What's something that absolutely screams ‘British childhood’ to you?’

I slept in a car with three friends at 16 all the way up to Holland from the south of Portugal, it took us about a week. It was a shitty little Peugeot and they were mostly drunk (other than the driver) and insisted on listening to the Human League for hours on end

It was quite fun TBF!

I have a weirdly posh RP accent despite Liverpudlian and Cockney parents and my mum maintains it's due to listening to Enid Blyton tapes as a toddler 🤣

Jelly bags, as well as jelly sandals

flat lemonade for tummy ache

olive oil for earache - never for cooking.

lots of minor injuries - and huge scabs on knees and elbows - always always someome at school in a cast we would write on.

Aunts and nans who were my age now - 49 but looked and dressed like 70
year olds

parents referring to each other as ‘our mother’ and ‘our dad’

the ubitquitous big plastic bowl that was used for cake making, feet soaking, or sickness - and meat defrosting

a coal bunker we used to get into
to hide

older brothers sneaking the paper to look at page 3 - Linda Lusardi or Sam fox- everyone had a favourite.

the shock on our dads face and some of his neighbours /mates when the wives and mums came home with tight curly 80s perms having cut off 70s hippy style long tresses. Mine cried.

My nans girdle on the radiator

sunday school a d pink wafer bics afterward and warm squash

not being allowed back upstairs once beds were made and it was tidy

Fascinated, sitting quietly while older female relatives talked about ‘women’s problems’ the ‘change’ and waterworks’ in hushed and furtive , subversive tones.

Fruit cocktail in a tin. And fighting over the cherry with my cousin

pink wafer biscuits. Foil wrapped marshmallows

I would go back for a week in a heart beat.
just for some of the smells alone x

Champion the Wonder Horse was great - I bet today's kids wouldn't sit glued to a black and white programme about a wild west equine. See also those ancient Flash Gordon programmes with Buster Crabb (?). We would laugh at the special effects, but watched them all the same.

Mine did that 🤣

@TheyFuckYouUpYourMamAndDad I loved my ugly plastic sandals - I liked to peep at my toes through the little holes. I suppose today's kids do the same with Crocs. There's a children's book "Jellyfish Shoes" in which a brother convinces his sister that the shoes are made out of jellyfish washed up on the beach. I'd have been scared if I'd read that then!

@thesnailandthewhale I too had the coins stuck in a birthday card, and had to write and thank her for them.

Scraping knees in the playground, and yellow stuff "faires' magic" being put on it by whichever dinner lady was on first aid duty.

Pretending to fly, in the garden, with my parents' help. I was blindfolded and sat in a chair, which was lifted up, and moved around. It really felt like flying, and I would hear a commentary about the tiny fields and houses far below. I loved this so much, and my parents did this wonderful thing in which I would end up in a very different part of the garden from where I thought I had started. I didn't learn for years how they tricked me with that bit of magic.

'Girlie' soft porn is v tame in comparison to what's around now, unfortunately.

I remember Tennants tins having 'daring' images of glamorous women on them, though there was no actual nudity. Imagine the outrage today, yet again, there is much worse on the internet...

My mum ironing in the living room every Sunday evening,
Getting the latest Top of The Pops album which had cover artists. We didn’t seem to mind, though some covers were very dodgy,
Years of dancing unselfconsciously in the living room to the radio, until one day a family member teased me and I never did it again. It wasn’t malicious but the damage was done 😞
Page 3, which thankfully stopped. So weird to think having barely legal topless girls in the daily newspapers was normal,
Top shelf magazines in mainstream newsagents (they gave me the rage!) Thank god they’ve gone too.

Sesame Street on Saturday mornings. 😍 Loved my Bert and Ernie dolls.

I didn’t have any grandparents growing up, it’s lovely there are so many people having happy memories of their grandparents in their childhoods 😊

I think we used to watch the opening credits for the song then switch over. I don’t think we watched the actual programme, it was a bit slow for us.

I’ve just remembered Champion the Wonder Horse!

So worth getting ill for.

Your Nan sellotaping some pound coins to the inside of your birthday card

Sleeping ( all 3 of us ) in the back of the car with the seats down all the way to France . A jam sandwich and a bottle of squash to keep you going all day in the woods . Toasting on a toasting fork over the coal fire . Ice on the inside of the windows in winter . Mittens on a string under your coat . Enid Blyton books .

Banana antibiotic. Raspberry Pripsen for worms. It was indeed grim.

I was born in 1968 @Tangomango1 and I'd be fascinated to go back for (a month or two?!!) to my childhood - and go with my dc as kids to see what they thought of it!! Reckon my dd would love it but ds not so much!! 😃

Just googled that - it was in fact raspberry flavour - it was sort of bitter sweet and chalky

Oh yes and those massively tall slides, ridiculously high monkey bars and sodden sandpits with dog poo in.

Fall off one the apparatus and it was straight down to casualty.

Sunday - everything closed
Early closing Wednesday

Swap Shop - Cheggers shouting at us manically cheery on some sodden beach

Seaside Special or Holiday Special - some tent somewhere with men dancing in tight flared trousers and sparkly tops with moustaches, some off colour comedian and a few spesh acts.

Bit more classy - Frank Muir and Paddy Campbell gently sparring while defining words on Call My Bluff.

NB Watched a lot of telly as weather was so bad.

For mine (totally irrelevant for my DC)
Ice cream van and 99 or popeye ice creams
Donkey rides, trampolines and swing boats on beach.
Playing out on streets
Knock down ginger
British bulldog
What's the time Mr Wolf
Corn beef sandwiches
Taking lemonade bottles back to get 5p/20p
A quarter of sweets
Or penny sweets or even half pence sweets!
School assemblies, reciting the lord's prayer and singing hymns
Getting gravel in your knee when you fell over in the playground.
Playgrounds with swing horse and spiders web climbing net, roundabouts, swings with really long chains that you could go really high on and tall metal slides that were scorching hot in summer.
Brownies and Sunday school.

Yes - antibiotic. I remember it being slightly gloomy too - revolting.

Ewwww I'd forgotten white lightening and the puking in the park! Happened many a time 🤢

My dad drawing hopscotch squares with chalk in our backgarden,
Being entertained playing tiddlywinks, snakes & ladders and Frustration,
Cresta fizzy drinks with the polar bear ad,
Blue Peter and Magpie (I was a Magpie girl),
Seeing my favourite (at the time) popstar open our local fete, Brian Connolly of The Sweet. He was grumpy and unengaged so I think I may have removed his poster from my wall in disappointment. 😁

Used to love that stuff!

Ice cream van, rock pools, grazed knees and running from wasps.

How long and boring the summer holidays were!

No way, we hated going back to school.

A frozen Kwenchy Kup (7p)