Bygone days ....

[Pipp]

Once, wrapped my trannie in a towel in the bathroom while I was having a bath... (Why? Dunno, no idea) (Too much information? Yes, probably!) I then completely forgot about it. Later, my dad, doing some household chores, picked up the towel and, to his surprise, launched my transistor radio in a high arc across the room to a crash landing in the (empty) bath.

I got a bit of a telling-off about that. Poor dad, he'd been a Royal Marine bandsman during the war and had seen plenty, but I think the flying trannie still gave him quite a shock.

Hahaha, I bet someone will be imagining the wrong thing here. That would shock any girls' dad.

Just in case anyone is wondering, it is an abbreviation for transistor radio, teenagers of a certain age used to use.

 

[lizdeluz]

@Pipp, thanks for that! Oh dear, the dangers of being misconstrued!

 

[julifriend]

Sitting in front of my Grandma's fire on a Sunday afternoon toasting crumpets on a toasting fork and then putting loads of real butter and home made jam on them. My memory of school dinners includes chocolate concrete with chocolate custard. And I never could stand rice pudding, sago, tapioca or semolina. Revolting things all of them.

And as for games, how about kick the can?

 

[JTL]

..Transistor radios! Used to hide mine under my pillow so I could listen to Radio Caroline late at night!

That's how I discovered the blues Bob Dylan Chuck Berry and so much more!

 

[Lamont D]

For me growing up was an everyday struggle. Youngest of four lads, which left its mark! Both parents worked long hours and it was left to me to do the chores and shopping etc. I had to get up early to make the coke fire, which we had to buy from the coking plant. The winters were bad because. of our house having only one room with a fire and no carpet just lino. Slept with my brother for 11 years, hand me down clothes. Poor diet only saw fruit at Christmas except apples. Only decent food was at school. Did well to pass 11+ went to grammar school, but I was always regarded as a failure because I was lower working class! Couldn't produce the academic and sporting talents that I had, too many barriers in favour of the elitist more prosperous boys. We had a Ford pop as well it broke down on Saddleworth moor, before M62 was built. Ruined our only holiday when at primary school. Winter of '63 was especially harsh, constant freezing temperatures. Lack of food milk etc. suffered with exposure. House flooded when the thaw set in. Whole country suffered. Never want to see that again. The best thing about my younger days were the holidays, when I could explore my local area and find out about the history and go to libraries and read up on history and other subjects like space and geography. I was quite happy doing this alone. In my teen years it was sport that kept me same from the school. Football, cricket and basketball, swimming, and running cross country I was good at despite the sports masters and my lack of personal sporting clothes and equipment. I recieved my full colours in the fifth year, but my parents couldn't afford the cost of getting them. I was still proud though. I have worked all my life, not a day on the dole, never claimed till we recently got turned down by the social because my wife cannot work and my pension is 'just' over the limit. How surprising!
We have never relied on anyone else and nothing ever surprises me about our political leaders about how they don't want to look after the people who voted them in. Hey ho!
No regrets And I have a large and loving family. Which is better than all the money in the power brokers purses and I'm happier.

 

[Pipp]

Sounds like we had a similar childhood @nosher8355 , except we didn't have a car, my dad went out on his motorbike alone. I was given a lot of grief from teachers, some other pupils and their parents for being from the wrong part of town. Got most of my knowledge from reading every book in the children's library.
Holidays were in caravan on Welsh coast. Travelled there on Crossville bus. Took about four hours to do a journey that now takes about an hour in the car.

 

[Lamont D]

Crossbills buses! Another good memory!

 

[Lamont D]

It was acceptable practice to be bullied by older boys. Especially prefects against working class first or second years, indeed it was the head prefect who caned boys for small misdemeanours. I have to laugh when Ripping Yarns is shown on tele. And the schooldays one is shown about the school bully.
Marvellous days? Not!
Learnt about the way of the world in that so called educational establishment.

 

[sanguine]

In theory I was classic bully fodder - clever and small - but for some reason it never happened. Maybe because I always mixed in well with all sorts and didn't do anything provocative. I could run very fast if needed, but if threatened I tended to just stand my ground out of laziness and they backed off. Foolhardy possibly but it seemed to work!

 

[Pipp]

In theory I was classic bully fodder - clever and small - but for some reason it never happened. Maybe because I always mixed in well with all sorts and didn't do anything provocative. I could run very fast if needed, but if threatened I tended to just stand my ground out of laziness and they backed off. Foolhardy possibly but it seemed to work!

I was usually ok with the other kids. The area I came from had a reputation for producing gangsters and hardknocks. I played up to that so nobody took me on. Apart from the teachers, and some of the posh girls' parents. Still They had no reason to doubt my reason for being there when I came top of the class in most subjects.

 

[Lamont D]

In theory I was classic bully fodder - clever and small - but for some reason it never happened. Maybe because I always mixed in well with all sorts and didn't do anything provocative. I could run very fast if needed, but if threatened I tended to just stand my ground out of laziness and they backed off. Foolhardy possibly but it seemed to work!

I was the most bullied, I think, it wasn't a competition! I was small, headstrong and unwilling to pamper to there excesses, but it was all for nought as the teachers encouraged the taunting of someone above his station. Thank whoever brought in the classless system we have now in our secondary schools!
The elitist attitude to education is sickening in this country.

 

[Bev18]

I've always said i'd have done better at school nowadays, than in the late 70's early 80's. they did always highlight the brain boxes and leave us middling people behind.

I was bullied by one girl, but really she was a silly cow and I was 5ft 8 and she was 5ft 2 pipsqueak, but the girls that were the cocky ones in the class got on with me so told her to pack it in. I was from a council estate but wasn't what they perceived as a typical council estate person and was from a single parent family - which somehow they respected me for. My mum had a full time job and a part time job in the evenings.

I make my daughters laugh even now by saying when bus fare was 5p and a bag of crisps was 4p and we only had salt n shake or golden wonder Walkers hadn't been invented then. We didn't have a car, so walked or bused it everywhere. Hated food shopping as it was half walk to kwik save and had to carry the shopping home.

Then even more embarrassing was my nana buying a tatty 2nd hand pram (silvercross, navy blue) specially to put the shopping in, so embarrassing. But it saved having permanent dents in your hands.

then when i passed my driving test when i was 20, the first thing I did was to take my nana shopping in a car and she didn't have to carry her shopping back . she still insisted on walking other times though, got quite offended that I thought she couldn't carry a shopping bag at 74. Those were the days lol.

Now when I put my foot down and say to the girls, no I'm not dropping you off, walk like I used to do they roll their eyes.

 

[chris lowe]

There you go, 45 rpm discs - when I first bought them (Can't Buy Me Love by the Beatles, so 1964?) they were 6/8d, exactly three for £1. Which was a bu$$er if you'd only got a ten-bob note as a birthday present. LPs were 37/6d. Record players had speeds of 16, 33, 45 and 78.

And then the cassette. When they first came out it was like something out of the space age. I never quite got 8-track cartridges, although they were of better recording quality than cassettes. The cartridges were just too big though.

I remember lp's being 37/6p. Two of my brothers clubbed together and bought a Dansette and the first records they had for it was Kitty Lester Lover Letter and (Ithink) Joe Brown Picture of You. First lp I bought with my own money was Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced from Sound of Music in Havant, and I remember buying King Crimson Court of the Crimon King from there as well. They don't write songs like 21st Century Schitzoid Man any more (OK who said thank goodness for that!)

 

[chris lowe]

What about when pubs closed for a few hours during the afternoon?
Good old days? I think not!

But maybe.

Shops closed on Sundays too.

My local still closes from half 2 to 5 each day apart from Sat and Sunday, but most of the 8 pubs in the village (and there used to be four or five more) are open all day.

 

[sanguine]

First lp I bought with my own money was Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced from Sound of Music in Havant, and I remember buying King Crimson Court of the Crimon King from there as well

Good choices! Robert Fripp one of my musical heroes. I don't think Crimson albums have dated anything like as much as some of their prog contemporaries.

 

[Lamont D]

M

I remember lp's being 37/6p. Two of my brothers clubbed together and bought a Dansette and the first records they had for it was Kitty Lester Lover Letter and (Ithink) Joe Brown Picture of You. First lp I bought with my own money was Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced from Sound of Music in Havant, and I remember buying King Crimson Court of the Crimon King from there as well. They don't write songs like 21st Century Schitzoid Man any more (OK who said thank goodness for that!)

My brother had a dansette record player which he played soul and Motown on and his favourites Beach Boys singles. He would break my fingers if he found me using it! He never caught me!

 

[chris lowe]

M

My brother had a dansette record player which he played soul and Motown on and his favourites Beach Boys singles. He would break my fingers if he found me using it! He never caught me!

I had to wait until they were both out at work before I could play it, I would have been in deep doo doo if they'd caught me out.

 

[Lamont D]

My local still closes from half 2 to 5 each day apart from Sat and Sunday, but most of the 8 pubs in the village (and there used to be four or five more) are open all day.

my first pint cost me 1s 10d and ten no. 6 were a shilling.

That was when pubs were pubs, spitoons on the floor.

 

[chris lowe]

my first pint cost me 1s 10d and ten no. 6 were a shilling.

That was when pubs were pubs, spitoons on the floor.

We do still have one pub (whcih I don't count as it's about 100 yards over the border in West Sussex) that still has sawdust on the floor, but I find it a bit "clique-y" with the yatch set. You know that bit in Americal Werewolf in Paris where the two guys go into a bar on the Moors and everything stops........

 

[Lamont D]

We do still have one pub (whcih I don't count as it's about 100 yards over the border in West Sussex) that still has sawdust on the floor, but I find it a bit "clique-y" with the yatch set. You know that bit in Americal Werewolf in Paris where the two guys go into a bar on the Moors and everything stops........

By where we lived. By the docks the docker drunk in the bar where no lady's were to be found, and there was no furniture or other things that could be thrown or broken when there was fights etc. glasses were thrown as a norm. Didn't visit the place very often!