Guess my age

[openthefrontdoor]

No this isn't going to be one of those threads where I post a photograph and ask you to say how old you think I look.

I just thought for a bit of fun for anyone who like me has too much time on their hands, I would post a few facts about myself and see if you can guess my age.

I will post odd random facts over the next day, then tell you my age tomorrow.

This is a new user name, in case I have mentioned my age in previous post.

Fact 1) My mother used to wear dresses made of crimplene.

Fact 2) My father used to ride a bike and wore cycle clips to stop his trousets from getting caught in the cycle chain.

Like a number of previous posters I think your mum was surprisingly old when she had you. Some of your memories could be mine and I’m 61.

I'm still sure she's between 67 and 71. But it's hard to narrow it down further than that! Unless it was a very rare pregnancy in her mum's late forties, OP is probably either 70 or 71.

I've got vague memories of it being talked about, but that's all.

Top of the pops and Crossroads.

Might be, if I hadn't mentioned I was an only child. haha

People are getting closer now with the updated clues and quite a few people have guessed my exact age.

This is interesting as some of your references are the same as mine but I think you are quite a bit older than me. I’m going to guess that you are 71, born in 1954.

Next clue (or reminiscence) - my parents used to drink Brooke Bond tea and I collected the picture cards they gave away with each packet.

This is hard!

I wonder if this prompted by a significant birthday tomorrow.

I think you are turning 70 tomorrow.

Have switched between 70 and 75 a few times.

I'm Irish so don't get the Green Stamps & parents favourite tv references at all, but have some family in England and kind of benchmarked from there and your other clues and a lot of assumptions in your parents ages when you were born.

I'm very confident that you can't be younger than 68 older than 80 yet. Have reduced my logical 12 year gap down to 5 year gap and eventually settled on 70!

Love this thread!

My birthday is not in June. The only thing that prompted my thread was other posts saying guess my age, but going by a photo.

Late 80's

66

Great thread. I originally guessed 78 but I'm beginning to wonder if you might be younger. Voting at 18 was introduced in 1969 so 18 year olds would have been eligible to vote in the 1970 General Election.
There previous General Elections were in 1964 and 1966 so if you are 78 (born in 1948), you would have been able to vote for the first time in 1970 (unless you lived in a constituency which had a by-election).

As a child, I do remember children at school who had aunts and uncles of a similar age. Before reliable contraception, women would sometimes start having children in their late teens and continue well into their 40s. There have been instances of this in Call the Midwife, with mothers and teenage daughters pregnant at the same time, and even some grandmothers having unexpected late pregnancies. So in reality, your mother (if born around 1913/early 1914) could have had children from 1930 to 1960.

I’m surprised you don’t fully remember 3 day week though, perhaps you are a bit younger. Revised guess at 68.

OP - have you always lived in the UK?

72

OK, thinking this through a bit more!

The Green Shield stamps are insignificant. I used to do the same with my mum and I am in my mid-fifties. They started when my mum was a teenager (she's over 80).

OP's mum was born before WW1 started. So the very latest she could have been born is 1913 or the first half of 1914.

Given female biology, the latest the OP can really have been born is around 1963. She is much more likely to have been born in the fifties and anything later than about 1958 is very very unlikely.

OP wore the uniform I remember in Boots in the early to mid 70s at 16-18. She doesn't mention it changing during her time there. So I think she must have been born at the earliest in 1954 and the latest in 1957. That makes her between 69-72.

I'm going with the later end and now think she is 71 and was born in 1955.

Yes, always lived in England.

72

I'm also thinking of a girl of my age who always thought that her 'parents' were her parents, but my own grandmother told me (in confidence), that they were actually her grandparents and that her real mother had given birth when she was 16 and had then left the area to begin a new life elsewhere. I now know that this was more common than I realised. Today, people are far more open about things like that.

We're getting closer now. So I'll give a clue that might narrow it down even more. The first big disaster that I recall in the news was the Aberfan tragedy.

68

I’m revising to 69 as your comment re decimalisation changes it

Interesting. That was 1966 and I was just a toddler!

However, how many other big disasters occured in the previous ten years I wonder? Aberfan was such a terrible disaster, involving a lot of children and made headlines around the world. I can't think of anything comparable in the previous decade.

Chelsea Girl was great - hot pants and tiny halterneck tops. I didn't dare wear that sort of thing, but did buy a green stripey acrylic twinset (tank top and cardigan), which I remember my dad saying looked very grown-up.

Biba was a voluptuous, vampy shop that I almost didn't dare step foot in. I did buy some perfume from there, though. The bottle was very thin, fragile glass. But I swear I can still smell it!

Remember Aqua Manda? And Boots 17 (or No. 7? - but I doubt it) had some kind of orange-scented range that I now revisit via Aldi's Lacura Vitamin C Brightening Daily Cleanser... very nostalgic sherbety scent.