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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

478 replies

MyCheeryPearlTraybake · 28/05/2025 16:20

Going to the corner shop for some custard creams

OP posts:
IButtleSir · 28/05/2025 21:37

SummerInSun · 28/05/2025 16:27

As someone who didn’t grow up in the U.K. but read a lot old British children’s books, you all spent your childhoods camping on moors, riding ponies and capturing smugglers, didn’t you?

While eating hard-boiled eggs and drinking lashings of ginger beer, yes.

totalwinwin · 28/05/2025 21:47

For children of the 90s, those sturdy plastic lunchboxes that had a picture on the front, you carried by a handle and that had a matching drinks container inside. My parents were very concerned with healthy eating but also didn't seem to understand much about the new processed products so mine would generally contain a brown bread sandwich and vegetables wrapped in tin foil alongside peperami and munch bunch yogurts.

Hymns to mark the seasons - We Plow The Fields and Scatter for Harvest, Little Donkey for Christmas, All Things Bright & Beautiful in the Spring and, all year long, belting out Shine, Jesus, Shine.

Food to mark the seasons (this would be the same for my kids, now) - strawberry picking in high summer, blackberry picking in late summer, apple and plum crumbles and pies in autumn. Tangerines at Christmas time.

Someone else mentioned it already but walking around our village bare foot in the summer and the pain of hot asphalt on the soles of your feet, but they toughened up.

Village fetes, and the thrill of once finding a pair of high top trainers in the jumble table.

As already mentioned, The Snowman at Christmas, but also multicoloured tree lights that were in those little crystal shaped bulbs. Dad would lay them out across the sitting room floor and unscrew them one by one to find out which ones were working and which weren't. And those funny colourful foil decorations that stretched out and were hung across the ceiling.

SoSoju · 28/05/2025 21:59

Going to the corner shop to excitedly buy 50p worth of different penny sweets, “I’ll have one of those, 3 of them, 2 of those up there” etc
Those shop keepers must have had a lot of patience!

Playing out all summer till it was time for tea.
No mobile phones. You’d just tell mum & dad where abouts you’d be and that was that.

Spending my Saturday job wage (£20 + tips cash in hand, which I thought was decent back then) on teen mags. J17, Sugar, Mizz & Bliss.

A trip ‘into town’ with a few friends from school.
Spending hours looking at make up and trying on perfumes in Boots and Superdrug (Tribe, Charlie Red and the latest Impulse scent) Then we’d head to HMV to listen to new albums, maybe a look in Tammy Girl or Topshop ( but we could never afford anything in there) followed by a trip to McDonalds afterwards.

TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 28/05/2025 22:07

Going to the corner shop to excitedly buy 50p worth of different penny sweets

WTF I must be a lot older than all of you.

I was taken by my dad on Friday evenings to the sweetshop, and was excited to spend sixpence. That's 6 old pence (2 and a half pence)

You could get LOADS of sweets for sixpence in 1962/3! You could get four chews for a penny.

So you could get 24 chews for 2 and a half pence.

If I'd had ten shillings (50p) I could've bought the whole shop in my imagination.

ruethewhirl · 28/05/2025 22:56

Lorrymum · 28/05/2025 20:15

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!

Oh you’ve just brought memories flooding back, I used to have that Britains stable and loved it! Also had lots of Britains farm animals and buildings.

AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta · 28/05/2025 23:01

SoSoju · 28/05/2025 21:59

Going to the corner shop to excitedly buy 50p worth of different penny sweets, “I’ll have one of those, 3 of them, 2 of those up there” etc
Those shop keepers must have had a lot of patience!

Playing out all summer till it was time for tea.
No mobile phones. You’d just tell mum & dad where abouts you’d be and that was that.

Spending my Saturday job wage (£20 + tips cash in hand, which I thought was decent back then) on teen mags. J17, Sugar, Mizz & Bliss.

A trip ‘into town’ with a few friends from school.
Spending hours looking at make up and trying on perfumes in Boots and Superdrug (Tribe, Charlie Red and the latest Impulse scent) Then we’d head to HMV to listen to new albums, maybe a look in Tammy Girl or Topshop ( but we could never afford anything in there) followed by a trip to McDonalds afterwards.

All this.
It sounds like we had the same life @SoSoju! Such simpler times but so much better.

onwardandupwards · 28/05/2025 23:06

Arguing with my sister over who gets the toy in the cereal box
She ra and fraggle rock
Captain planet and thunder cats
Sara Lee chocolate cake
Playing pogs
Quince dolls

Obviousquestion · 28/05/2025 23:10

autumn days when the grass is jewelled
Sodastream
minadex
strap-on roller skates (boys), roller boots (girls)
marbles in the playground, ditto elastics
Father Christmas arriving by helicopter at the recreation ground and handing out toffee lollipops
gooseberry bushes
opening of the first McDonalds, a total event
you to me are everything at the school disco

AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta · 28/05/2025 23:15

Arguing with my sister over who gets the toy in the cereal box.

I'd completely forgotten about the toys in cereal boxes. Wonder when/why that stopped being a thing.

AInightingale · 28/05/2025 23:31

AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta · 28/05/2025 23:15

Arguing with my sister over who gets the toy in the cereal box.

I'd completely forgotten about the toys in cereal boxes. Wonder when/why that stopped being a thing.

It was quite reckless when you think about it, giving maybe a three year old a bowl of cereal that might have had a small plastic geegaw in it.

AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta · 28/05/2025 23:50

AInightingale · 28/05/2025 23:31

It was quite reckless when you think about it, giving maybe a three year old a bowl of cereal that might have had a small plastic geegaw in it.

True. I only remember getting light up clip on things to go on the wheels of your bike in them. And how boring the rest of the box was when the only thing left in it was cereal.

Lardychops · 29/05/2025 00:05

AInightingale · 28/05/2025 20:36

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.

D’ya reckon he’s still there lol?? From the 80s lol x
(Said in faux NI / US accent obvs)

Rookie93 · 29/05/2025 00:08

Saving stamps from the Post Office with Princess Anne and Prince Charles on them. Used to save half my pocket in stamps (6d or 1 shilling) and then spend the rest on sweets. Buying cockles from the seafood man outside the pub for Sunday tea. Getting parafin for the heaters from the van when it came round in the evening. No central heating at home, relied on two paraffin stoves & the coal fire. Spending the school holidays either in the library (if raining) or over the park and no-one knowing where I was & no way to contact anyone. As a pp said many of the local shopkeepers and the librarians knew who I was and would give me various messages for my Mum when she got home from work. Doing penny for the guy near the train station & collecting wood for the bonfire on the local bombsite - grew up in 60's.

VoodooQualities · 29/05/2025 00:11

Sandcastles, cockles and whelks, 99 ice creams, donkey rides.

Lardychops · 29/05/2025 00:18

Going up the shop for my mum with a handwritten note, and two pound notes for 20 B&H and some biscuits.

RestlessMillennial · 29/05/2025 00:19

School dinner pudding/cake and custard

TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 29/05/2025 00:43

Believing that the offerings of the Wimpy Bar were haute cuisine.

😂

EBearhug · 29/05/2025 00:51

Islagetmycoat · 28/05/2025 16:27

The sound of the ice cream van. I’m in my fifties now and still get excited when the ice cream van comes down our road.

In Germany, that turned out to be the rag & bone man. I was unimpressed to discover this (in my 30s.)

Also it seems we're the only ones who play Top Trumps.

justjuggling · 29/05/2025 01:17

Jelly & ice cream at children’s parties!

Darkmudder · 29/05/2025 02:16

Swigs of Pernod in the park.
Boys glue-sniffing in the bus shelter
Tormenting the local street drinkers
Stealing make-up from Boots
Sneaking into the leisure centre
Following boys around the shopping centre
Knock down ginger
Hanging out in an abandoned office block
Bothering the people on the golf course
Annoying the 'parkee' - park-keeper ... not sure they exist anymore
Winding up our teachers
Nicking coins from the 'saved coins whiskey bottle' at home
Making daft funny nuisence phone calls
Running up a large phone bill for "dial a disc' 160?
Messing about in phone boxes
Making fires on abandoned land
Dicking about on the train tracks
Jumping the barriers on the tube

WiddlinDiddlin · 29/05/2025 03:53

SummerInSun · 28/05/2025 16:27

As someone who didn’t grow up in the U.K. but read a lot old British children’s books, you all spent your childhoods camping on moors, riding ponies and capturing smugglers, didn’t you?

Wellll... riding ponies and camping on moors and elsewhere, yes, a lot of that.

Never did capture a smuggler though, nope.

Also did a lot of sitting in the car in the pissing rain, eating chips whilst trying to spot the sea... at many UK beaches, this is a faint line about 4 miles out, across a vast expanse of brownish mud.

Hm, being taken round various museums and educational experiences and then hustled through the gift shop rapidly at the end being told 'no, you can't have that, it's all tat!'.

VoodooQualities · 29/05/2025 03:56

School uniform! And the realisation the other European countries don't have it, then realising maybe Britain is stuffy and old fashioned after all!

Anyotherdude · 29/05/2025 04:28

Skiing down the enormous slide in plimsolls, getting the plank flyer to it’s limits by standing at the ends and pushing really hard so that everyone in the middle actually became weightless at the end of each pass, and jumping off the roundabout when it was at full spin. Oh, and the playground surface was tarmac!

Toptotoe · 29/05/2025 07:34

Catching the bus into town with a friend and going swimming in the baths and then having a cup of bovril after and a packet of crisps in the cafe after with wet hair.