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

[MyCheeryPearlTraybake]

Going to the corner shop for some custard creams

Grange Hill, Blue Peter, Byker Grove. Bagpuss, Clangers, Willo the Wisp. Chorlton & the Wheelies.
Going to the beach in all weathers (grew up by the sea).
Sitting in the car eating picnic lunch with different colour tupperware plates and mugs (usually in the rain). Tea from a thermos.
Not going abroad on holiday as it was too expensive.
Going to the chip shop for a portion of chips for lunch with two friends, and paying 18p a portion. Sitting on the patio with soda stream drinks and eating the chips.
Country dancing at school.
'Salad' included salad cream, grated cheese, corned beef, hardboiled eggs.
Church on Sundays. Christian 'bible week' camping holidays in the summer.
Scones with cream and jam.
Enid Blyton, Arthur Ransome, Elinor Brent-Dyer books.

I bloody loved the adventures of vicky magazine!! I too only got the 1st 2 magazines my mum probably just forgot to subscribe or they stopped making it or something

Oh I'd forgotten the hymns. I'm sure pretty much everyone on here had the same hymn book at primary. I can still sing several now as can DH 😂 and do the movements when needed (You can build a wall around you is standout)

Reading my older sister's copy of J17 hidden in a copy of the Beano so my mum didn't realise 🤣

Oh I've thought of another! Having school pets. We had four guinea pigs (poor things just left at school all the time).

As I was a total teacher's pet at that age (around 7) I was asked to name them as a 'reward' for being a bit of a geek. I don't think the teacher was expecting me to come out with Vyvyan, Rick, Neil and Mike after the Young Ones but those were their names until I left the school

We probably didn't. I don't remember any hymns at primary, spart from the annual carol service, though that doesn't mean there weren't any. The singing I do remember was Yellow Submarine, which at that age, I didn't know was by the Beatles.

Middle school was Let It Be, Morning Has Broken, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? and When a Knight Won His Spurs. And all the usual Christmas carols. Oh, and There is a Greenhill Far Away to the tune of the House of the Rising Sun, which it fits really well, and I much prefer to the traditional tune.

It was only at secondary that we got traditional hymns, O Still Small Voice of Calm and To Be a Pilgrim - and pretty much only those two.

Oh, and all of them did We Plough the Fields and Scatter for Harvest Festival- which was fine, as we were a pretty rural catchment.

Torchy, Torchy the Battery Boy.

Playground equipment that looked like its purpose was to eliminate the weaklings.

Yup. With a bloody hard landing if you fell!

I’m not religious (now) but I remember we used to have these giant sheets hung up in the gym (where assembly was) with the hymns on. My favourite was I Vow To Thee My Country, which I still love (is it even a hymn?) and All Things Bright and Beautiful.

Anyone remember a little yellow paper-backed hymn book for primary school kids, called 'Sing to God' or something like that? I'd quite like a copy to reminisce over...

Tarzees

Tarzees are what?

Ours was called 'come and praise'. Everyone I know of about my age (40) had the same hymn book. Some bangers in there!

Alot of the stuff people are mentioning is done in other countries too. So...going to limit it to stuff that is only UK childhood:

1. The smell of dettol.
2. Marmite on toast.
3. Bananaman.
4. Blue Peter (not anymore though - ah well).
5. The Beano.
6. Really wanting to go to Alton Towers. Then wondering why you spent so much time wanting to go to that dump.
7. Clarks school shoes.
8. Heat magazine.
9. Really wanting to go to the beach. Then wondering why you spent so much time wanting to go to that dump.
10. Birthday parties in church halls.

Ladybird books and cassettes, with the instruction “when you hear this sound, turn the page”, and the classical music. Beethoven’s 6th will always be Snow White to me. I loved those! They were my introduction to classical music. “When the music stops, please turn the cassette over to side 2”.

The Puddle Lane books to teach reading, with very British characters such as Mrs Pitter Patter, who was the Hyacinth Bucket of the series.

A bit before my time: the Tale Spinners records: again, stories performed to classical music, by actors who were later big names. My grandparents had the Ugly Duckling, which I loved. (Narrated by distinctive voice of Robert Hardy, decades before he was Harry Potter’s Minister of Magic!) I recently listened to all of these on YouTube: they were really well done, very theatrical.

Did anyone else's school have a sort of tape machine. There were cards with single words on it from the reading books (I'm thinking Janet and John). They had magnetic tape on the bottom of the cards and if you ran them through the tape machine it would play a recording of that word.
Really useful for pronunciation- no help for comprehension 😁

Old fashioned newsagent shops with a bubblegum and gobstopper machine outside. Put in a penny and turn the handle.

Both our parents worked so letting ourselves in after school. Me cooking us something to eat until mum got home at 6
Going to the park with friends.
Having 2 lidos nearby - maybe fifteen minutes walk away- and going there with friends for what was probably hours at a time during school holidays
sitting outside/playing in the pub garden unsupervised with my brother while my dad was inside

My parents always made a list of things to do in the summer holidays. Alton towers was always on it but we never actually went. I'm glad to hear it's a bit shit but will continue to guilt trip my mum about it (jokingly, I'm 40 and it's a running joke now!)

We didn't have this. But we did have lots of written activities involving following instructions from a posh voice on a cassette player: I remember a maze of paths where you had to colour the correct path, avoiding hazards such as a witch with a cauldron, and a talking tree which catches you with its hands, and never lets you go. We usually did these as a teamwork exercise, and had to agree on the right answer.

Paper 'lucky bags' which were filled with utter crud but massively exciting. They were pink for girls, blue for boys. 10p.

Oh I'd forgotten about them!
I used to love a Lucky Bag. Were they really 10p? That would make them two shillings! DH and I think they were 3d.

I remember them from the late 70s so I think they were about 10p. As were comics, we got about four a week from our granny. Still remember the excitement of going to her house and pouncing on that week's Twinkle or Misty (which always scared the life out of me, it was all about ghosts and haunted office blocks and voodoo dolls).

I remember them from the late 70s so I think they were about 10p

🤣🤣 DH and I were remembering them from the early 1960s. They were definitely 3d.

That means that if they were 10p when you were little, they'd increased in price eightfold. That's shocking!

All of Misty is available online, and some other comics. Don't have the bookmark on this device, though.