orange boxes with old curtains around them being held up with drawing pins. At no time of my childhood did I feel deprived and even now appreciate what my parents went through to provide for us. If I died tomorrow I would consider I have been fortunate and led an happy life :O)

p.s. Anyone remember Nibletts?
 
G

Guest

Your Dad must have been virtually self employed digging his own coal Lord B judging by the size of your average stately pile and those huge rooms and high ceilings.

Surely the expenses money for sitting in the higher house and the networking opportunity brought a few bob his way ;-)
 
May 25, 2005
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Nibletts! Bliss! If you stuck some of the youngsters of today in 'our shoes' they wouldn't know what to do. Life was harsh, especially just after the end of the 2nd (for any jester out there!) world war. Rationing was awful when all we wanted was a bite of chocolate. Playing football (even us girls) with a tin can and skipping using a bit of washing line. However, this period never did any harm to the people who lived through it - it made them a damn sight stronger! No freebies just hard graft. Bring it back and teach some of the layabouts a lesson. This, I know, will not be added to this thread, but there you go!
 
May 25, 2005
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Sorry everyone, I know that my remarks might have been a bit scaithing and I apologise to all those who 'were brung up reight!'.
 
Jan 19, 2008
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Your Dad must have been virtually self employed digging his own coal Lord B judging by the size of your average stately pile and those huge rooms and high ceilings.

Surely the expenses money for sitting in the higher house and the networking opportunity brought a few bob his way ;-)
Sorry Euro if by saying my father was a miner it inferred he dug the coal. I would like to correct the matter and say that he owned the mine :O)
 

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