My mums reaction to Chernobyl (lighthearted)

[Okeycokey1]

Named changed on the very slim chance that dm is a mumsnetter

On the phone to my mother having a typical catch up about what films, radio shows, tv we are watching etc and mentioned am I watching Chernobyl..

Mum says “oh I remember it at the time - I switched to buying bottled water, and also you’d only drink certain things (I was around 4 then) and I wasn’t keen on giving you your normal squash or milk. As cows may have been infected

You’d always liked coke and lilt so gave you that instead”

aibu to think this is quite sweet, and would love to hear your versions of 1980s parenting

80s child here. Dm also rubbed alcohol on gums for teething, but also used to put butter on burns! Hurt like anything, I wonder why

With respect to Chernobyl, I remember 2 men from the government coming out with a Gieger counter. Every child in the village followed them everywhere, listening to the clicking. It was very surreal.
I also remember not being allowed to drink milk for weeks.

80s kid here. Mum literally never let us do anything. But dad was a farmer so we were out in all weathers chasing sheep, cows etc. Watching bulls and rans 'do their thing'.. Watching dear dad elbow deep (without gloves) in sheep and cows calving and lambing. DF rarely washed his hands and bathed weekly til he was in his 50s. I miss him a lot. My daughter will be a city girl which I'm a bit sad about!

We also drank unpasteurised milk straight from the tank. Milk you buy in the supermarket isn't a patch on this.

Oh the memories!

My dad also had a transit for work. Mum didn’t drive them so we used to go pick her up from work at the hospital where she was a cleaner at 8pm. Baby sister in her car seat in the front with dad, my brother, my mum, me and all the cleaners from her shift in the back! There must have been about 10 of us squeezed in 😂

Dad was just talking the other day about how he used to sit on the living room floor to play the SNES, one of us in between his legs, roll up supplies and ashtray on one side, roll up in the mouth and a can of lager and bottle of buckfast at the other side of him.

We did the sitting on his knee driving thing too, he actually did it recently with my DD4 at the safari park and she loved it.

My nana as well! To this day you still can’t say you feel unwell in her presence as she will sit you on her knee and cover the back of your neck with vinegar 😂 have no idea why!

My mum said as a newborn she wanted me to get used to a dummy so she wouldn't have to keep going downstairs for milk in the night, so she kept a jam jar on her bedside table and every time I woke she would dip the dummy in the jam jar then stick it in my mouth, and I'd fall asleep again sucking the jam off. I WAS A NEWBORN. She said sometimes she would wake up and my eyes would be stuck together with jam and it would be all over my face from where she had just jabbed the dummy around in the cot trying to find my mouth 😂😂😂

I used to have Guinness in a mug from being aged 7 I remember being in the car with my aunt driving my mother next to her my brother and I in the back with a twin brother each on our laps my cousin next to us and my other cousin in the footwell at my mothers feet
We all rode on the back of my fathers motorbike as soon as our feet could reach the foot pedals (it was safer on the motorbike as I cut my foot to the bone on his pushbike)
I babysat aged 10
Would walk two miles home from school over 3 main roads
Could cook a meal aged 6
Could change lightbulbs/fuses from aged 4
Used to walk siblings home with no adults to walk with
My parents didn’t bother with seatbelts

I’d never allow mine to do any of this-but I survived!

Love this thread. I was born early 80s. I remember a lot of Sunday evenings spent in pubs whilst my mum and aunt went swimming. My dad and his brother would go to the pub and me, my sister and our 2 cousins would be given a £1 or 2 and left to it. I remember climbing over pipes over a river during these Sunday evenings. My uncle would let us drive around the pub car park sitting on his lap whilst we steered. Once another auntie was looking after us and we had to pick my uncle up an hour away. There were 7 of us kids in the car just bobbing around in the back. I remember going with my mum to get seat belts fitted in the back of the car when it became legal. Such good memories!

@Rainbowknickers I stayed at my grandmother's for the day once when I was off school sick aged about 6. Mum came to pick me up and asked how I was. Nan said I seemed better after she'd given me a glass of Guinness !

5, 6 and 9. My mum used to go to work at 8.30, come home at 12 to check on us and go back to work until 3. Every school holiday. 1970s.

one of the children decided to play with the cigarette lighter
One of our family jokes is the about the time I messed about with the cigarette lighter and got the cigarette bit jammed in and it melted the dashboard. I threw the cigarette lighter away on the my last car just in case.

to lie full length stretched out in the boot with sleeping bags the whole way

Our two travelled thousands of miles like that when we lived in Germany, they had Snugbugs, orange sleeping bags, they were wedge between the luggage, this was early/mid eighties.
When we went through th'Illuminations in Blackpool they would sit in the back of the estate car with the door open or they would stand with their heads through the removable sunroof!
Lots of people here seem to have very happy memories of their childhood when attitudes weren't as restrictive as they are today, I wonder if the cotton-wool children of today will have such happy memories?

@TheBrilloPad that made me crack up 😂😂😂

I remember at school we were all panicked about ‘acid rain’ coming from Chernobyl
It's hard to explain to people today how frightening it was, we were living in Germany, schools were told not to allow children out at playtime and the local hospitals were full of people suffering from iodine poisoning as they'd been told that it would ward off the effects.
The other scary time was in '63, we went to school not knowing if we would still be alive at home time, it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, nuclear war was a very real threat.

My Dad taught me to drive aged about 6, up and down the drive forwards and reverse and also at Gran and Grandads place which had a long drive. It was how he learnt. He did the pedals and I did gears and wheel. He also taught me to change oil aged about 8 and do service checks same age - l used to sit on the wheel arch of the car with my feet in the engine bay. I used to "help " him with lots of diy stuff and still do most diy at home.

My Mum only smoked at christmas when my Uncle brought her a stick of cigarette packs - but she never smoked around us. Various rellies smoked when I was younger but by the time the siblings came along they had stopped so it was only me and the sister down from me that would remember that. Fag and a G&T for Granny

Gripe water - I remember swiping that as it tasted lovely - same for buttercup syrup as well.

I remember playing in the coal bunker too but ours was clean, it was a good base for getting over the fence and escaping into the world at ours though.

We didn't perhaps have as much freedom for street playing as some in the 80;s so we enjoyed our freedom when we could bunk

I remember my brother getting drunk with some older boys when he was 9 and fell in a little stream, I ran home and grasses on him to my mum and she chase him home with her corn broom 🤦🏻‍♀️ he never drank again until he was 21😂

I Remember playing for hours in the forest behind ours we'd be out all day and pop home for lunch/drinks ect then back out all day climbing trees building dens.

Playing hide and seek in the high wheat fields.

I also remember my nan feeding me vodka when I had a toothache when I was about 10. And her cooking me bacon puddings when I fancied one 😋 she'd take me to the green grocers with her and buy me punnets on gooseberries and greengagers because they were my fave.

Burning my thumb on the cigarette lighter in the car and nan sticking it in butter 🙈

Oh how I miss my childhood. Kids these days don't know what their missing.

In the 1980s, when I couldnt sleep , my Dad would give me a shot glass of sherry.. must have been about 7 years old... I remember coming down saying I couldnt sleep quite often, just for the booze!

I remember Chernobyl I was 17 and in Amsterdam. Terrifying. Lots of jokes about glow in the dark sheep in Wales (Where we lived) as they thought they would be effected by radiation travelling on airflows.

My mum used to take me to work with hey in the summer holidays, I spent some time actually programming the computer that designed the double glazing for customers (who would have been horrified to know a 10 year old had processed their order for the factory!), being taken out to client meetings by her male boss who then would take me shopping (and bought me my first ever deodorant from M&S!), and going into the factory the rest of the time and helping to do the diamond leading on the windows. I am really proud that I helped to make the stained glass window in my grandmother's house, because the glaziers didn't know how else to keep a child occupied!

Crazy when you think of it now. Although DH used to take DS out with him on his round when he was a postie. Bit different environment though...

My 6th birthday was a couple of days after Chernobyl, I got a slide from my parents. The slide was in the living room for a month because I wasn't allowed out to play.

I was a terrible sleeper, Phenergan was still available over the counter.

Mum says she used to go to different chemists each time so they wouldn’t realise she was drugging her kid to sleep 😆

Phenergan - antihistamine was the 'medicine' of choice I used for my kids (late 70s).
Daughter got drunk at 3 - at a wedding she was asking everyone for a taste. No one person gave her more than a sip - by the time I realised what was happening she was well gone.

Being left outside the pub with crisps and a coke from about 6+

Being in the car without seat belts, especially in those Volvo estate cars with the back facing seats in the boot. Being in my friends Dads jeep, no seatbelts, no roof, no rollover!

Being told to “keep quiet” going through French customs - my parents had bought too much vino and we were sitting on it in the back

Playing in the woods next to the cricket pitch while my dad played cricket on long hot summer afternoons - I now know this wood was a rubbish dump - just a grown over one!

Not being allowed out at play during the Chernobyl era.

All these things yet someone yesterday visibly baulked at me giving my 2 year old my phone & his dummy to keep him entertained/quiet while waiting for a flight back from hols yesterday. Either that or he screamed!

We used to have an old 2 seater car, completely impractical as there was 2 adults and 2 kids but when me and my brother had to go in the car at the same time I used to travel on the tiny parcel shelf behind the front seats. It was better than the front seat though as you had to hold that closed otherwise it would fly open, especially on roundabouts.
I also remember travelling in the back of my uncles white transit van (he was a builder) when suddenly the van stopped and the police burst into the back, apparently they thought he was bringing reinforcements from outside the area to the picket lines at the local pit.

My dm only bought New Zealand lamb for years because of Welsh sheep eating radioactive grass. Just sheep though, all other livestock we carried on eating British!

From the age of about 3 or 4 I was given a very small amount of Guinness every now and then to help build me up.

My mum left us in the car whilst she did her weekly Waitrose shop. I would have been about 4 and my sister 10. My sister threatening to take the handbrake off 😱