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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:
sprigatito · 29/05/2025 13:12

Comedycook · 29/05/2025 12:10

No...I think it was an antibiotic.

Edited to add...just had a google and apparently it was amoxicillin

Edited

The thread worm treatment was called Pripsen. It was rank 🤢🤢🤮

Londonmummy66 · 29/05/2025 13:12

Another Southsea girl - I used to wander down to watch the hovercraft in my lunch time in the sixth form as school was just across the common.

I remember the disgusting warm school milk they used to force you to drink and making rose petal perfume.

I also remember that school was closed a couple of days a week in the early 70s due to strikes and we had to walk in mid morning to collect our work and take it home to do. I think it was to preserve coal.

DaffodilAlliance · 29/05/2025 13:16

How long and boring the summer holidays were!

A grumpy neighbour telling the ice cream van to sod off because of the noisy music

Going to the dentist on the bus with my Mum to have braces fitted or tightened

Endlessly reading Enid Blyton

Crying over Black Beaty and Lassie on tv

Amazed incomprehension that my Dad could sleep during the day

Being teased by older brothers

Lemonade for Sunday lunch (the grown ups had wine)

Spending hours out with friends on bikes

Flashers in the local park

Reonie · 29/05/2025 13:18

A frozen Kwenchy Kup (7p)

nomas · 29/05/2025 13:19

How long and boring the summer holidays were!

No way, we hated going back to school.

Verv · 29/05/2025 13:21

Comedycook · 29/05/2025 11:04

Yellow banana flavoured medicine

Used to love that stuff!

Ice cream van, rock pools, grazed knees and running from wasps.

BunnyLake · 29/05/2025 13:50

My dad drawing hopscotch squares with chalk in our backgarden,
Being entertained playing tiddlywinks, snakes & ladders and Frustration,
Cresta fizzy drinks with the polar bear ad,
Blue Peter and Magpie (I was a Magpie girl),
Seeing my favourite (at the time) popstar open our local fete, Brian Connolly of The Sweet. He was grumpy and unengaged so I think I may have removed his poster from my wall in disappointment. 😁

Andoutcomethewolves · 29/05/2025 13:58

Katemax82 · 29/05/2025 13:05

Christ I remember the puking up from white lightening down the park!

Ewwww I'd forgotten white lightening and the puking in the park! Happened many a time 🤢

LillyPJ · 29/05/2025 14:06

Comedycook · 29/05/2025 12:10

No...I think it was an antibiotic.

Edited to add...just had a google and apparently it was amoxicillin

Edited

Yes - antibiotic. I remember it being slightly gloomy too - revolting.

Dutchhouse14 · 29/05/2025 14:47

For mine (totally irrelevant for my DC)
Ice cream van and 99 or popeye ice creams
Donkey rides, trampolines and swing boats on beach.
Playing out on streets
Knock down ginger
British bulldog
What's the time Mr Wolf
Corn beef sandwiches
Taking lemonade bottles back to get 5p/20p
A quarter of sweets
Or penny sweets or even half pence sweets!
School assemblies, reciting the lord's prayer and singing hymns
Getting gravel in your knee when you fell over in the playground.
Playgrounds with swing horse and spiders web climbing net, roundabouts, swings with really long chains that you could go really high on and tall metal slides that were scorching hot in summer.
Brownies and Sunday school.

tobee · 29/05/2025 15:27

Sunday - everything closed
Early closing Wednesday

Swap Shop - Cheggers shouting at us manically cheery on some sodden beach

Seaside Special or Holiday Special - some tent somewhere with men dancing in tight flared trousers and sparkly tops with moustaches, some off colour comedian and a few spesh acts.

Bit more classy - Frank Muir and Paddy Campbell gently sparring while defining words on Call My Bluff.

NB Watched a lot of telly as weather was so bad.

tobee · 29/05/2025 15:29

Nomorecoconutboosts · 28/05/2025 16:57

Late 70s/early 80s
Clarks sandals (jelly shoes later)
deeley boppers
mini milks, ice lollies with a blob of ice cream on from the van, sparkle ice lollies - cheapest option, lemonade or orange. funny feet
boiling hot car seats
boiling hot cars no air con, windows open even on motorway
Food at motorway services was more like a canteen, nothing like it is now (not that we had any of the food)
free parking more widely available than now.
concrete under the play equipment, roundabouts that went really fast. Many park trips you’d observe some sort of fall or injury.
pretty much everyone had scabs on their knees
needing coins to pay for toilets in most tourist areas.
there weren’t really fleeces or hoodies. As a girl I’d wear a cardigan or kagoule on top of summer dress/shorts
salad was just round lettuce and sliced up cucumber plus big tomatoes, maybe spring onion. Tinned ham or tinned salmon. We had loads of value crisps, or snaps if lucky (3p)
I don’t remember seeing cherry tomatoes till I was about 20 and they were posh then.
kids drinks - those cups that you pierced the lid with the straw or a Capri sun if lucky.
Caravan holidays with no toilet or shower in them - had to go to the block.

Oh yes and those massively tall slides, ridiculously high monkey bars and sodden sandpits with dog poo in.

Fall off one the apparatus and it was straight down to casualty.

Darkmudder · 29/05/2025 15:46

sprigatito · 29/05/2025 13:12

The thread worm treatment was called Pripsen. It was rank 🤢🤢🤮

Just googled that - it was in fact raspberry flavour - it was sort of bitter sweet and chalky

tobee · 29/05/2025 16:06

Tangomango1 · 28/05/2025 18:16

I was born in 1969 and thank you so much to everyone for listing my childhood & teenage memories 🥰

My DH tells me off for being so nostalgic but if I had a Time Machine, I would travel back in a heartbeat & re live it all.

I don’t have much to add apart from:-

Bingo
The smell of a church hall or school hall
Knee high white school socks & black leather Clark’s shoes
Sunday night TV as a child & the dread of school the next morning
Me & my sister in matching acrylic dressing gowns standing near the portable gas fire 🫣
Top of the pops
picnics
fish & chips
meat & 2 veg
The queens jubilee in 1977 and a party at primary school (it was sooo exciting)
Wimbledon
Blue Peter
Cream Tea

I was born in 1968 @Tangomango1 and I'd be fascinated to go back for (a month or two?!!) to my childhood - and go with my dc as kids to see what they thought of it!! Reckon my dd would love it but ds not so much!! 😃

EBearhug · 29/05/2025 17:49

Banana antibiotic. Raspberry Pripsen for worms. It was indeed grim.

Vicliz24 · 29/05/2025 18:05

Sleeping ( all 3 of us ) in the back of the car with the seats down all the way to France . A jam sandwich and a bottle of squash to keep you going all day in the woods . Toasting on a toasting fork over the coal fire . Ice on the inside of the windows in winter . Mittens on a string under your coat . Enid Blyton books .

thesnailandthewhale · 29/05/2025 18:08

Your Nan sellotaping some pound coins to the inside of your birthday card

AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta · 29/05/2025 18:09

Comedycook · 29/05/2025 11:04

Yellow banana flavoured medicine

So worth getting ill for.

BunnyLake · 29/05/2025 18:11

HarperStern · 28/05/2025 17:17

White Horses theme makes me cry but I have literally no memory of the programme itself weirdly.

I think we used to watch the opening credits for the song then switch over. I don’t think we watched the actual programme, it was a bit slow for us.

I’ve just remembered Champion the Wonder Horse!

BunnyLake · 29/05/2025 18:13

thesnailandthewhale · 29/05/2025 18:08

Your Nan sellotaping some pound coins to the inside of your birthday card

I didn’t have any grandparents growing up, it’s lovely there are so many people having happy memories of their grandparents in their childhoods 😊

AInightingale · 29/05/2025 18:18

Sesame Street on Saturday mornings. 😍 Loved my Bert and Ernie dolls.

BunnyLake · 29/05/2025 18:22

My mum ironing in the living room every Sunday evening,
Getting the latest Top of The Pops album which had cover artists. We didn’t seem to mind, though some covers were very dodgy,
Years of dancing unselfconsciously in the living room to the radio, until one day a family member teased me and I never did it again. It wasn’t malicious but the damage was done 😞
Page 3, which thankfully stopped. So weird to think having barely legal topless girls in the daily newspapers was normal,
Top shelf magazines in mainstream newsagents (they gave me the rage!) Thank god they’ve gone too.

AInightingale · 29/05/2025 18:26

'Girlie' soft porn is v tame in comparison to what's around now, unfortunately.

I remember Tennants tins having 'daring' images of glamorous women on them, though there was no actual nudity. Imagine the outrage today, yet again, there is much worse on the internet...

scalt · 29/05/2025 18:47

@TheyFuckYouUpYourMamAndDad I loved my ugly plastic sandals - I liked to peep at my toes through the little holes. I suppose today's kids do the same with Crocs. There's a children's book "Jellyfish Shoes" in which a brother convinces his sister that the shoes are made out of jellyfish washed up on the beach. I'd have been scared if I'd read that then!

@thesnailandthewhale I too had the coins stuck in a birthday card, and had to write and thank her for them.

Scraping knees in the playground, and yellow stuff "faires' magic" being put on it by whichever dinner lady was on first aid duty.

Pretending to fly, in the garden, with my parents' help. I was blindfolded and sat in a chair, which was lifted up, and moved around. It really felt like flying, and I would hear a commentary about the tiny fields and houses far below. I loved this so much, and my parents did this wonderful thing in which I would end up in a very different part of the garden from where I thought I had started. I didn't learn for years how they tricked me with that bit of magic.

x2boys · 29/05/2025 18:51

thesnailandthewhale · 29/05/2025 18:08

Your Nan sellotaping some pound coins to the inside of your birthday card

Mine did that 🤣

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