One for the older members, and young ones can laugh.

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Ouch!

All fourteen for me plus the starting handle (aka Thumb Breaker) and even those windscreen wipers that stopped operating when you accelerated to overtake something in the rain! (Ford Prefect owned in 1966!)

The other element of growing old is that a lot of the old jokes and sayings just go out of existence. What youngster today would recognise the old saying "I haven't laughed so much since Mum got her **** caught in the mangle!"

We had an old "hand-me-down" mangle with wooden rollers and a set of cast iron gears which seemed designed to whip off a young lads fingers as he helped his Mum (there wasn't an option to refuse) to do the weekly wash!

Who remembers:

o Itchy grey shirts that were the exact colour of dirt and thereby lasted a whole week at school?

o Dragging carpets out once a week to beat the dust out of them? (No one we knew had fitted carpets!)

o Sunday Best? i.e. clothes that were only ever used on a Sunday and then relegated to the wardrobe until they were too small; at which time they were either sold or downgraded to "School Clothes".

o How many kids today get to make and experiment with their own gunpowder? Constituents bought from the local chemist, mixed and pounded in a kitchen bowl and then exploded in a variety of ways just for the hell of it? I can still remember the recipe but asking for the ingredients in Boots today would probably get me arrested!

Happy Days. :thumb::thumb::thumb:
 
Ouch!

All fourteen for me plus the starting handle (aka Thumb Breaker) and even those windscreen wipers that stopped operating when you accelerated to overtake something in the rain! (Ford Prefect owned in 1966!)

The other element of growing old is that a lot of the old jokes and sayings just go out of existence. What youngster today would recognise the old saying "I haven't laughed so much since Mum got her **** caught in the mangle!"

We had an old "hand-me-down" mangle with wooden rollers and a set of cast iron gears which seemed designed to whip off a young lads fingers as he helped his Mum (there wasn't an option to refuse) to do the weekly wash!

Who remembers:

o Itchy grey shirts that were the exact colour of dirt and thereby lasted a whole week at school?

o Dragging carpets out once a week to beat the dust out of them? (No one we knew had fitted carpets!)

o Sunday Best? i.e. clothes that were only ever used on a Sunday and then relegated to the wardrobe until they were too small; at which time they were either sold or downgraded to "School Clothes".

o How many kids today get to make and experiment with their own gunpowder? Constituents bought from the local chemist, mixed and pounded in a kitchen bowl and then exploded in a variety of ways just for the hell of it? I can still remember the recipe but asking for the ingredients in Boots today would probably get me arrested!

Happy Days. :thumb::thumb::thumb:

Chemisty kits were really good and you could buy anything you could think of in the chemist. They even sold kaolin & morphine for upset stomach to kids.

There are times when a mangle is useful, the saying is lost now on, along with 'I got mangled last night' get looked at stupidly.
 
Dutto - That's sparked a memory. I remember going to all the chemists in town with me mates, trying to buy flowers of sulphur and saltpetre to make gunpowder. The first one was easy enough but we were generally refused the saltpetre until someone suggested that we were buying it for an uncle who wanted it to preserve rabbits in... or something like that. I'm glad to have been a kid in the seventies, we were never,ever bored unlike today's gormless lot who wouldn't last five minutes outside their digital,virtual world. Ye a sweeping generalisation I know and I don't mean to be antagonistic but y'know where I'm coming from, right??
 
I scored pretty highly as well ( but only cos I ve got a really good memory!)

You forgot to mention the Epilogue in there somewhere when the telly closed and the National Anthem.

I had my son laughing when I told him that we had to stand up and walk to the television to turn it over or volume louder, he didn't believe me!

We had a radiogram, did anyone ever listen to Radio Hilversum, it was always on the dial. I went there one year to see what it was like ( just outside Amsterdam).Nowt special
Also Jack Jackson on Radio luxembourg and bingo on the radio(late 60s) on the Redifusion.Alan Whicker on Tonight with Cliff mitchelmore and Fife Robertson, real characters.Robin Hall and Jimmy McGregor even before Andy Stuart was big ( reputation not stature that is )!

My first car my Dad bought me for �£40 or so was a split screen Morris Minor with traficators and I still remember the Reg no 221 CMR. I can still tell the noise of a moggy a mile off by the exhaust when you change gear.
I had 5 lessons with BSM and passed my driving test on teh 5th day about 2 weeks after my 17th Birthday, the lessons were paid for by Embassy coupons given free with cigarettes.
Ah, them were the days!

PS Just remembred Knitted balaclavas and sleeveless pullovers with a dogtooth pattern worn with short trousers, what a sight, good job I've got no photos of that!
 
Er, all 14 for me too.
I passed my driving test in a 1953 Morris Minor convertible which had originally been fitted with trafficators, then somebody had fitted indicator lights, which failed half way round the test, so I ended up having to complete the test using hand signals. It also had a starting handle.
In addition to the grey shirts that Dutto mentioned I remember 'Aertex' pants which had a mesh pattern in the material, so in the summer when it got hot they became even more uncomfortable then normal.
I can remember milk and coal being delivered by horse and cart.
The 'dustmen' would empty the bins into a simple container with opening lids on the side, no hydraulically operated compression kit fitted then. And the rubbish was mostly ash from the coal fire and a few tin cans. Most everything else got burnt on the fire. And the dustmen also called for their 'Xmas box', something that seems to have stopped nowadays.
Coop would deliver the weekly groceries against a list left with them on Saturdays (my job).
Sorry, I've got boring :-?

PS I too can also remember 'lessons in explosives'. Ramming homemade gunpowder into copper tubes fitted with a jetex fuse (light the end and then move back quickly). The alternative to gunpowder was weedkiller (sodium chlorate) and sugar, which could also produce spectacular results (well at least to an 11 year old).
 
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Terrym, the trick with sodium chlorate is to pass it thru' a sieve of the correct mesh and discard the stuff (fire depressant) which falls thru'! Misspent youth? Me? No way!
 
PS I too can also remember 'lessons in explosives'. Ramming homemade gunpowder into copper tubes fitted with a jetex fuse (light the end and then move back quickly). The alternative to gunpowder was weedkiller (sodium chlorate) and sugar, which could also produce spectacular results (well at least to an 11 year old).
Or getting 8080 ammonia and iodine crystals from the chemist.
Dropping the iodine in the ammonia and filtering out the result
gave us nitrogren tri-iodide, which cracked with a purple cloud
when you tricked someone into stepping on it.
 
Or getting 8080 ammonia and iodine crystals from the chemist.
Dropping the iodine in the ammonia and filtering out the result
gave us nitrogren tri-iodide, which cracked with a purple cloud
when you tricked someone into stepping on it.

Old physics teacher used to leave them all around the lab, so when the kids run in they would explode all around the room. Although they were he used to say, he used them to catch mice, saying that when he retired they found 4 gallons of mercury under the floorboards and he used to disinfect blade by blade his lawn. :lol:
 
Well that's 6 for me! Didn't realise I was getting on a bit
You did miss one:
15. Getting a clip round the ear (doesn't sound too bad but it chuffing hurts!)
I always remember getting a whack from my mums wine spoon aswell, but to be honest I was a little s#it
Wouldn't dare try that with my own kids because I'd end up in prison! It's a shame because I learned quickly not to answer back and wouldn't dare speak to my parents like my children speak to me.
Now where did I put my wine spoon :whistle:
 
Well that's 6 for me! Didn't realise I was getting on a bit
You did miss one:
15. Getting a clip round the ear (doesn't sound too bad but it chuffing hurts!)
I always remember getting a whack from my mums wine spoon aswell, but to be honest I was a little s#it
Wouldn't dare try that with my own kids because I'd end up in prison! It's a shame because I learned quickly not to answer back and wouldn't dare speak to my parents like my children speak to me.
Now where did I put my wine spoon :whistle:

You remember the cane then ! And the ruler that was 1/2 inch thick and the dap (plimsole) and the arse. Those where the days:electric::electric::electric::electric::electric:
 
Clip round the ear by a policeman, they would be in court themselves if they did it today.
 
You remember the cane then ! And the ruler that was 1/2 inch thick and the dap (plimsole) and the arse. Those where the days:electric::electric::electric::electric::electric:
One of our physics teachers used a wooden burette stand.
Board rubbers were regularly chucked across the class room at inattentative pupils. Chalk too and could sting quite a lot if thrown with some force and if it struck in the right place.
And a regular method of 'encouragement' was to twist your ear and lift you with it so it hurt.
However I imagine that, in the long run, the vast majority of us were none the worse for it. Some might even be better for it if it made them toe the line and concentrate on the reason why they were there in the first place.
 
Just eight for me. I `remember' some of the other things but only as something that other people experienced. I mean, you have to have a telephone to have a party line don't you?
Some obvious things missing like wind-up gramophones and 78s. Happy memories of those.

By the way, I raised my kids with a family evening meal, only I was the one cooking and the Mrs was the one coming home from work. Fast food? Er, it's maybe a thing when you live in a town but we're 3 miles from the nearest village and it's 15 minutes in a car, 65 minutes on foot.
 
Damn it, I'm from '88 and remember 9 of them.. I think I was just a poor *******.

1.... Sweet cigarettes
2.... Coffee shops with juke boxes
3.... Home milk delivery in glass bottles
4.... Party lines on the telephone
6.... TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning.
(There were only 2 channels....if you were fortunate ) We had about 12 though
7.... Peashooters
10... Hi-fi's
12... Blue flashbulb
13... Cork popguns
 
Eight for me, time flies when your having fun!!


1.... Sweet cigarettes - yes
2.... Coffee shops with juke boxes - yes
3.... Home milk delivery in glass bottles yes
4.... Party lines on the telephone
5.... Newsreels before the movie
6.... TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. yes
(There were only 2 channels....if you were fortunate )
7.... Peashooters - yes
8.... 33 rpm records -yes
9.... 45 rpm records - yes
10... Hi-fi's- yes and still have it
11.... Metal ice trays with levers
12... Blue flashbulb
13... Cork popguns
14.... Wash tub wringers
 
Re milk being delivered in glass bottles... remember the winters we used to get, which were so cold overnight that the frozen liquid expanded and formed a solid mass sticking out a couple of inches from the top of the bottle? We were as poor as church mice and our crappy (but happy) council drum had but one coal fire (which me pa had to get up for to coax into life before everyone else got up), decaying window frames which held single panes and which regularly had beautiful filligree ice formations on the INSIDE. Would love those winters back, I'm sure they'll return in the not-too-distant. Please, don't anyone start banging on about global warming and associated crapola - I'm just not having it.
 
When I was 7 and my brother was 11 it was our job on Saturday mornings to go and get a pram load of logs from the wood yard. We'd take them home and then light the fire, hold a sheet of newspaper across the front of the fire to make it draw faster. 50% of the time the paper would burst into flames.
It's probably an EU regulation that kids can't have matches now.
 
Here's a few more down "Whatever happened to ..." from Memory Lane:

o Whipping tops? The local shop even sold "Window Breakers".

o Jacks? That was where you .... ! I have to apologise because the Rules are too complicated to explain to adults! Sorry!

o Marbles? At least three different games were on offer.

o Skipping ropes? For the "gurls" obviously as was Hopscotch!

o Stick and Pen? Hit a small stick with a big stick and then try and get round a course before someone crippled you!

o Winter Warmers? A tin can with a wire handle and holes punched in it. Filled with anything that burned to keep you warm in winter.

o Guising? A Derbyshire pastime this. Four lads went out roaming around pubs and clubs around Christmas to put on a small Play that comprised the characters of St. George, The Saracen, Beelzebub and The Doctor. A great little earner for those 11 year-old kids whose parents didn't mind them being out pub crawling until 11pm!

I (Beelzebub) still call Keith (St George) my friend. :thumb: :thumb:

Happy Days! :whistle: :whistle:
 

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