To feel sadness whenever I go on a council estate?

[TheHolyToast]

I was brought up on a huge council estate. It was the happiest time of my life. I used to play out with all the local kids, every night after school and every day during the holidays. The older kids taught me how to ride a bike and i still remember the feeling. The ice cream man used to come around and the siren sent all the kids running to their houses for money. The neighbours thought nothing of feeding kids that were not theirs - you'd simply go back to your friend's house and the mum would be like "so and so's bairn is here, put some extra fish fingers in". We would go and explore the local woods, play in the overgrown gardens of empty houses, everyone was happy and carefree. Everyone was friends.

Then my mum remarried into money and everything changed. All of a sudden it was "common" for kids to play in the street and I was sent to organised clubs instead where I didn't like anyone and they didn't like me. I changed school and the atmosphere was different, everyone compared how much their clothes and holidays cost, nobody just wanted to have fun, it was all about showing off what you had. I started playing truant as I quickly became friendless. There was no more playing in woods, no more "sweet van", god forbid you turn up at someone's house uninvited, you'd be sent straight back home again. I hated it and longed for our old house.

Anyway, 25 years on and I'm a community nurse now. I'm often working on council estates and in particular, my old estate. The sun always seems to be out in these areas, like I remember it.

The other day I went into a house that was identical to my old house. The memories started flooding back. The brown corduroy sofa and cheap mahogany furniture, Jackie from next door and the swinging chair she had attached to the ceiling. I started to feel upset but carried on with my work. Then at 3.30 the kids came bursting in, dropped their bags, announced that they were playing out and the mum shouted "make sure you come home for tea, fish fingers and waffles" then bang. The door shut and I watched the kids running down the garden path with their friends all stood near the gate waiting for them. I ended up quite upset at this point and the poor patient asked if I was ok. I told her her house reminded me of my old house and it was bringing back happy memories. She laughed and said "you lived around here? I thought all you nurses were posh? Surely you can't miss living on here??!" But I really, really do.

Money doesn't bring happiness does it? I feel it's ironic that throughout our lives, the focus seems to be on improving our financial circumstances yet the happiest time of my life was when I was at my poorest.

AIBU to pine for this stuff when it everyone else's eyes, we were just another poor family claiming benefits on a council estate?

Thanks for all the responses. It's been interesting and thought provoking to read them.

Something funny happened this afternoon - I was at work and ended up in my old area again. I asked the patient how to get to the local shops as I couldn't remember. I needed breadcakes. She told me and off I went. As I drove up to the complex of shops I noticed a gang of teenagers hanging around the entrance. I pulled into the car park and noticed a group of blokes ffing and blinding outside the pub. Just beyond the car park was a couple of blokes circling the cash machine on bikes and a little old woman walked towards it, looked at them and then changed course with her head hung low. I switched the car back on and drove off. "No fucking chance" I thought. Then I remembered the thread I started here earlier and laughed. Either the area has REALLY changed in the past 20 years or I never really saw the bad side as a child. A bit of both perhaps.

My parents split up soon after we moved from the estate, looking back THAT is when life started getting dark. Going to live at my grandmas, sexual abuse from a married in relative, my dad died, we hopped from one shitty flat to another with no heating, constant changing of primary schools as I was sent to live with different relatives until my mum got herself sorted out ... I suppose the council estate days were the last days I remember a happy childhood.

God that sounds a bit attention seeking! It wasn't meant to and I'm not looking for sympathy. I know other kids have it worse, I see it every day in my job.

Holytoast, I could have wrote your post. I too grew up on a council estate and experienced a lot of what you mentioned. Sometimes I still drive through it to get that warm, nostalgic feeling. It was the happiest time of my life. I agree with some other posters though. I'm probably looking at it through rose tinted glasses. But I often wish I could turn the clock back, just for a few hours to experience it all again.

Haven't rtft but I thought this was going to be you feeling sad for those poor deprived people so I was smiling a bit when I was reading your post

We live on a council estate and it is very much like you describe. I'm glad you have those memories to look back on even though you miss it.

Is this another plot for your book OP?
I'm sure there are many people who live on council estates that don't have the rosy memories who seem to. Me included.

No its no a plot from a book 😂

Sorry, I missed that you mentioned you had been abused and I certainly wasn't questioning that. The paragraph above does read like a novel to me though.

I've been poor and I'm now affluent. Affluent is so much nicer, it really is.

Very similar to a conversation I was having with my DM and DG the other day.
My DM lived on a council estate until she was about 11 when they moved to a new private estate in a city. She remembers it just like you - as halcyon days. She's still remembers the shock of moving to a more moneyed urbane environment. "Eaten alive" is a word she uses a lot.

My DG remembers it differently. They were fairly comfortable, but she recalls the school holidays when all the neighbourhood kids would run off to school at lunch time so they'd get their only decent meal of the day.

She cooked a round of bacon sandwiches one Sunday evening for my DM and her friends, most of whom had never tasted bacon (early 70's) and fell on them like they'd not eaten properly all weekend (they hadn't).

She also recalls the constant violent rows and fears over money amongst the neighbours. It holds memories that still trouble her to the day.

Not much has changed. I work for the local authority and there are still huge programmes in our borough to keep kids fed in the school holidays

poster MadameBronte Tue 30-Jan-18 20:16:13
I've been poor and I'm now affluent. Affluent is so much nicer, it really is.

Thanks for that insightful interjection MadameBronte. Next up, bears do shit in the woods and the Pope is indeed a Catholic.

FFS, that was rather unnecessary .

I moved off a big council estate a few years ago, still in council just in a smaller area.

It was just as you described. The kids played out the front, in and out of each other's houses. People really helped each other out, salt of the earth, people really made the effort to help each other. The fences blew down, a group of men got together and went along the row and fixed them. One little boy had to go to hospital for an operation so the whole street brought Halloween forward for him so he could trick or treat before he went in. We fed each other's kids, did each other's school runs if someone was ill or heavily pregnant. Old people would have their shopping done for them and their dogs walked.
However, as a parent, I also saw the hopelessness of the teenagers, the lack of opportunities, the drugs and crime and gangs. It was great for kids but the teens had to either join the gangs or be picked on by them. What was a place of freedom for kids became a dangerous place as a teen. There was a lot of robbery and burglaries, attacks at night, women stopped walking places on their own.
I miss it a lot, the sense of community. But I had to get my kids a better life.

I had no idea the Pope is a Catholic? Really? Every day is a school day on MN.

Sounds so much like my childhood OP! But when I was a child I didn’t realise we were poor, or that my dad spent almost all of the money he earnt at the bookies, or that my mum struggled so much. I wouldn’t want that to be my adult reality if that makes sense? Hence why I have always strived to own my own home and live in a nicer area, which means I am richer than my mum was but definitely work more! Anyhow, the road I live on is mainly youngest families, and children do play out - albeit mainly at the weekend.

Well. That took a strange turn.

How'd you forget where the shops were in this fabled, place of your happy childhood?

" A council house was nothing to be ashamed of, until the home ownership greed made it seem that way"

Its got to the stage where Shelter have launched a social housing commision to try and change the narrative about social housing tenants and how they are now viewed.

I live in social housing but grew up in a house owned by my parents who both worked Dad as a site foreman and Mum in a factory. I grew up in the 70s and 80s (born in 1973) and i remember long summer holidays playing outside or having friends round watching videos while my parents were at work. Had a fairly happy childhood.

I swopped houses to get away from a salt of the earth estate, kids dont see the blazing rows, poverty and drug abuse.

I predict half the kids my ds used to play with will never leave that estate as there is little encouragement to aspire to better.

A lot of the adults do not realise there is a whole world beyond chichester.

I grew up on a council estate in the 1970s. I too had a mostly happy childhood, though we didn't have much money. We had a lot of freedom to wander and space to play games and ride bikes as there were very few cars on the roads. I recall the holidays being spent mainly outdoors and as everyone knew each other, people kept an eye out. My dc do not have the same amount of freedom.

However, though I remember most people working, the problems were still there. Several neighbours were living in their parents houses, but with their own families too, so not a lot of space. Plenty of evidence of MH issues and problems with alcohol and domestic violence etc. though I have only become aware of this as an adult.

Apart from school, I was the first person that I know of to go to University. I was then seen to be a bit up myself. I'm now on a FB group for the estate and another for my old primary school. Lots of the families are still there. There has been a lot of happy reminiscing but I'm not sure I'd want to go back as I feel that I've become a different person - and not in the sense of being better off, but more to do with life experiences. My dc though I think, would prefer the freedom vs the music/tennis lessons etc.

I grew up in a posh village in the Cotswolds and we used to go out a play round the village all the time, sometimes on foot, sometimes on bikes, sometimes on our ponies. I'd regularly have supper at friend's houses.

Surely you just miss being a child with a good community of friends? Money and council estates have little to do with it.

Laughing at her thinking nurses are posh

I grew up on a council estate - when all of your family and friends are on benefits, anyone with a job is posh. Never mind having a job that requires an education.

Flabbermingo agree

I grew up in a middle class area on a middle class estate and the childhood described is exactly how I remember mine. I go back to my mums now and the road is like a car park so many cars no where to play. Society has changed the childhoods we had don't exist any more. Kids still play out where I live and mine do but it is not as free because there is so much more traffic on the roads so therefore not as safe. I do feel our kid are missing out but I don't think the childhood you describe happens on Council estates either or is linked to being poor or not. It was a moment in time that I think has passed unfortunately and now more then ever with everyone addicted to gaming smart phones social media etc I can't see it coming back

I think it’s a change in society more than the area and money. It is more frowned on for children to be out unsupervised (which is sad for them) and we tend to put them in clubs and keep them busy than leave them to get bored and make their own friends and entertainment in their neighbourhoods. But yes, those were good times, I’m of that era where you were out and playing til late.

I grew up on a posh housing estate, lots of young executive/professional parents. We still played out all the time and regularly had tea at each other's houses.