To ask about stuff from your childhood that is strange in retrospect?

[TheCatOfAthenry]

My late grandfather used to poke us in the head with a pocket knife and say "bees bees bees". He used also give us coffee and home-brewed beer in our bottles from the age of about 10 months.

Unrelated, he used also come out with statements like "a minute is a very long time" and "nobody can hear you scream if you're lost in a chasm."

When we were ill, the crystals came out. They hoped to undo my scoliosis before the orthopaedic surgeon saw me. Had abscesses treated with funny poultices and homeopathic sweeties. One particular cure involved massaging your own nose and coccyx simultaneously. (For one condition, the school got involved to ensure I got real medical care.)

We had the archangel Michael's sword carved on our front door. We were taught that if we told a ghost to go away three times, they would. I have yet to utilise this information. And we went to Catholic mass for good measure.

Spent many a night in public houses - Dad's a musician. Was reared in a cloud of tobacco smoke. Holidayed in caravans and essentially ran wild on a halting site every summer.

Mainly nice memories. Lots of lovely people around us. I grew up into a very skeptical medical doctor, but I still enjoy all sorts of people. Get out the guitar from time to time, but only enjoy crystals as decoration these days.

Would love to hear others' retrospectively strange experiences.

BalloonSlayer, The Bumps - now that really takes me back!! Brilliant.

Long hot summers days (where did they go?) playing outside all day, every day, sun up till sun down, on your bike or pretending to play tennis in the middle of the street. Few cars so you didn't run the risk of dinking them, and we couldn't hit hard enough to knock the head of a geranium

Over the park with a jam jar and make shift net out of a garden cane, a coat hangar and pair of your mums old tights Never getting sun burnt, never wearing suntan cream.

Laughing at boys from the school next door mooning from the upstairs deck of bus, going past the school field. they'd all be on the sex offenders list today

Playing cards and board games of an evening, or reading. We didn't have a telly until the 70's and even then it was turned on for specific programmes.

The man down the road used to go rabbitting. Dunno where, this was the middle of London. We'd get up in the morning and find tens of rabbits hung on the apple tree to cure their skins.

Buying single smokes! and 1/4s of sweets!

Being sent to modelling school for the day in 6th form to be shown how to walk, sit, and shake hands in an interview, how to dress, put make up on, smile and greet nicely. No one believes me when I tell them this! And I've never failed an interview !

TicketyBoo
The office ladies were sticking tampons up our noses.

To stop your nose bleed.
One of the funniest posts I have ever seen on Mumsnet.

I think I've found my tribe - hello, everyone.

Being taught to ride horses bareback from the age of 5.

Communal showers after games.
Excruciatingly embarrassing, especially when 12 years old. No privacy, we were crowded into a small changing room and had to strip off and walk through the showers. No proper washing or soap allowed we had to keep moving. The teacher stood and watched to make sure we all got wet

My parents really weren't poor, Argy

We went on holiday around six times a year, I went to private school. True, choice wasn't as plentiful as now but in my early teens there was Tammy Girl (remember that!) and Marks and Spencers for ordinary stuff, Debenhams and BHS. Plus sportswear was very "in" then: Adidas and Nike and the like.

No, it was strange. We went to Turkey a few times on holiday and my dad insisted on buying loads of horrible jumpers with fake designer names ("Channel", really!) and a pair of the world's most uncomfortable jeans that had buttons on the fly instead of a zip and they were my clothes for non school uniform days and school trips. I got CRUCIFED at school for it. One of things I am still so bizarrely grateful to DH for is when I met him, at sixteen, he actually bought me a whole load of clothes - just standard jeans and tops and cardigans and shoes, from Topshop and New Look (i chose them but he paid as he was working!) It meant when I started sixth form college I fit in!

I find the chucking kids out and not letting them back until dark awful, to be honest.

It really wasn't. You would find food and drink (usually orange squash) at someone's house (you would be in a group) or scrump apples.

If you were very lucky someone had a grandparent near by and then you would get cake, or, even more lucky a picnic.

Asking what's for tea and being told 'shit with sugar on'

In our house it was 'bread and catch it' ir a slice of bread any whatever you could catch.

I used to be sent with a note to the shop to get my mum's fags - I wasn't at school because I was only 4. Can you imagine that now?

she also spent a large chunk of every day drinking coffee in various friends houses.

You mean she attended 'coffee mornings', such a 70s thing along with 'cheese andewine parties'

It wasn't awful for you, sashh

Doesn't mean there weren't a lot of frightened and lonely children - easy prey for predators. And a lot of danger from railway lines, water, farm equipment (remember Apaches?) empty houses, and so on.

I remember Apaches yes, OK maybe it was bad for some children but what I describe was the norm for me living in 3 different places so normal for me and a lot of others.

Sundays at 'The Club' - a naturist club in a field in Surrey, all year round.

No sugar at all until I was a teenager. No TV. Only vegan food. My mother explaining proudly that this way I'd never get a taste for it.

She was wrong and I was gobbling up all the forbidden foods every chance I got as soon as I was away from the house. I always think of her and giggle whenever I see parents on MN explaining how their DCs just don't like meat/sweets/MacDonalds because they've raised them so carefully.

I also wore gender neutral clothing (nothing major, just brown dungarees most of the time), wasn't allowed plastic toys and we grew our own food. Looking back, my DM was years ahead of her time! She was a total crank in the 1980s but now she'd be completely on trend!

I didn't say your parents were poor, opheliacat. I just said that having a small range of clothes was the norm rather than being seen as abusive, as some posters here seem to think. Equally, having one U.K. holiday, one bathroom and one (if any) car was normal.

Argy yes...smaller than today's kids but Ophelicat, like me, would have noticed than compared to her peers, she had far less...and like me, she now wonders why.

In the 70s and 80s when I grew up, my peers had clothes from markets and Marks and Spencer...later they'd graduate to TopShop.

They'd have at least a few outfits which were fashionable. I had very, very little to wear in comparison. And Ophelicat also points out that her parents were wealthy.

I'm sure they could have managed a few outfit changes!

Each summer my Mum would get a couple of my dads old shirts & cut the sleeves down & collar off for my sister & I to wear over our swimming costumes all summer.

Maybe I should add I'm very fair skinned & burn incredibly easily

Stripey that's actually a good idea...here in Australia, I find it quite hard to find thin, cotton coverups for my kids.

Of course there are t shirts but they leave the upper arms exposed...

I didn't say my paremts were abusive for not buying me clothes, Argy.

On its own, no, it isn't. My dad was always a bit funny about spending money on clothes and some other stuff, to, to be honest, parking being one of them. I remember seeing him when DS was about 6 months and having a row about paying for parking! But on its own, it is a quirk.

Whether or not my parents were abusive, I don't know, in some ways yes very, in others, no not at all.

I used to get all my clothes from the jumble sale.

We had to shout up the chimney for Santa at Christmas.

We had to sit in the car with crisps while our parents were in the pub.

I had to put an oxo cube in my knickers for luck for dance competitions.

Boys always got bigger plates of food.

I could roam around all day by myself from the age of 5.

Grandma used to thickly butter bread and then sprinkle lots of sugar on for the children's nerves. Apparently it makes them stronger.

paxillin we used to be given sugar sandwiches for tea. Just bread and butter with sugar as the "filling". Seemed quite normal at the time.
There were 6 children and not much money so it was a good way of filling us up.
We were always skinny and the same now we've grown up, but I don't eat many sugar sandwiches these days .

The Wotsit cupboard really tickled me.

After my parents split up me and my brother spent every other weekend with my Dad. We really looked forward to going to the 'tyre place'. We used to go at night and get tyres from this industrial estate, and one time he even let us have one each and I painted mine purple. It's only as an adult that I realised he was stealing! He also gave us a crossbow (we were 7 and 5) which we were allowed to shoot in the house.

I loved the feel of teeth in the soft thick butter and the crunchiness of the sugar, Medeci. We were also all skinny despite clearly unhealthy food. I might have a sugar sandwich tonight in memory of my granny .

When I was growing up 'sugar butty' was a term of endearment, as in 'you OK my little sugar butty?'. I've never actually eaten one though.

Some of these are just brilliant and I remember many.
Family parties at ours ( 5 kids so they had everyone at us) in a fug of smoke with guitars and accordions and fabulous, wild singing that later became melancholic.
Us kids were told to make sure everyone's drinks were full at all times. I loved pouring huge tumblers of spirits at the drinks ' cabinet! The women all disappeared to help mum with the buffet and gossiped in the kitchen.
Later the aunties all slept in the double bed ( 4 of them) and they indulged me, in my single bed, with family scandal and stories of old. I swear I'll write it all.down one day!
The next morning the men woke on the various sofas and poured themselves a ' hair of the dog' and slipped you a pound note not to.say a word! Ah the memories.

I've wrote about this in here before,but our old headmaster used to get the girls heads, put it to his crotch and squeeze his thighs together. He also used to tickle us and ran the gymnastics club where we distinctly remember him running his hands over girls bodies, to show us the 'shape' our legs should be in whilst doing a cartwheel.

It was never flagged up cos it just seemed 'normal'