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

478 replies

MyCheeryPearlTraybake · 28/05/2025 16:20

Going to the corner shop for some custard creams

OP posts:
SoSoju · 28/05/2025 21:59

Going to the corner shop to excitedly buy 50p worth of different penny sweets, “I’ll have one of those, 3 of them, 2 of those up there” etc
Those shop keepers must have had a lot of patience!

Playing out all summer till it was time for tea.
No mobile phones. You’d just tell mum & dad where abouts you’d be and that was that.

Spending my Saturday job wage (£20 + tips cash in hand, which I thought was decent back then) on teen mags. J17, Sugar, Mizz & Bliss.

A trip ‘into town’ with a few friends from school.
Spending hours looking at make up and trying on perfumes in Boots and Superdrug (Tribe, Charlie Red and the latest Impulse scent) Then we’d head to HMV to listen to new albums, maybe a look in Tammy Girl or Topshop ( but we could never afford anything in there) followed by a trip to McDonalds afterwards.

totalwinwin · 28/05/2025 21:47

For children of the 90s, those sturdy plastic lunchboxes that had a picture on the front, you carried by a handle and that had a matching drinks container inside. My parents were very concerned with healthy eating but also didn't seem to understand much about the new processed products so mine would generally contain a brown bread sandwich and vegetables wrapped in tin foil alongside peperami and munch bunch yogurts.

Hymns to mark the seasons - We Plow The Fields and Scatter for Harvest, Little Donkey for Christmas, All Things Bright & Beautiful in the Spring and, all year long, belting out Shine, Jesus, Shine.

Food to mark the seasons (this would be the same for my kids, now) - strawberry picking in high summer, blackberry picking in late summer, apple and plum crumbles and pies in autumn. Tangerines at Christmas time.

Someone else mentioned it already but walking around our village bare foot in the summer and the pain of hot asphalt on the soles of your feet, but they toughened up.

Village fetes, and the thrill of once finding a pair of high top trainers in the jumble table.

As already mentioned, The Snowman at Christmas, but also multicoloured tree lights that were in those little crystal shaped bulbs. Dad would lay them out across the sitting room floor and unscrew them one by one to find out which ones were working and which weren't. And those funny colourful foil decorations that stretched out and were hung across the ceiling.

IButtleSir · 28/05/2025 21:37

SummerInSun · 28/05/2025 16:27

As someone who didn’t grow up in the U.K. but read a lot old British children’s books, you all spent your childhoods camping on moors, riding ponies and capturing smugglers, didn’t you?

While eating hard-boiled eggs and drinking lashings of ginger beer, yes.

LivingDeadGirlUK · 28/05/2025 21:23

Eating a picnic in the car because its chucking it down.

Whaleadthesnail · 28/05/2025 21:17

Blue Peter

x2boys · 28/05/2025 21:12

maltravers · 28/05/2025 19:59

The taste of full fat milk. I don’t drink it usually, so the taste of it transports me back to the little 1/3 bottle of milk with a straw we had every morning at primary school until Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher did away with it.

Crazy full on British Bulldog with half the school charging up or down the pitch.

That school milk though was absolutely vile left in a,warm classroom all day 🤮would it have killed them to put it in a fridge?
It gave me a life long dislike for milk.

hazelowens · 28/05/2025 21:07

Going swimming by yourself or with pals on a Saturday. You walked into town and back so you had extra for the vending machines, or just going into town with no money but trying on loads of clothes. Or as an older teen who had money getting a hot donut and cream from the guy who sold them in the shopping arcade.

Weedresistantmembrane · 28/05/2025 21:04

Radcliffe and maconie on r6 play snippets of theme tunes from old tv shows.
Black beauty and Howard's way take me back.

Weedresistantmembrane · 28/05/2025 21:03

Why don't you?
Nothing on telly on Saturday afternoons... apart from Grandstand.
Water fights with fairy liquid bottles.
Sitting in the bath in tepid water, with sunburn.
A 10p mix. Where you chose the 10.
Not being allowed to mix lemonade and squash because it was a waste.
The kids. Kids everywhere.
The lads always trying to hurt you with sticks or stones or plastic knives from the army kits you could get.
Hedge hopping.

RM2013 · 28/05/2025 20:46

Ah so many memories.

walking to school in snow, hose pipe bans in hot summers,
only having 3 TV channels but watching Bagpuss, camberwick green, Trumpton etc and the sheer joy when channel 4 was launched.
Seeing the big tv on wheels being rolled into class was always a good day
chips from the chippy on a Sat evening
roast dinners every Sunday
playing out with friends for hours
milkman delivering milk and me and my sibling fighting about who would get the cream off the top of the milk for our cereal
10p mix up from the local shop
holidays in my Nan and grandads caravan
not having a car until I was around 10 - we used to borrow Grandads

GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing · 28/05/2025 20:37

Agree with the ice cream van

Going to a pebble beach, being able to change under a towel with ease and swimming in cold sea. Happily. Eating fish and chips (or just chips) on the beach.

AInightingale · 28/05/2025 20:36

Lardychops · 28/05/2025 19:58

Playing in America accents or later Northern Irish ones- a la ‘Why don’t you’ - the daily kids summer holiday show !

This embarrasses me to write it, but when I was about 7/8, Charles and Diana got engaged and all the girls I knew were obsessed with them. We used to play 'Prince Charles and Lady Di' and invent all sorts of domestic scenarios. Also played a game with stuffed Charles and Di dolls where we threw them over the roof of the house. I think Charles was stuck up there for months.

Thatwasthenthisisbetter · 28/05/2025 20:34

The Pru man coming every week ( or month?) I’m still unsure, was it insurance?

The excitement when I got a Sindy horse for Christmas. That was my only present from my parents, plus a stocking of colouring pens and pocket money type toys, but I was over the moon.

Does anyone know if you can watch Follifoot, Heidi etc anywhere?

Lorrymum · 28/05/2025 20:15

Looking forward to my weekly comic. I think it was Teddy Bear,Twinkle, Lady Penelope, Bunty eventually ending with Jackie.
Rushing out "to play" after tea and only coming home after being called in by my Mum or Dad.
Long cycle rides and walks.
Making camps in the woods.
Searching through my Mum's catalogue for my chosen toy for Christmas.
Playing with Sindy, Patch and Patches pony. Also my Britain's model riding stable and ponies.
Innocent times!

Andoutcomethewolves · 28/05/2025 20:10

AsTreesWalking · 28/05/2025 18:55

All of this. But I went out alone on my bike all day before I was a teen.
Also picnics with a calor gaz stove and tea from a teapot.

I had a moped and an air rifle from the age of 8 and my parents were happy for me to disappear all day with both, I suspect they may have been a wee bit neglectful

Lardychops · 28/05/2025 20:04

Tarzan in mornings in the summer holidays - Jonny Wizeman / Eroll Flynn …
first crushes

Sat on the floor watching Jaws on repeat with my sisters by rewinding the Betamax.

sleeping in pitch black as no street lights in our village and no way would my
parents ever have agreed to landing lights on/ night lights

Watching Kilroy on sick days off school, then being left alone for whole day.

Mums friends all smoking super kings, in double denim, with tight mullety 80s perms.
All called Aunty Pat/Linda/Janet/Pauline, big laughs - Mouths full of fillings.

Genevieva · 28/05/2025 20:00

Strawberry picking; shrimping; bbq on the only day in the last fortnight that it rains; making daisy chains the length of the school playground; rounders; waking up after a sleepover in a tent in a friend’s garden covered in slugs; sailing Optimists; all-day walks without grown ups or mobile phones.

CapitalAtRisk · 28/05/2025 19:59

Cod. Liver. Oil.

maltravers · 28/05/2025 19:59

The taste of full fat milk. I don’t drink it usually, so the taste of it transports me back to the little 1/3 bottle of milk with a straw we had every morning at primary school until Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher did away with it.

Crazy full on British Bulldog with half the school charging up or down the pitch.

Lardychops · 28/05/2025 19:58

Playing in America accents or later Northern Irish ones- a la ‘Why don’t you’ - the daily kids summer holiday show !

BunnyLake · 28/05/2025 19:56

Every morning before school my mum would give us a spoon of malt. I thought it was great, seemed like a real treat. It was supposed to stave off colds.

Also, this may have just been us but we (the kids) would get a spoon of butter and dip it in sugar and eat it. Well it was probably Stork margarine (that was advertised by, I think Leslie Crowther, as being just like real butter - it wasn’t) but we still ate it happily.

Every Sunday evening there would be a family sitcom (7.25pm), usually with the above mentioned Leslie Crowther.

Kittkats · 28/05/2025 19:54

This list covers my childhood and my kids!
Being home when street lamps come on.
Building dens in woods.
Water fights.
pocket money sweets from the corner shop.
playing out on bikes.
Reading a new book in under 24 hours.
Putting stockings on the end of the bed for Santa and waking up with them heavy on your feet.
The ice cream van.
Building snowmen.
A paddling pool in the back garden.

TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 28/05/2025 19:51

I had a Dr Kildare doll.

It lacked genitalia.

XWKD · 28/05/2025 19:51

Fish fingers and Doctor Who not being shite.

Bitteralmond · 28/05/2025 19:49

Fish and chips at grandma and grandpa's eaten with fish knives and forks.
Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding also at grandma and grandpa's.
The ice folly show at the ice rink.
The aquabelles show at the swimming pool.
Getting my first kodak camera with a film roll in it with only 12 exposures and my great uncle Mick making me use two of them to photograph his lawn and a row of French marigolds and lobelia.
Buying Golden Wonder crisps from the school tuck shop at morning break AND afternoon break.

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