Even when I started teaching myself, spirit duplicators were still on use; The master copy was made with something similar to carbon paper (more than one colour was possible if you were being fancy, or music sheets with the stave already on there, ready for notes to be added) and this would be put on a duplicator where sheets lightly soaked in methylated spirit were passed over it on a roller. Thus, freshly-printed copies would give off delicate fumes, to be greedily inhaled.
When I was in the Girl Guides, the packing for summer camp was thus: hire furniture van, stack in first, the hard lumpy stuff like tent poles, then the soft, squishy stuff, like bedding rolls, then the guides themselves. Seatbelts? We didn't even have seats! Hilarious when the van cornered; we'd roll across, giggling. At one big camping event, we watched as another company arrived in a coach; we considered them hopeless softies.
On a recent edition of "The Repair Shop", I watched the craftsmen restore a child's cooking stove, where the miniature pots and pans were heated by resting over slides containing lit methylated spirits; happy memories of my own stove, although that one required the insertion of lit firelighters in the space underneath.
I still have my tinplate Micky Mouse teaset, with all those lovely sharp edges, and play figures of Looby Loo and Teddy (don't know what happened to Andy Pandy) made of painted lead.
One of my dollies had a fully equipped miniature handbag, with the accoutrements which any young lady might need: powder compact, hairbrush, comb. mirror, packet of 20 Players Weights. When most of my toys passed down the family, the miniature cigarettes stayed with me; I think attitudes were changing.
However, sweet cigarettes were a favourite purchase on a frosty morning, as your breath in the cold air could imitate smoking; it's what all grown-ups did......and my beloved late DF showed me how to manoeuvre the Old Holborn and a Rizla cigarette paper into a roll-up for him.....
The Inner London Education Authority was ahead of the law in abolishing corporal punishment, and I was very early on in my career when this happened one January, so one term into a school year. I remember one mummy earnestly enjoining me, "Never you mind the change in the law, Miss Twosheds, if you think my daughter needs a smack, you give her one!"
In fact, I was already against it on principle, knowing from my own schooldays at grammar school that it was perfectly possible to keep order without resorting to physical violence, but I had been routinely slapped (not that often!) at my own Junior School.