Memories of Childhood

those that I saw o e bay are some i don't think i ever did!! I certainly don't remember the DR Who ONE!!
Which was the first toy/game you bought as a result of a TV advert? I am sure we bought the mouse trap game after one advert.

Very good question I don't know to be honest, I wasn't that influenced in my early days but I suppose it would have to be toy cars (television-related) like Thunderbirds or Joe 90. I do remember eagerly leafing through the toy catalogues of DINKY and CORGI and wishing I could have loads of them. I remember getting the PINK PANTHER car for one birthday though. LEGO was another favourite. Maybe ACTION MAN.

Being ill when you were a kid meant two weeks off school, dozens of 10p comics mostly Marvel or DC (with adverts in for see-thru glasses and Johnny Reb soldier figures -whoever he was!) and having your lunch, supper etc in bed. The worst type of illness was the flu. You felt like death if you succumbed to Russian, Red, Spanish or other types and so weak you could barely walk or lift a newspaper to read it-hideous times.

Summer colds were even worse where it was always bloody hot, Wimbledon for two solid weeks on the television(I was lucky I had an old video recorder so I could watch videos in my room if I wanted) and getting through boxes and boxes of handkerchieves.

Talking with GMach1 on messenger tonight, and one mention from him during a discussion about our childhoods in the 1970s about the powercuts which were a regular occurrence especially during 1972, triggered a flood of memories which I would have thought were lost forever.

Suddenly I remember trips along the High Street with my much missed mother, the sight of all the shops with lit candles on the counters, going into the local hardware store, which had a really strange smell, the guy who ran the shop, called Harold, wearing a brown Arkwright style shopkeepers overall, selling paraffin which at that time I had a real liking for the smell of. Buying the pink paraffin and fire lighters (they’d come in a packet and they’d be long rectangular shaped things which my Dad would lay on the rolled newspapers and wood, when we still had an open fire. God, the way it roared when it was a windy night, the sound in the chimney would be like there was a banshee living up there...one of my aunties had me half convinced one night that there really was one up there.....

The times before our house had central heating, the frost on the inside of the windows in the winter, getting up for school, absolutely freezing cold, going downstairs, for corn flakes in hot milk..,not recommended as the corn flakes would go mushy as anything...yuk.

(30-06-2019 14:41 )GMach1 Wrote:  Being ill when you were a kid meant two weeks off school, dozens of 10p comics mostly Marvel or DC (with adverts in for see-thru glasses and Johnny Reb soldier figures -whoever he was!) and having your lunch, supper etc in bed. The worst type of illness was the flu. You felt like death if you succumbed to Russian, Red, Spanish or other types and so weak you could barely walk or lift a newspaper to read it-hideous times.

Summer colds were even worse where it was always bloody hot, Wimbledon for two solid weeks on the television(I was lucky I had an old video recorder so I could watch videos in my room if I wanted) and getting through boxes and boxes of handkerchieves.

And the cellophane wrapped Lucozade bottle came out (well it did in our house anyway..funny how it tasted different then)

I really can't remember anything about the power cuts but I do remember buying paraffin and loving the smell of it. Can you imagine them selling paraffin to kids these days?
You've brought back so many memories about the roar of the open fire, I'd forgotten about that.

I emember when we bricked up our Chimney so we could have an electric fire. There is always a part of me that thinks the warmth from an open fireplace is better thn the electric fire. S for the power cuts were a regular occurrence then. Especially when it happened at a tense bit in a film or Dr Who. And the way things are looking if the current Corbyn led mob get in they could possibly return.

Ghastly stuff Lucozade. Someone bought some in for me when I was in hospital in 1986 and it was so sweet I couldn't drink the stuff, that and Tizer! Power cuts were never announced they just happened when you least expected it, plunged into darkness, lighting candles and in my case playing with a torch with my sister and shadow puppets with fingers on the wall. Another thing I remember was the old doctors surgery. It used to make me jump every time their 'ready' buzzer was used and the magazines were always women's and out of date.

^Go in any doctor's surgery and I'd guarantee you magazines wouldn't be no more than six months out of date and not so many women's magazines.

Sunday supplements abounded too but in our old surgery it was women who mostly went(men rarely appeared with kids or on their own so no need for other sorts of magazines) At the new surgery we have are no magazines that I can see and sometimes there are toys there for kids to play with. I do remember playing a game of Boggle with someone to take my mind off things.