Fond Childhood Memories Thread.

[JanieB]

My brother, sister and I were sent to our maternal grandparents in Westmorland (now Cumbria) every summer holiday. We weren't restricted. The house was enormous as Nanna had originally bought it as a private hospital before the NHS was invented.

Grandpa owned a riding school and livery stable. He was also the local blacksmith.

We learnt to ride by default. Picked raspberries, gooseberries and apples and made (rather disgusting) drinks with them. Caught sticklebacks in the river and swam in it. Walked for miles. Nanna was a typical straight talking no nonsense Yorkshire woman, but she taught me and my sister to knit, crochet and embroider. She would also help us make cardboard dolls and dress them. If it rained and we had to stay in, there were piles of my mum and aunts old comics, a "holey ghost room" full of old toys and dressing up costumes.

The top floor had no gas or electricity, the first floor gas only and only the ground floor had gas and electric. The electric sockets were very different from modern ones. The pins were in a straight line like this -o-.

[ginger ninger]

I remember watching the wrestling on the T.V and having a big piece of pork pie and brown sauce snuggled up to mi dad. And a big dish of ice cream for pud, funny how ice cream tasted better when I was a kid, must have been all the additives that were in it ...I miss additives

[elsie-scot]

Getting to spend time at my aunt and uncles in the summer, who lived in the counrty and had woods that seemed to go on forever. Making mud pies, creating horse jumping course (we were the horses) out of anything we could find and doing pretty much whatever other adventures we could think up. In return we were slaves, mainly picking fruit and top and tailing it

[WillyNelson]

This thread has genuinely brought a tear to my eye...

For me my fondest memories are those spent at my grandparent's in Somerset. The warmth and smell in the greenhouse full of tomatoes, the dusty soil, picking fresh runner beans, digging for new potatoes. It's where I get my love of homegrown vegetables. Top it off with the wonderful oily smell of their garage and the smell of the mower in the shed.

When I was helping to clear their house after they passed away last year I just stood in the middle of that now empty garage and cried.

[taff]

my father taking me for riding lessons every saturday even though I was wildly allergic and usually had an asthma attack when I got back, because I was bladdy annoying and would create if I couldn't go.
eating coal in the coal shed and playing in it so when my mother got home both of us were black and so were our clothes.
making a fire every year in the country park to make baked potatoes with a friend before the first day back to school.
hanging about with my italian grandfather in the orto while he did what he had to do and I pretended I was helping him

[rustylady]

Isn't amazing how often smells turn up in memories. For me the best smell has to be the smell of tar, melting on the roads (lanes) in the summer heat. Summers seemed to go on for ever.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Sitting in a tin bath in front of a roaring fire on a winters evening.

Ma Taylors corner shop 1/2 penny chews and a jug of beer for my dad.

Shipstones brewery stables with beautiful white shires that we could walk under. My friends dad was a hostler.

A disused air raid shelter that became a castle for Robin Hood, or Stalag what ever number for war games.

Mates that fell out without resorting to violence then fell back in again.

I feel sorry for the children of today so many restrictions and growing up to quickly.

Colin

[Hilary B]

There weren't fairies at the bottom of our garden, there were trains; GWR commuter trains. My Dad caught one to go to work in London. The garden wasn't so very large, but effectively it was 'large enough' because the railway owned a wide patch and Dad rented the bit straight on from our garden, as big as the 'real' garden, and grew things there. Runner beans, there was a damson tree, tomatoes usually (I helped take off the sideshoots) There must have been other veg grown, but I can't remember anything else being grown every year. In the proper garden we had 2 apple trees, Golden Delicious, and unlike the ones in shops these days they WERE delicious! There was rhubarb, plus blackcurrant bushes.
We played 'Garden Cricket'. You need a minimum of 3 players, but more is better, taking it in turns as bowler, batsman and wicket-keeper, any extras do the fielding. If the ball goes nextdoor, it's 4 runs and OUT.
There was a swing, the frame built from hefty angle-iron, which I think was the remains of an 'indoor' air-raid shelter.

[bramble]

Sitting in the hay cart when the hay was being brought in from the field.
Watching the mill harvesting the wheat and the smell of the dust from the chaff,
The taste of my granny's home made damson jam after me and my sister finished helping our dad to water the field of celery.
Catching pin keens in the river with our home made fishing nets.
The smell of the melting tar on the lane in the summer and getting a few slaps for getting same tar all over our clothes.
so many more memories being brought back from this thread.
Wish I could have it all over again.

[Snadger]

Sitting in the hay cart when the hay was being brought in from the field................................
.

................then the cart 'cowping' , bales toppled and me being flung into a whinney bush!

[Nicos]

Oh- this thread is delightful!!!!

I've been thinking back quite a bit and remembering- and appreciating- lots of lovely childhood memories!

Brill!- thanks

[Glutton4...]

...
The smell of the melting tar on the lane in the summer and getting a few slaps for getting same tar all over our clothes...

Deciding it would be fun popping the tar bubbles. With my school shoes on! After being told off for that, we tried it bare-foot! LOL Just had to do it!

[jacob marley]

Isn't amazing how often smells turn up in memories. For me the best smell has to be the smell of tar, melting on the roads (lanes) in the summer heat. Summers seemed to go on for ever.

For me it was the lorry that used to collect spent Yeast from the brewery's in Bham and taking it to Burton on Trent to be made into Marmite what a smell it used to linger for ages are majic those were the days jacob

[Hilary B]

Oh yes, the smell of the spent coffee grounds being removed from the Nestle factory! Not a nice one, but definitely a childhood memory, and een the things that were not-so-nice can trigger nostalgia!