Off Topic I Remember When

Drinking a bottle of milk at school

 

Thatcher Thatcher the milk snatcher

 

And the Sunderland Corporation Transport tokens.

 

Worrabout Willy Wafers with the lick on tattoos, little Popeyes all ower.

 

Or mars attacks with a slab of that rock hard pink gowie in the packet

 

Gowey ha ha that’s what we called chewing gum

 

Love it, can’t remember the last time I heard the word gowie, must be well over 50 years ago.

 

Nice one Snaggey!

 

You find plastic bags of porn too, mate? I wonder who it was who went around Shields And Sunderland leaving sticky porn for randy kids under privet and bushes. Brilliant reminiscences mate, many went back to my era in the 40’s, although life in the 80’s was easier, and I’m not moaning; each generation had it better than the preceding one.

 

Yeah. Even sex was innocent in those days.

 

I remember our house having one phone on a table in the hallway and it had a lock on the circle thing you dialled with. I remember the thrill of finding a discarded bin bag full of discarded “adult interest” magazines in the bushes in the park

 

I’ve really enjoyed reading this thread, even though it wasn’t my era - I was a mature man by the 80s - it brought back so many childhood memories. Some day I may post those memories on here of the 40s into the 50s, but it would be a long post, I’m afraid. My eyes are heavy now so I’m going to have a nap, so I’ll leave you all with that threat hanging over you.

 

scallywag

 

Sandy, mate, that was my era, but the whole point of this thread is for everyone to "Remember when", so please, share, tell us, what do you remember about your found times.

 

Mate, loved this, stuff like this is what I had in mind when I created the tread. Mine was about being born in the 80s and what I remembered and loved growing up in the 90s. I love that people are sharing, different decades etc. Me and a mate of mine at work who are the same age, from the same area but never met back then. We now talk about different people, places, the people that lived in our respective streets, the habits people had, and what strikes us is how mirrored everything is. The one bloke in the street that was always fixing a car, the street full of kids on a Sunday with mams and dad's sat on steps in the garden. I'm so happy we're all contributing to it with quality memories. I wouldn't be surprised if there's been a few laughs and nods of agreement from people reading. Class.

 

the music teacher used to drink something abit stronger in the instrument cupboard at my school

 

I was born in Penshaw, 1965. We lived in Avondale Avenue, top of the bank towards Chester Road. Sometime around 1970/71, maybe even 72, a new junior school was being built, Barnwell School, and our back garden fence bordered the field which it was getting built on. At the time there was a strike on...not sure who, but I can remember there being regular power cuts, and there was a shortage of coal, and we had coal fires. I can remember this.

The following I can't remember, but it's a story my Dad told countless times, and my Mam & Dad both used to laugh about it.

We had coal fires and there was a shortage of coal. A new school was being built out the back, and they had coal, lots of it. (My Dad said they used it to heat the tar for the roof, and the boilers for the school were coal fired).
My Dad sawed through a section of the fence and put a couple of hinges on it, making an "invisible" gate. When it was dark he used to go through the gate, and nick some coal. Not sure how often or how much, but it was enough that it got noticed.
One day he was in the garden, and a bloke from the site came over, wanting to speak to my Dad. He thought, ****, I've been caught!!
The bloke said that quite a bit of coal had been going missing, and asked a favour....
If the electric was on, would he leave an upstairs light on, and just look out the window every now and then, in the hope it would deter the coal theft. If my Dad agreed, he would see him OK, and would drop off a couple of bags coal for his trouble.
Week or so later, the bloke came back, and said it was working, the coal theft had stopped....would he still leave a light on, and he would bring over a couple of bags of coal a week.
We were getting a couple of bags of coal a week, in return for my Dad not nicking it!!

 

ahh the blackouts...we used to wander from the light to the dark all night, one area would have lights then they would go off and the next area along got them.

talking of light/dark... can anyone else remember when we did not alter the clocks and we all had to walk to school in the dark, we got 'dayglo towel bags' and were told to wear light clothing, pretty sure it was late 60's?

 

I remember when my older sister moved into an old colliery terraced house, it was in a right state, but it had a massive coal fired range in the front room, an outside netty with a proper chain to work the flush and an old tin bath in the kitchen, 2 bedrooms upstairs and it came with a small tomahawk axe firmly lodged in the cupboard door below the staircase
We all helped to clean it up and redecorate - there must have been about 20 layers of wallpaper on the front room walls - It took days to get it all off.
The street over the road was later taken apart and now stands in Beamish museum

I remember during the summer holidays being out all day, camping out overnight in the fields behind our house, staying up late playing cards, listening to James Whale on metro radio. Going to Scarborough on family holidays and then going 'up market' to Butlins Filey
One day me and a group of about 8 other kids from our council estate in Hetton, walked to Finchale Abbey (well that's what we called it) and set up our tent just before the torrential rain started. Luckily one of the lads had told his dad where we were going and he turned up looking for us just as it was getting dark. Somehow we all managed to get in the back of his mini clubman without any car seats or seatbelts