Memorable stuff from your formative years

[Ruckerwocman]

There was one of those machines on the north bound platform of the Piccadilly line station at manor house, 6d got you a selection of 3 different flavors, which came in a sealed bag, in a small box, so you opened the box, pulled out the bag, and placed the now empty box back in the still open pulled out drawer, and pushed it closed. The next punter got a box of air....... we were a bunch little sods back then. Early 60's

You little scrotes.

 

[RangdoOfArg]

Not even prize day! just normal jogging.
Kids that sliced through fingernails with hacksaws, failed to wield an Adze properly, couldn't spell moderately difficult words, had crap handwriting or even dared to eat left-handed were singled out for daily ridicule, correction and sometimes weeks in the remedial class with the mongs, flids and divvies...
Didn't seem to do any harm and prepared most for the robust work environment to come.

I’d say, for ‘my old school’ carry on normal jogging.
And so you must.

 

[Chef]

Not even prize day! just normal jogging.
Kids that sliced through fingernails with hacksaws, failed to wield an Adze properly, couldn't spell moderately difficult words, had crap handwriting or even dared to eat left-handed were singled out for daily ridicule, correction and sometimes weeks in the remedial class with the mongs, flids and divvies...
Didn't seem to do any harm and prepared most for the robust work environment to come.

I remember at primary school the pencil sharpener was basically a surform blade mounted in a box one of these types;


You soon learned manual dexterity and not to sharpen short pencils. (Except for 'Stumpy' John).

 

[RangdoOfArg]

Not even prize day! just normal jogging.
Kids that sliced through fingernails with hacksaws, failed to wield an Adze properly, couldn't spell moderately difficult words, had crap handwriting or even dared to eat left-handed were singled out for daily ridicule, correction and sometimes weeks in the remedial class with the mongs, flids and divvies...
Didn't seem to do any harm and prepared most for the robust work environment to come.

Sounds like it was ok and never meant to no harm but did the opposite

 

[longwayfromhome]

This went on for much longer than you might think. As a copper in the late 1990s we would have to deliver bad news in person. I had one guy burst out laughing. One guy dropped on the floor, and I called an ambulance. Shock.
I once went to an address and delivered the news to a woman whose teenage daughter had died in a car crash. Two am, all family woken. Then I realised the mum worked with my missus. Awful all round.
I felt awful all round for ages. The family who had lost their daughter were great to me whenever I saw them.
Anyway, do coppers still do this? Probably the worst aspect of a police officeR’s job.

I remember doing “death messages” not a popular task at all. I presume they are no longer delivered in person now the police have much more important things to do like arresting Chardonnay for calling Sharonna a slag on Facebook

 

[Trackpen]

Not even prize day! just normal jogging.
Kids that sliced through fingernails with hacksaws, failed to wield an Adze properly, couldn't spell moderately difficult words, had crap handwriting or even dared to eat left-handed were singled out for daily ridicule, correction and sometimes weeks in the remedial class with the mongs, flids and divvies...
Didn't seem to do any harm and prepared most for the robust work environment to come.

When my kids were at schools in Italy and Switzerland, so 1995 to 2014 between the two of them, from Infants onwards, if progress in a year was not up to snuff kids could be kept down a year - backsquadded if you like.
That was the system, parents and grandparents knew that was the system, and made sure the youngsters worked.
Having said that, there was also streaming and separate types of class depending on abilities/capabilities.

 

[Gardner6LXB]

Speaking of pantries etc. I’m amazed that my Grans house that was built in 1950 had a pantry with cold block/shelf & also an outside toilet with a coal shed attached. They had an inside toilet & bathroom upstairs.
Random.

 

[Fiona_TG]

We had a pantry under the stairs with a stone shelf for keeping milk and cream cool and a wooden meat safe with a perforated metal grill in the door. Long buried memory. Tin bath, coal fired copper, Baby Belling stove and a Primus for making tea. Main smells were coal fire, meths and kerosene.

A coal fired copper eh? I think the ones round here are doughnut and kebab powered.

 

[OneTenner]

Sounds like it was ok and never meant to no harm but did the opposite

Well, I still eat left handed, I can use an Adze properly (sort of) and I never hacksawed through the end of my thumb so it taught me some skills and some resiliance in the face of overwhelming dinnerladies odds

 

[cent05zr70]

A perfectly harmless (for once) and innocuous memory just flitted into my head.

Circa 1959-62 I used to walk to school in Cove. On a frosty winter morning the spiders webs in the bushes would freeze up and look like a silver filigree made by a magic jeweler.

If you got a small stick and bent it into a loop you could collect the spiders web on it. You ended up with something resembling a miniature tennis racket or snowshoe. Very pretty to look at but no rhyme nor reason for doing it.

A quick Google image search showed no pictures of this so I assume kids no longer do it.

Certainly a lot less damaging to nature than my mother and her childhood friends sticking a straw up a frogs arse and inflating it.

Arse! Rectum, shirley?

 

[beefer]

Main smells were coal fire, meths and kerosene.

And Jeyes fluid.

 

[old_n_fat]

And Jeyes fluid.

Love that smell. Proper time machine it takes me back so easily.

 

[Chef]

Arse! Rectum, shirley?

Rectum miss? Blew them to pieces!

I thang yew.

 

[ericferret]

Love that smell. Proper time machine it takes me back so easily.

Walking into the local clinic and being assailed by what appeared to be about 45 gallons of spilt disinfectant.
Walk into a medical establishment now and all you smell is the great unwashed!!!

 

[RedDinger]

We all had .177 Gat guns or .22 rifles. Bought from the local hardware shop at around age 13/14. No questions asked. Imagine that today. We’d nick crates of empty milk bottles from the local dairy & shoot ‘em up in the park.

The coppers would be knocking your door in today.

We also had Gat Guns, which we used to shoot 177 pellets at each other. Looking back, I'm amazed no one got seriously hurt.

 

[AlienFTM]

Walking into the local clinic and being assailed by what appeared to be about 45 gallons of spilt disinfectant.
Walk into a medical establishment now and all you smell is the great unwashed!!!

We moved into an Op Humane converted block. Shiny and new. Investigating, in the toilet/showers etc area was a small cupboard and at the back, an industrial demi-john size pharmacy bottle of something. Cautiously remove the top, the overpowering smell of CLEAN! Very high ammonia content.

As NCO and former driver of the SSM, I hung around for his Friday block inspection while everyone else did a squadron first parade. After the last troopers had bùggered off, I'd splash a liberal dash of CLEAN! around and shut the door. SSM walks in, opens door, gags on ammonia, decided it must be CLEAN! and moves swiftly on.

 

[Tedsson]

You tell the kids this stuff and do they believe you?!!!

Nope.

I was talking to my daughter about smoking in the old days.

I told her you could smoke in a cinema, at work, in a theatre, in the pub, restaurant, bus/train/aircraft, the underground and even in the doctors waiting room.

She didn't believe me and assumed it was the normal wind-up.

 

[tiv]

We never had one but I do recall some people having a gas fridge of all things.

Didn't know what coffee was as mother drank that disgusting Camp Coffee. In a chum's kitchen was an odd gadget mounted on the wall and was told it was a coffee grinder. Cast iron body, ceramic hopper and glass bowl to catch the grounds. So I asked about real coffee and got Maxwell House! Real coffee only came in the 70's when Lyons Coffee Bags appeared, been hooked ever since.

 

[Wightsparker]

Mid 1950s, someone must have told my mother about some foreign stuff called curry. She bought curry powder.
I must have been in my early 20s before I discovered at an Indian restaurant in Luton that curries could be more than curry-flavoured mince served with boiled potatoes. Having said that, I used to enjoy Mum's curries.......

 

[A signaller]

1960-1 or thereabouts, mum decides to take us to one of the first Indian restaurants in north east london, all i remember of it was being totally mesmerized by the many plates of different foods in front of me, a bit of this, and bit of that, and that boys and girls, is the reason i dislike curry, in any way shape or form.