Things you'd love to do again that are gone

[suckingonchillidogs]

I loved the funfairs of the 1970s/80s - trying to win a goldfish in a bag by throwing darts at a card, the ghost train, big wheel, waltzers, chair-o-planes, stuffing my face with toffee apples and candy floss. The music would be blaring (and very cheesy - Bay City Rollers/Racey/Bucks Fizz) and you had to traipse over a muddy field to get there. I know you still get similar things but it's not quite the same. I'd love to relive a 70s Easter weekend at the fair! Anything you wish you could do again?

I'd like to be 7ish and get picked up on the last day of winter term, get changed in the back of the Nissan Sunny and then play car games and count Christmas trees on the drive to see my grandparents in Derbyshire. My brother and I would fall out over who was winning the spot the red car game or whatever nonsense it was and Talk Radio would be the soundtrack to the drive. My grandparents' house, like many people have already mentioned, was like stepping back in time. Bone handled knives, candlewick bedspreads, glass plates and mugs, trinkets, thick, patterned carpet which the heavy doors would shush over as you barrelled through them to see Grandma. They let us watch ITV with Michael Barrymore programmes or Cilla Black and we would eat homemade ice-cream or get Chinese takeaway and Christmas adverts would play (there's millions says Geoffrey, all under one roof...). Breakfast was tomato sausages from Birds bakery and ohhhh, their gingerbread men. All of it. Just feeling safe and loved and cherished. Grandma died just before the pandemic and I was with her at the end. I just hope she knew how loved she was.

So many others on here I agree with. I'd like to watch the BBC run up to Christmas drama again. Narnia or the Borrowers or whatever. Sunday night after the Clothes Show and you had to wait for it. Pick n Mix in Woolworths. The town turning out for a fete or fundraiser. Endless days on my bike or playing by the river or on the building sites with friends. Tag, Block 123, British Bulldog. Camping with my parents.

I also find it curious how many list their pill fuelled nights as the best time ever. I lost a friend to that culture and all I can remember is twats on pills who talked a mile a minute, were endlessly selfish and lucky to survive. They liked to wax lyrical about coming up and coming down like it wasn't all just a terrible gamble and fucking awful for the people watching them or picking up the pieces. It's the ultimate dichotomy though. They lived it one way, I witnessed it another.

Such lovely memories on this thread.

I’d like to go back to a Sunday in the month of May and be 6 or 7, on my swing, with my dad mowing the lawn and the aroma of roast dinner and tunes from Family Favourites floating out of the kitchen window.

I agree fairs were exciting. They seemed so exotic whereas with my old jaded eyes they just look seedy and expensive now.

I’d also like to go round Chelsea Girl or Clock House with my mum - and get an outfit for a disco on a Saturday evening in some village hall.

I love this thread. I'd love to go to my old childhood home in Ascot, seeing my old bedroom with red wallpaper and white hearts, matching lampshade etc. How I managed to even sleep with the bright red I'll never know 🤣 Hanging out with my friends and not coming home until dinner. Appreciate my family more. It never occurred to me that my dad and grandparents wouldn't always be around 😭 visit my grandparents house which always smelt of pipe smoke. Nan would have made cakes and we'd eat them with really sweet tea,then we would have a go on pacman on atari or I'd listen in whilst my grandad was on his CB radio. His handle was pacman on there.
Visit Kensington market. I loved it there. Then find someone selling chicken chow mein for £1 or something silly but it was the best I'd ever eaten. Lovely memories ☺️

I also find it curious how many list their pill fuelled nights as the best time ever. I lost a friend to that culture

Same here I didn’t feel qualified to comment because I wasn’t part of that scene, but later I lost a very close friend to pills and it was heartbreaking seeing her and that group of her friends, all of them, just going completely downhill. It makes me think of the epilogue to A Scanner Darkly ‘If there was any ‘sin’, it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great’

What a lovely thread

@IncyWincyGrownUp

I’d like to go back to the tiny local library, where the librarian would magically find some more space on my ticket for me to have more books. Where I could discover science fiction and fantasy books, and not have to think about anything other than the words on the page.

I rarely get to the library now, it’s a fair bus ride away, and is a large city library that just doesn’t feel the same.

I spent hours in our little village library, I can still smell it if I close my eyes. And yes to the kind librarian letting me take extra books, mostly because she knew I would still be back in a week having read them all I hate that my DD hasn't had that, our big town centre one is close enough but utterly soulless and unwelcoming

Sunday lunch at actual lunchtime, stirring bisto gravy powder into the roast dinner tray on the gas ring until it thickened, listening to jimmy clithero on the radio as dad carved the meat.

I just made Sunday lunch with bisto ❤️

I wish I could spend one more summer day with my best friends hanging around on the park at the edge of our housing estate, playing hide and seek in the bushes, lazing around on the grass and eating 20p mix ups from the newsagents. We were young, slim, happy and we didn't have a care in the world. It's weird to think one day we did that for the last time and we had no idea.

I'd love a big get together with my family again. We used to have big celebrations for birthdays, Christmas and Easter and barbecues every summer, but a few years ago some of my aunts fell out over something silly and now they don't talk. It's such a shame and everything is boring and awkward now. I hope everyone goes back to being close but I fear too much has been said. Sigh.

Professor burp’s bubble works takes me back! I went to chessington on my birthday one year and it made mine and my brothers day to see a little kid vomiting a blue slush puppy out of his nose. Happy days

@spacehardware

I just made Sunday lunch with bisto ❤️

Ahhh bisto, memories of when gravy was made with powder not granules 😀

Libraries were so much better. The thwonk thwonk of the stamper and the smell… and the “Quiet please” notices. I was always intrigued by those books in that weird alphabet that was trendy in the 60s and early 70s. Poor kids who were subjected to that experiment !

@ShowOfHands

I'm sorry to hear about your friend.

Yes there were casualties too. I know of a couple myself. Not so much pills but the wider excesses. But I also know of people who died backpacking and of alcoholism and in a car crash and suicide. Its all pretty sad if I stop and think back over the last 30 years. But also plenty of adventure and hope and freedom.
I wouldn't be happy for my own children to do what I did. So that's probably the answer.
But at the time it really was fantastic.

I have lots of other fabulous life memories and wouldn't be lying to say they include the lovely old ladies who ran our Sunday school. Attended by over 100 children. You wouldn't get that now! I miss that too. Church isn't the same now. My children don't enjoy going and neither do I.

Sit round the table on Xmas night with my extended family playing cards and picking at leftovers whilst the adults got good naturedly drunk.
My parents died young and my aunts, uncles and cousins are now all over the country. Never see any of them anymore.

Go nightclubbing in my 20s in the 00s

I said about the 90s, being at Uni and drinking but neither I nor my friends ever did pills.
This thread has made me so nostalgic for my lovely grandma. Lost her over 20 years ago, miss her every day.

Go clubbing at Bagleys or Turnmills then stay up until mid morning the next day in my friends house-share drinking tea and smoking fags before catching tube home.

Yes! Some of my best ever conversations were in the waltzers at The Cross or in (platonically) shared beds as the sun came up after a night there/Bagleys.

Be in my own home, sitting on my sofa with my dog and my own things around me in a room that I decorated. Potter in my garden.
Spend Saturday at my grandparents, all squashed into a tiny room with an open fire watching Dr Who and eating Nan's roast dinner (best roasties and Yorkshire pud ever) with jelly and ice cream for afters.
Be the girl with the hair (so vain I know but I miss my long and swingy dark hair).
Gallop along the beach on my fave riding school pony, joyful and fearless.

Ride the rolacoster at metroland

Eat a packet of Spangles!

@cptartapp

Sit round the table on Xmas night with my extended family playing cards and picking at leftovers whilst the adults got good naturedly drunk. My parents died young and my aunts, uncles and cousins are now all over the country. Never see any of them anymore.

Same here 😢

What a lovely thread. Just shows that as parents we shouldn’t worry too much about affording flashy days out and keeping children entertained- a simple trip to the fair. a family dinner and a good film provide the best memories.

Gosh I remember a video store down the road from me. It was not Block Buster but my brothers and I loved going there. We saw lots of daft horror films!

I would go to Van Allen/Dorothy Perkins/Richards/C&A for my clothing and Stead and Simpson for my shoes! I really miss Woolworths. Before Sainsburys clothing was called TU, Woolies had a make up range (after the Evette range) called TU. I had two eye shadows - Maroon Chaos - yes Marron and smoke stack a pearly silvery mauve. Both were lovely! I miss Yardley cosmetics too, also Miners and Outdoor Girl.

Speak to my brother before he turned self centred and not a nice person. I'd love to know what his issues are with me. I've tried asking but got nowhere. Not spoken for 3 years.