It’s 5.30 on the Sunday nights of our childhoods. AIBU to ask you what you are doing?

[StudentProblems]

It is 5.30 on any Sunday night of your childhood. For me it’s approximately 1997. I am having my hair nit combed in the front room, having been told off for not eating all my roast pork. Dad is messing around with the fire because it won’t draw properly. It’s all a bit tense.

What are you doing?

Ironing my siblings shirts and watching heartbeat.

At my grandparents, we've just finished a dinner of stewed pork pieces in gravy with mash and veg. School Around the Corner is on (NI people will know!) and soon it'll be time for Heartbeat which means time to go home to my parents.

Getting ready to go out to the evening service at church. We often went twice on Sundays.

We'd have finished a roast, mum wasn't a great cook but it was the one meal we had altogether in the week.

I'd have had a bath and a hair wash (also enjoyed mum or dad brushing it while i sat and dried it by the fire)!

Wonder Years/Borrowers on the TV.

This lockdown has reminded me a lot of these memories too. Very happy times. I hope my DCs feel similarly in tears to come!

Late 70s

Finishing homework lying on the front room carpet. Feeling sick because it's school tomorrow.

Mum is in the kitchen making cheese and cucumber sandwiches. White bread, but with the crusts cut off because it's Sunday. Slice of Battenberg for afters.

80's for
Me Eating tea ( sandwich ) taping top 40 , everyone home and relaxed , sundays always were generally a chilled day and one day we were normally all home as a family .

Mum ironing, crap weather, everyone moody about school/work, Bullseye, homework, cheese and biscuits (roast was at lunchtime), recording the charts, bath, hairwash. God Sundays were boring in the 80s. Sort of like now really.

It's the mid 60s aged about 9 or 10 and I am in the launderette with my Mother and quite capable of operating the machines, helping to fold clothes and sheets as well as helping to carry them. We would catch a bus into the town centre around 5:00 pm and go then as it was a quiet time. We would have eaten a main meal at lunchtime. I think I had to miss some of Pinky and Perky who were TV puppet pigs. We got back home around 7:00pm and my Dad would be listening to Sing Something Simple on the radio. Then it was go for a bath and get ready for bed during Dr. Findlay's Casebook.

If I was 7-8, it'd still be the 70's/start of 80's and we'd probably only just have had our tea, might be still eating. It would probably have been something like bread and butter with fish or liver paste out of a little glass jar, and salad - I don't remember sunday tea being a big deal. Lunch would have been a roast chicken, or special chicken soup with rice, or possibly 'stew' (which I would have toyed with for about two hours and had to stay at the table until I'd either eaten most of it, or managed to mess it about to the extent that it looked like I'd eaten most of it). I might have had a really small glass of Woodpecker cider with my lunch.

We'd have been watching whatever 'family' thing was on tv at that point, but the only things I can remember, like The Borrowers, or Box of Delights, were on a bit later, into the 80's. Maybe Antiques Roadshow? Later, after the bath I shared with my younger brother, we'd both sit in front of the tumble drier in the kitchen, on a large square floor cushion, to dry our hair in the warm blast from the vent at the front. We'd both have books - it took bloody ages. I reckon now this was a chore-saving and crowd-management ruse on the part of my mum.

Later on into the 80's, when I was about 13 or so, sunday evening would be stuck through with guilt and squirming because I still hadn't done my homework.

Late 1980’s/early 1990’s. Pubs chucked out at 3pm and dad would come home in a vile mood and start a row with my mum.

We would either have to sit there and watch the whole debacle whilst starving as we wouldn’t be allowed to eat dinner. If we were lucky dad would pass out pissed on the sofa and we would either warm the dinner up in the microwave or if dinner hadn’t actually been finished we would make pancakes with the Yorkshire pudding batter and watch Antiques Roadshow

Being asked is my homework done.
Watching top 30 hits.
Dinner.
Bath.
Watching Glenroe.
The fear!!!!
Bed!!!

(Late 80s early 90s Ireland)

The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe! And possibly The Borrowers although I may be conflating there.

Last of the summer wine

After a heavy afternoon of playing elastics, I've finished my trifle and am expertly recording my favourite top 20 songs off the radio so that the DJ's voice isn't on the cassette.

I'd be about 10, and we'd be having crumpets for tea and watching The Borrowers or The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe.

Well technically it would be summer for me in the Southern Hemisphere so having had dinner probably running around wild outside somewhere on the property until called in for bedtime

Eating hot buttered crumpets or banana sandwiches with my cousins while all the adults played cards. Always looked forward to Sunday's at my grandparents house.

Mid to late 1980's,
Lemon curd sandwiches and home made jam tarts, french fondant fancies.
Super gran on the tellybox and then the antiques roadshow. (Maybe the A Team?)

Cheese on toast for tea, Antiques Roadshow in TV or Lovejoy maybe? Or Songs of Praise? I think...bit hazy!
Bath and hair wash, get all school stuff ready, read my horse books, telly...comb wet hair a million times, for some reason 😀

It's the 1980s, and me and my cousins are at our grandparents. We've had tea - and it's an actual "tea" of scones, cake, bread and butter, cheese, that kind of thing - and now we're amusing ourselves till it's time to go home. This involved racing our bikes up and down the street, climbing trees and building dens in the back garden; or, in bad weather, sliding down the banister and chasing each other round with my grandad's shaving foam...

Early 90's Australia. Probably still out riding my bike and running around with my friends. Only went in for dinner.

Shovelling Sunday dinner down so I can get to my karate class.

Antiques roadshow ubiquitous chez nous of course

I remember my grandad fetching his copy of the Sun up to our house and liking a read of the sexy problem pages at the back.

1996 and I'm getting a bath ready for school. I have been repeatedly told off for sloshing the water out of the tub and my dm is telling me to get a move on as she needs to get ready for work (night shift as an a&e nurse).

Df is looking for a saucepan to rinse the shampoo out of my hair with a spliff in one hand.

When I am in my nice warm just-off-the-radiator pj's, I'll have a yoghurt and a glass of water and watch a bit of very boring tv before being packed off to bed where I will proceed to refuse to go to sleep until approximately 10pm.

Mid 90s. We would’ve had roast beef for dinner. The ice cream van also used to come round on a Sunday. I’d have a tub of vanilla ice cream with raspberry sauce, and sometimes sweeties too or 10p crisps. Bath and hair put in a braid. I remember watching The Flintstones on TV before I went to bed and mum got to watch her programmes.

We would be having our dinner after putting our horses to bed , we had our main meal in the evening everyday , then probably finishing off homework .