Random childhood stuff you have no explanation for.

i remember having my picture taken with 2 small monkeys circa 1979/80ish in a shopping centre in the North West. I look absolutely terrified in the picture and still remember being terrified of them.

Do you remember the stickers that oil, petrol and car companies gave out? Petrol stations usually had some to give away. Some of them were really flash with intense colours and metallic foil. My weird but long-suffering parents took us on long road trips around Europe most summers, and all the foreign petrol stations had exciting new stickers we hadn't seen before.

It was much easier for kids to play car games when there were no seatbelts as you could twist around and look out the back window.

I saw a re run of an early episode of Eastenders and Roly, the Watts family poodle, was let out of The Vic to go for his wander.

From age about 4 to about 11 everyone went to birthday parties that were the same format with the same games and the same kind of food. People didn’t hire anywhere or have entertainers or go to the cinema for birthdays at that age. It was in your own house. The girls would wear long dresses and the boys smart clothes. In fact my boyfriend at the age of about 4 was admired by me because he wore a nice tie to a birthday party, he was aged 4 as well. My liking for his tie has gone down in family folklore.

We called the elastics German Jumps.

Clackers were eventually banned at my school.

Punch Buggy - a game my DCs and their friends played in the car.

They all held their breaths when driving past a cemetery too.

Where I grew up, they all ended up scratching themselves outside the bookies.

Dogs roamed free. We called them by their given names and surnames - 'Fido Murphy', 'Snoopy Sullivan'...

Yes in Scotland. My grandparents both have photos of themselves as children with one of these dressed up monkeys.

Being given a dish of milk and a cloth then asked (told) to wipe the individual leaves of the house plants with it. Yes, all of them. All of the house plants, all of the leaves.

With no explanation or understanding of why, but inspections to check it was done to standard.

We play cheese on wheels for a yellow car, baby bell for a yellow mini, Peugeot punch for a Peugeot and DH & DD have made a new twinning car for any car that’s the same as ours.

i do remember a punch game but I thought it was something to do with VW Beatles but I may be wrong.

We’ve just reintroduced ‘cheese on wheels’ for the next generation down - turns out there’s loads of yellow cars/vans/buses around now.

I left primary in ‘08 and I fondly remember the dog/school scenario. I don’t know how it happened. We had electronic whiteboards and high fences- dogs did not roam free.

Haha! I’ve just remembered that when my twins were little and getting under my feet I would give them a cup of water and two tiny paint brushes and ask them to go outside and “paint the house” they’d spend ages doing this 😂😂

Sorry off topic. I also remember way more dogs being around as a child, loads off lead. You hardly ever see dogs walking to heel off lead now in town, just as well really.

I loved elastics
inside outside inside on

@CoralDreamer if you didn’t leave your teeth embedded in a horse seesaw you could throw yourself off the top of this precarious thing onto a bed of concrete. Where did the sky high slides go?

My sons used to do this whenever they saw a double letter in a number plate 😂

There was a long journey game I vaguely remember, scoring based on the name of a pub and the number of legs. I think it was turn based and something to do with cricket.

Those rocking horses could be rocked so violently the mechanism underneath would be exposed. Our urban legend was a child lost an arm in one.

Dogs were let out for the day, none of them were neutered, they'd congregate at our house when ours was in season. We'd have to walk her on a lead and pick her up if a big dog showed up. I remember them jumping up at me. It's a wonder I never got bitten. Probably explains why I'm pretty chill round dogs, it was kill or cure.

My dad had a red book with all the beginnings of number plates in and where they were registered. We'd try to spot as many as we could on long trips.

Once the tiny post office up the road was robbed. Dad had noticed a car parked opposite our house (small dead end lane in the middle of a tiny village) and noticed that the car was registered somewhere a long way away so when the police were doing their investigations he mentioned it as being unusual. The police traced it and caught the burglars! This was back in the 80s so I guess it was more unusual to see cars that weren't bought locally. I only found this out recently but am weirdly proud of my dad for being such a number plate nerd 😁

Another memory is burning my backside coming down a really high slide on a really hot day, I think it was made of brass!

We used to cherry pick and I remember sitting on the tailgate of my dad’s Morris Minor van and driving round the orchard to collect the trays of cherries and being stung by nettles as we drove over them. Also my being told to let my dog lick my scraped knee as he would make it better! We were well ‘ard!

The metal grated steps up to a slide were agony if you clipped a shin on them.

My Dad always got an Audi on the 1st August every year …cannot imagine buying a new car ever !

Thank you ! I wanted to say Merrackers 😂

Clackers!

The slides ,really steep ,no safety rails and swings that would go practically over the top ,insane but sooo much fun 🤩

French elastic and magnetic balls on string …cannot remember the name! Knuckles got destroyed.About 1973.