Born in the 40's, 50's, 60's??

[tosh13]

My mother use to roll the newspapers up and tie them in a knot, suppose it made them burn longer starting the fire up, then pile shiny back coal on top, none of that coke stuff till years later.

Bunny Rabbit ears, my Dad did the same.

[Fareast]

My dad, probably like lots of dads, years ago, was dead 'handy'.He used to clean our chimneys every so often-------very carefully!

 

He also built a simple sort of hot water central heating system in the kitchen, put up a garden shed from various pieces of wood he'd 'acquired', repaired all our shoes, always did the painting and decorating and work on the outside of the house, made me lots of toys especially just after the war and had a full-time job with plenty of overtime. I forgot to mention he also did the garden!

 

Parents spent a lot more time with their children in the 40's, 50's and 60's and ate meals and discussed more things with their children.Each member of the family would probably 'bring home' all the news from their bit of the world.I'm sure this made children more able to discuss things with real people and exchange opinions, not merely relying on newspapers or the 'telly'.Your mother or father might encourage you NOT to believe everything you read or heard in the media. This enabled kids to think for themselves more.

 

The whole fabric of society was quite different 40, 50, 60 years ago------more independent, more mature, less gullible and, from all accounts, happier!

[mini b]

I remember as a kid 50s/60s Cinders on top of the snow to stop you slipping especially as we had to walk up blake st or daniel hill no grit waggons then.

black and white tv no fighting over who has the remote.

[Missdan]

My mum used to put old woollen socks over her shoes to stop her falling on the ice. She had a name for this practice, can anyone remember what it was?

[scraggy]

I remember getting grease on my exercise book and before I could get a new one I had to use a piece of blotting paper and iron off the grease. Can you imagine? A friend needed a new book about an hour later and she snuck one for me as well. Phew

[saxon51]

I remember - in primary school - having to take all my exercise books home and put covers on them. Wallpaper, or brown paper, whatever we could get hold of. We were also made to label them ourselves, and they were thrown away if not done neatly, and we were made to do them again. Any doodling that appeared on them resulted in a smack or caning.

 

Nowadays, the adult staff at schools do all the labelling because the kids make a mess. God help us.

[dowkeruk]

I was born in 1937. Hope I qualify. I think the thing that stands out most,

as was said in the first post, was playing outside most of the time -

knocking on the neighbours' door and asking 'Is Jimmy coming out to play?'.

Regarding today's nannying, I was interested in chemistry and once bought a

large bottle of stick phosphorus from the chemists (I forget the name) on

West St, not to mention the sodium chlorate, magnesium roll, bromine,

metallic potassium .... I'm still here, just.

[Jabberwocky]

I remember - in primary school - having to take all my exercise books home and put covers on them. Wallpaper, or brown paper, whatever we could get hold of. We were also made to label them ourselves, and they were thrown away if not done neatly, and we were made to do them again. Any doodling that appeared on them resulted in a smack or caning.

 

Nowadays, the adult staff at schools do all the labelling because the kids make a mess. God help us.

Yeahhh I remember that now! I couldnt do it and I was slippered, slapped and caned for the best part of a month, it got to the point where I was dreading going to school!

Then...

I started to enjoy the pain...

[Greybeard]

I was interested in chemistry and once bought a

large bottle of stick phosphorus from the chemists (I forget the name) on

West St, not to mention the sodium chlorate, magnesium roll, bromine,

metallic potassium .... I'm still here, just.

 

I remeber that chemist's. You could buy all the ingredients for gunpowder there, except the powdered charcoal which was easy enough to make yourself.

 

My grandfather once brought me a small sack of magnesium shavings from his work which made really good 'fireworks'. - you'd get locked up for messing around with stuff like that these days

[poppins]

I remember - in primary school - having to take all my exercise books home and put covers on them. Wallpaper, or brown paper, whatever we could get hold of. We were also made to label them ourselves, and they were thrown away if not done neatly, and we were made to do them again. Any doodling that appeared on them resulted in a smack or caning.

 

Nowadays, the adult staff at schools do all the labelling because the kids make a mess. God help us.

 

 

It was like being in the Army, they ispected every thing, I remember well covering thebooks with hard brown paper, why couldn't we have used newspaper I wonder ?

 

Also swapping comic books with the kids of the street, then re-swapping with another friend...went on and one before we had all read them.

 

Taking bottles back to the pub, we were a bit ashamed doing that though, I was anyhow,hated it when I met someone on the way and the bottles were rattling in the bag.