When i was a boy

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no probs - I like the young man bit though, probably only 10 yrs younger than you !!
I remember buying 5 Park drive, bazooka joe bubblegum, no chinese or indian - the only takeaway was the chippy..out of newspapers ! Holidays in Seahouses or Blackpool - no overseas stuff then!
I think we may have come a long way in some respects but in other ways life was good then. probalby because of a big close family around me - makes a big difference !

Rich bugger, suppose Finchale Abbey wasn't good enough for you. :p

If me Da had done overtime to pay for the petrol we went all the way to Crimdon Dene. <rofl>
 

I still do, thats why I'm a fat bastard

no probs - I like the young man bit though, probably only 10 yrs younger than you !!
I remember buying 5 Park drive, bazooka joe bubblegum, no chinese or indian - the only takeaway was the chippy..out of newspapers ! Holidays in Seahouses or Blackpool - no overseas stuff then!
I think we may have come a long way in some respects but in other ways life was good then. probalby because of a big close family around me - makes a big difference !

It was single woodbines for me but had bazooka and fish shop chips was a treat, Holidays in Redcar or Scarbourough, Blackpool in a good year
 
I still do, thats why I'm a fat bastard



It was single woodbines for me but had bazooka and fish shop chips was a treat, Holidays in Redcar or Scarbourough, Blackpool in a good year

Butter cut off a slab in the shop and slapped into shape with paddles then wrapped in greaseproof paper.

While I'm waiting for the butter can I have a Woody and a match?
 
it was actually - with a metal folding stand. 2 speed recording - think it was a Phillips. probably fairly crappy by todays standards but I loved it !

4 Track and you could play what you recorded backwards, kids today and their computer games!
Hours of fun to be had, everyone laughing inanely at garbage. hahaha

Strange one in our house mind it was my Mam who was the gadget freak.
All paid for on tick at Liverpool house and Binns. Spent many a happy hour standing in the queue upstairs in Binns to keep her place while she was off shopping.
 
brains going now....remember the file 'Kes' ? About the kid with the Hawk ? It were all just like that, getting the belt at school, apprenticeships were taken for granted. The school gates opened at 15 and gates of Swan hunters opened... what do you want to be son - this queue for welders, this one for plumbers, dont know any of mates that were
refused ! used to play fooball after school till it was dark - maybe 6 hours at a time and did it all again the next day..
Bloody hell - cant believe Im talking like this - sound like me Da !
:emoticon-0105-wink:
 
What's amazing to me is that there's only 5 or 6 years between me and syd, and we only lived 10 or 12 miles apart. And yet we grew up in different worlds! We knew about black and asian people because we had students (male and female) from the African and West Indian colonies (as was) and from India and Pakistan at Sunderland Technical College, then situated at the bottom end of Durham Rd. My mother was a strong racist, pulling me to one side in the street if a "Jew-boy" was approaching and she regarded "blacks!" as little more than apes. But us young'uns kind of admired the students because the first thing a black guy bought when he could afford it was a nice suit and, especially, a white shirt. The white used to gleam against the black and brown skins and they always looked bloody immaculate. "Most hip, man".

*****philia was rife on the Fulwell End at Roker. It was common knowledge that if a man stood in front of you with his hands held behind his back, you'd best move because 'Eeee, he'll get your willie!' Some of them were well known for it. There was a well known guy who usually stood behind the goal among the kids, pick out one of a suitable height, and slip his hands round your thighs and press against your bum when the crowd got excited and wouldn't notice. I never had the experience but knew well how to avoid it!

Shop keepers and doctors were about the same as you describe. And foreign take-aways hadn't arrived. But drugs were a bit different. A lot of men had come home from places like Borneo, Singapore, North Africa and the Middle East with a liking for substances, and, in the late-1940s the demand for them in Britain rocketed. The 1951 Dangerous Drugs Act was pushed through to stop the flow. It was a silly rush job which grouped e.g. hashish with heroin (and we still haven't sorted the mess out). LSD came in from California at first in the mid-1960s. I was in my twenties by then and took it once a week for seven years, till about 1975. Very good for me in a lot of ways, though it did do some people harm.

The big difference, then and now, was domestic violence. Today, some do-goodie social worker would have gone to court to ensure that I didn't remain in that house with those parents. I'd have been forcibly removed (which I would have liked to be honest). Going just a bit further back, my grandfather was considered an eccentric at Wearmouth Colliery because he never beat his wife.

Thanks for this post, syd. It was a genuine eye-opener for me. Sunderland isn't on the main railway line, and national bus services were unheard of so my north-east had no choice but to look outwards. Walks down the docks with grandad on Sunday afternoons opened up the world to me - "Where's Valparaiso grandad?" "Where's Oslo?" All these ships from magical places - wow! Your small village just ten miles away was just as foreign to me when I read it - amazing world.

Smashing post <ok>
 
When I was a lad you could play ball footie and ball games in the street without cars getting in the way...The street I was brought up in in Ryhope had about 150 houses, and there must only have been half a dozen people had cars by the late 60's and early seventies...I actually drove down the very same street quite recently and every household seems to have at least one car..Absolutely no chance of the youngens playing 'gates' now...
 
When I was a lad you could play ball footie and ball games in the street without cars getting in the way...The street I was brought up in in Ryhope had about 150 houses, and there must only have been half a dozen people had cars by the late 60's and early seventies...I actually drove down the very same street quite recently and every household seems to have at least one car..Absolutely no chance of the youngens playing 'gates' now...

cars in Ryhope, I wonder how many were nicked