Chatting at lunchtime today there was a stunned silence when I announced that I hadn't lived in a house with a bathroom and indoor toilet until I was 11, or a house with central heating until I was 16. One of the youngsters then said,'But you're not THAT old!' Yes, he is still breathing
It got me thinking though, how different things are just 30 years on.
When I was 8 I used to chop wood and lay and light the fires. I could pluck and dress pheasants, pigeons and chickens, and skin and joint a rabbit. I used to eat things that kids today would vomit at................pigs heads, pigs trotters, chittlings, brawn, sheeps hearts and brains. At weekends if I wasn't needed to ride work on the horses I would disappear off all day with the dogs, just running wild. I used to walk 4 miles to school and back, summer and winter, and never thought anything of it.
My bath was a tin tub in the kitchen in front of the Aga, the toilet was outside, and at night I used the 'guzunder' (because it guz under the bed )
My companions were the dogs, the horses, and the stable lads. I could climb any tree, ride any horse, was a dead-shot with a catapault. I was usually covered in horse sh*t, mucky from head to foot and I was a total tomboy. I didn't even know what a television set was!
I suppose to some, it may sound like I had a deprived childhood. I didn't. I was happy, healthy, fit and energetic. Would I swap my childhood for the soft, over-protected, couch-potato lifestyle of so many children today? Not bloody likely!
So how about you? What are your memories of childhood......................and would you have changed yours in any way?