Just for a minute, forget everything stressful and read this. Close your eyes and go back in time... Before the Internet... Before semi-automatics, joyriders and crack....
Before Wii or XBox...
Way back........
I'm talking about Hide and Seek in the park. The corner shop. Hopscotch. Butterscotch. Skipping. Handstands. Football with an old can. Fingerbob. Beano, Dandy, Buster, Twinkle and Dennis the Menace. Hula Hoops, jumping the stream, building dams. The smell of the sun and fresh cut grass. Bazooka Joe bubble gum.
An ice cream cone on a warm summer night from the van that played a tune. Chocolate or vanilla or strawberry or maybe Neapolitan or perhaps a screwball. Saturday morning cartoons, Children's Film Foundation, The Double Deckers, Red Hand Gang, Tomorrow People, Tiswas or Swapshop and 'Why Don't You'?
Fishpaste sandwiches, staying up for Doctor Who. Clean pyjamas, Morcome and Wise, then bed
When around the corner seemed far away and going into Oxford Street at Xmas was really going somewhere.
Earwigs, wasps, stinging nettles and bee stings.
Sticky fingers (not the album, or alright then...) Playing Marbles. Ball bearings.. Big 'uns and Little 'uns. Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, and Zorro. Climbing trees. Making igloos out of snow banks.
Walking to school, no matter what the weather. Running till you were out of breath, laughing so hard that your stomach hurt
Jumping on the bed. Pillow fights. Spinning around on roundabouts, getting dizzy and falling down Being tired from playing..
when the worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team.
Water balloons were the ultimate weapon. Football cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle. Choppers and Grifters.
Eating raw jelly. Orange squash ice pops. Vimto and Jubbly lollies
Remember when...
There were two types of trainers - girls and boys, and Dunlop Green Flash The only time you wore them at School was for P.E. And they were called gym shoes or if you are older - plimsoles
You knew everyone in your street - and so did your parents. It wasn't odd to have two or three 'best' friends.
Ah I remember it well,if just a bit before your time.
We lived quite close to the Bazooka factory,their mishapes and big chunks, all slung out the back, were just as good and free,apart from the occasional barbed wire rip!
The factory on the industrial estate, was an all round the year scrump.
We scrumped fruit as well, 20 odd of us at a time , cleared the local orchards
We were in one once, and a group of blokes with shotguns, came upon a couple of us, and yelled, there's one of the little b********, we all lept out of the trees and scattered, and heard the shout f***** hell there's 'undreds of em.
Saturday morning pictures with the Lone Ranger and Mr Ed
The Tufty club
Pinky and Perky
Walking miles of hedgerows looking for birds nests, on your own and not a perv in sight
Porn was a crumpled, grainy, black and white picture that a mate found under his brothers bed of a naked woman who strangely had nothing at all 'down there'
Playing footie with an old lace up leather ball weighing a ton, if your dad was rich or a thin plastic ball that was f***ed the first time it hit the roses
Cricket matches cancelled half way through the first innings 'cos the only kid to have a bat got sent to bed early for back chatting to a neighbour
When knock down Ginger was performed by criminally insane kids who deserved the belting they got 'when yer dad gets home'
When visits from relatives guaranteed a farewell sixpence for 'being a good boy' just for staying in for an hour
I actually got the cane from the headmaster in my primary school for twisting the arm of a girl who wouldn't hold my hand in Country Dancing class. My God, what was I thinking? The guilt stays with me
I think I was probably young a bit before your time Dal.
I remember.
Saturday morning pictures. A cartoon, comedy short (Laurel & Hardy, Three Stooges, Charlie Chaplin etc.), a main film, usually a western then an interval when we all sang along to Uncle Ernie playing the cinema's huge Wurlitzer organ followed by an episode of a serial such as Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel and others. All that for 6d (2.5p).
Comics included The Eagle, Comic Cuts, Rover (ah, Roy of the Rovers).
Black Jacks and Tutti Fruitti Chews were 8 for 1d. Liquorice wood was 1d for a large stick and lasted for hours and Sherbet Dabs were also only 1d.
If you fell over in the playground and got a graze or cut a teacher would simply put Iodine (stung like f**k) and a plaster on it and send you back out or off to your classroom without any enquiry by Health and Safety.
In the autumn practically every kid in the school playground would be playing conkers and when it snowed the playground would be covered in ice slides. If you hurt yourself you was simply given rudimentary first aid and told to be more careful but neither of these activities were stopped or banned on health and safety reasons because that's what kids did and if you did get hurt that was part of the price you paid for being kids.
All we're rearing today are a bunch of little wimps who know more about civil liberties, health & safety and litigation than what it really is to be a child.
We used to have a guy come round every Friday night selling penny sweets.
He was known as the Friday man.
You could take a coke bottle back to the off licence and get the 10 pence deposit back for sweets. We used to go there mob handed with bottles.
3 uesd to climb over the fence and hide in the yard at the back of the offy, the rest would go in the shop with the bottles and get the deposit's back. The shop keeper would then take the bottles out to the yard, when he went back in the shop, the 3 in the yard would pass the bottles back over the fence and we would take them in the shop again for the deposit.
Conker's and Soot fights.
The best toy gun was a Johnny 7, if you had one of them you were the dog's nut's.
Well, I'm topping up on G&t's and getting away from the tiny black flies(harvest flies?)
Thunderbugs, Fred. Used to have thousands of millions of them in Lincolnshire.
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Ah the good old days.
Ricketts. Nits, having Nellie the Nit nurse going through your hair, shaving your head and painting it with gentian violet. You walked home looking like a blackberry lollipop.
Having nothing to eat. Making up a picnic with a sugar sandwich. A bottle filled with water and a ha'penny liqorice stick. Puking it all back up before tea.
Going to cubs and having to eat all the survival stuff that Skip used to make over an open fire. Then watching Skip go off with the Arkela into bushes 'hunting for food' he said.
Running around like a madman doing errands for you mam all week for a tanner. A miserable bl**ding tanner. Twopence on a chocolate bar, threpence in the flicks and a penny to last you the rest of the week, What spendthrifts we turned out to be.
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