Dad your'e Joking

[jackie j]

My nan used to save thrupenny bits for my holidays and my sisters got the sixpences and the shillings.
Half a crown bought us a weeks school dinners.

[loveday69]

YouTube - Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen

Hillarious! ROFL

[Nicos]

Half a crown bought us a weeks school dinners.

Gosh- I'd forgotten that!!
We used to be able to buy jammie dodgers or plain smith's crisps with the blue twist of paper (containing salt) for morning snack to eat with our 1/3 pint bottle of milk. Girls lined up before boys as a common courtesy too!

Misty mornings walking to school on my own at the age of 6 ( we just lived outside the smog area).........Almost being late as there was a wonderful oak tree to climb en route!! Never been the same after hanging upside down, skirt hem around my ears

Playing with ants at the kirbside with a squeezy bottle, french skipping and roller skating until bedtime or pottering in the garden with my father until bedtime, finishing off the day with a lovely smelly bonfire the scent of which would linger on in my hair the next day at school.

Boys with blue scabby knees where the gravel and cinders healed like tattoos under the skin!

....yes I was happy then...but I am now too!

[Winky]

Oh I loved thrupenny bits, they were just so chunky - you knew you had a coin in your hand with those - I still miss them (sad aren't I?)

thrupenny bits - they were the best!! We've got a few still and every now and then get all nostalgic
Phone boxes with button A and button B - or am I showing my age

[Mikey]

Ah phones, I'm only a young pup, who never lived in a shoebox, but I loved the rotary dial phones. Except when calling people with lots of 0's and 1's in their number.

[danski]

dont remember a three day week. had a few four day weekends though! never had pocket money either we used to go to the local shop pinch the emptys round the back, then take them round the front for the deposit.not many. just enough for ten berkley superkings (we had to buy long ones to share between 5 of us).didn't have much money but we had a laugh.!!

[rogesse]

I remember it all, especially the cool bath by candle light (isn't that romantic now?)

Wouldn't it be a wonerful thing if it could be experienced again by our darling over pampered teenagers - I suspect mine would need councilling after being separated from the xbox for more than a few hours.....

[pipscariad]

Eee, it's a right old nostalgia trip, this thread! It's amazing how many things you'd forgotton all about come flooding back...

A place I was working a few years back was organising an event and we had to go to the cash 'n carry for 'penny' sweets - I tell you, after a week or two 'finishing off' Black Jacks and Fruit Salads, suddenly they become a bit much!

I lived in the middle of nowhere in the North York Moors when I was growing up (and loved every minute!), and we were beyond the mains, so the power cuts never effected us, we had the phut phut of the diesel generator keeping us illuminated. The Rayburn in the kitchen kept us cosy, but it was like an ice box upstairs, with thick frost and ice on the windows. I used to be snowed in for most of the winter - my birthday's in November and I used to nearly always have to cancel my planned party....

My children love hearing all about it (at the moment, they're young enough to be interested!), and we've got some great memories

[Cloud]

I remember it all, especially the cool bath by candle light (isn't that romantic now?)

Wouldn't it be a wonerful thing if it could be experienced again by our darling over pampered teenagers - I suspect mine would need councilling after being separated from the xbox for more than a few hours.....

That soooooo hit home

[BarleySugar]

I've been trying to plan a camping trip, my teenagers are only interested in a campsite with wi-fi access! They can't believe we had to choose between a TV or having the telephone connected when we were young. We choose the TV, why did we need to phone our friends when we'd been with them all day at school? If we wanted to send a messsage to someone further afield we wrote a letter, in fact I kept up with pen pals in France until I was in my mid-twenties, wish we were still in touch now.

[SarzWix]

French skipping...

Two, Four, Six, Eight,
Mary's at the Cottage Gate,
Eating Cherries off a Plate,
Two, Four, Six, Eight.

I was just in time to catch the Double Dutch thing (last year in junior school) too, that was great fun, but soooo hard, and turning two ropes at the same time wasn't easy either!

[Nicos]

Cripes SarzWix......one rope was hard enough!!!!

[geoff]

My dad was a boy in the Depression; and became a builder

In the 50s, 60s and early 70s a lot of his work was converting coal fires to gas or electric he said he would never do that in his own house, always keep one open fire then if there's a strike, a power cut, or if times get hard, you can always find something to burn -- a broken down fence, an old pallet, a dead tree, anything My own house now is all central heating, but if i move, i'll look for a proper fire I don't see economic conditions improving in the forseeable future At least I now have an allotment to grow some food, even if it is just spuds and beans

[Cloud]

What goes around comes around!Everyone wants solid fuel or wood burners now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Nicos]

Interestingly, in France, people get financial assistance if they install wood burning stoves!!!