Childhood Memories.

[Lissa]

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?

That sounds like a great childhood, although I'm slightly worried about your being kept company by stable boys...

For me, I remember a lot of music-related stuff: listening to Marillion in the car on holiday in France, listening to Sade in the car when living in Hong Kong when I was 4. I love music so I think I am very aurally inclined.

As for my childhood, it was pretty good, no consoles and a lot of digging holes and climbing trees.

South London in the 1960s. We lived in my grandad's house, it had a huge garden so we (brother and sister) used to climb the trees, give each other wheelbarrow rides, and walk on grandad's lettuces. Ford Anglia... One of the rooms in the house had an ornate fireplace with lions' heads holding up the mantel, so we used to put our fingers in the lions' mouths and pretend that we were being mauled and then shoot the beast. Holidays in Broadstairs, stung by jellyfish...

i remember MASSIVE wagon wheels

Originally Posted by Lissa

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?

Wow, you had meat to eat and a tin bath - luxury, pure luxury.

I try not to remember those harsh days, climbin t'top o'hill in chance of a cast off bread crust fightin wi dogs for a bone or two hoping me thruppence would last the winter. if I got stuck up a chimney once I got stuck a hundred times...

I was a pretty active kid, not exactly sporty but I would always be off with my mate to the local BMX track or off over the fields at the back of our street with their dog.

I remember building a 'tree house' with a rope swing that we were really proud of at the time - in reality the 'house' was a big sheet of wooden fence panel wedged into the branches! My mate lost 3 teeth & broke his arm on the rope swing too...

When we got a bit older we used to go and hang round in a den that we had made on top of an old slag heap nearby that was covered in trees, daring each other to ride our bikes down the steepest bit we could find & generally messing about, experimenting with cigarettes for the first time & lighting campfires every now & then. A couple of years ago, the same slag heap had to be totally removed & re-lanscaped cos it turned out it was on fire underground the whole time!

We never had central heating, ever. And that was in "The North", you know!

Originally Posted by Lissa

.......at night I used the 'guzunder' (because it guz under the bed )

We did have the luxury of an indoor khazi but my grandparents didn't. They used to call said item "the "Edgar Allen".

[rictus01]

I remember doing the fire, Dad would lay it up the night before and one of us boys would have the duty of lighting it first thing, the house was freezing, rush down to the kitchen and light the fire, get it going then back to bed until the room warmed up before helping mum with breakfast and sandwich duty.

One of the other duties we had was to climb in the coal bunker and move all the coal to the hatch end before the coalman delivered ( I remember his horse).

We didn't have a bath, if you got really dirty you had to stand in the sink, we'd go to Nans on Sunday for the weekly bath.

Oh and we'd walk over to epping forest to play in the trees, of course the M25 is in the way now.

Cheers Mark.

No-one's mentioned the shoe-box box at the bottom of the swamp by the side of the M6 yet

[Biker Biggles]

M6? Luxury!
Nought but shank's pony ont turnpike in my day.
Lived ont bottom of sea and got drowned every day.