What's something that absolutely screams ‘British childhood’ to you?’

[MyCheeryPearlTraybake]

Going to the corner shop for some custard creams

Really? I learn something new every day thank you! I can barely believe we lived with these colours.

Babycham at Christmas
Homemade Christmas cake, pudding, mince pies, stuffing (I get it all from supermarkets 🫤).
My mum getting up ridiculously early on Christmas morning to put the turkey on. I’m beginning to think we must have had Christmas dinner at 11.am or something 😁

Walking down the river for miles holding our pink glittery jelly shoes and getting bitten to fuck by midges (late 90s)

Fish and chips at grandma and grandpa's eaten with fish knives and forks.
Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding also at grandma and grandpa's.
The ice folly show at the ice rink.
The aquabelles show at the swimming pool.
Getting my first kodak camera with a film roll in it with only 12 exposures and my great uncle Mick making me use two of them to photograph his lawn and a row of French marigolds and lobelia.
Buying Golden Wonder crisps from the school tuck shop at morning break AND afternoon break.

Fish fingers and Doctor Who not being shite.

I had a Dr Kildare doll.

It lacked genitalia.

This list covers my childhood and my kids!
Being home when street lamps come on.
Building dens in woods.
Water fights.
pocket money sweets from the corner shop.
playing out on bikes.
Reading a new book in under 24 hours.
Putting stockings on the end of the bed for Santa and waking up with them heavy on your feet.
The ice cream van.
Building snowmen.
A paddling pool in the back garden.

Every morning before school my mum would give us a spoon of malt. I thought it was great, seemed like a real treat. It was supposed to stave off colds.

Also, this may have just been us but we (the kids) would get a spoon of butter and dip it in sugar and eat it. Well it was probably Stork margarine (that was advertised by, I think Leslie Crowther, as being just like real butter - it wasn’t) but we still ate it happily.

Every Sunday evening there would be a family sitcom (7.25pm), usually with the above mentioned Leslie Crowther.

Playing in America accents or later Northern Irish ones- a la ‘Why don’t you’ - the daily kids summer holiday show !

The taste of full fat milk. I don’t drink it usually, so the taste of it transports me back to the little 1/3 bottle of milk with a straw we had every morning at primary school until Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher did away with it.

Crazy full on British Bulldog with half the school charging up or down the pitch.

Cod. Liver. Oil.

Strawberry picking; shrimping; bbq on the only day in the last fortnight that it rains; making daisy chains the length of the school playground; rounders; waking up after a sleepover in a tent in a friend’s garden covered in slugs; sailing Optimists; all-day walks without grown ups or mobile phones.

Tarzan in mornings in the summer holidays - Jonny Wizeman / Eroll Flynn …
first crushes

Sat on the floor watching Jaws on repeat with my sisters by rewinding the Betamax.

sleeping in pitch black as no street lights in our village and no way would my
parents ever have agreed to landing lights on/ night lights

Watching Kilroy on sick days off school, then being left alone for whole day.

Mums friends all smoking super kings, in double denim, with tight mullety 80s perms.
All called Aunty Pat/Linda/Janet/Pauline, big laughs - Mouths full of fillings.

I had a moped and an air rifle from the age of 8 and my parents were happy for me to disappear all day with both, I suspect they may have been a wee bit neglectful

Looking forward to my weekly comic. I think it was Teddy Bear,Twinkle, Lady Penelope, Bunty eventually ending with Jackie.
Rushing out "to play" after tea and only coming home after being called in by my Mum or Dad.
Long cycle rides and walks.
Making camps in the woods.
Searching through my Mum's catalogue for my chosen toy for Christmas.
Playing with Sindy, Patch and Patches pony. Also my Britain's model riding stable and ponies.
Innocent times!

The Pru man coming every week ( or month?) I’m still unsure, was it insurance?

The excitement when I got a Sindy horse for Christmas. That was my only present from my parents, plus a stocking of colouring pens and pocket money type toys, but I was over the moon.

Does anyone know if you can watch Follifoot, Heidi etc anywhere?

This embarrasses me to write it, but when I was about 7/8, Charles and Diana got engaged and all the girls I knew were obsessed with them. We used to play 'Prince Charles and Lady Di' and invent all sorts of domestic scenarios. Also played a game with stuffed Charles and Di dolls where we threw them over the roof of the house. I think Charles was stuck up there for months.

Agree with the ice cream van

Going to a pebble beach, being able to change under a towel with ease and swimming in cold sea. Happily. Eating fish and chips (or just chips) on the beach.

Ah so many memories.

walking to school in snow, hose pipe bans in hot summers,
only having 3 TV channels but watching Bagpuss, camberwick green, Trumpton etc and the sheer joy when channel 4 was launched.
Seeing the big tv on wheels being rolled into class was always a good day
chips from the chippy on a Sat evening
roast dinners every Sunday
playing out with friends for hours
milkman delivering milk and me and my sibling fighting about who would get the cream off the top of the milk for our cereal
10p mix up from the local shop
holidays in my Nan and grandads caravan
not having a car until I was around 10 - we used to borrow Grandads

Why don't you?
Nothing on telly on Saturday afternoons... apart from Grandstand.
Water fights with fairy liquid bottles.
Sitting in the bath in tepid water, with sunburn.
A 10p mix. Where you chose the 10.
Not being allowed to mix lemonade and squash because it was a waste.
The kids. Kids everywhere.
The lads always trying to hurt you with sticks or stones or plastic knives from the army kits you could get.
Hedge hopping.

Radcliffe and maconie on r6 play snippets of theme tunes from old tv shows.
Black beauty and Howard's way take me back.

Going swimming by yourself or with pals on a Saturday. You walked into town and back so you had extra for the vending machines, or just going into town with no money but trying on loads of clothes. Or as an older teen who had money getting a hot donut and cream from the guy who sold them in the shopping arcade.

That school milk though was absolutely vile left in a,warm classroom all day 🤮would it have killed them to put it in a fridge?
It gave me a life long dislike for milk.

Blue Peter

Eating a picnic in the car because its chucking it down.