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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:
CiaoMeow · 28/05/2025 18:00

Girls' comics - Debbie, Tammy, Bunty, Jinty, Judy and Debbie - until about 10 or 11
Then - Jackie, My Guy, Photo Love, Patches, Blue Jeans, Look-in

The Six Million Dollar Man
The Bionic Woman
Charlie's Angels (the real ones)
The Tomorrow People
The Kid's from 47A
Lizzy Drippin
Follyfoot
Black Beauty
The Flintstones
Top Cat
Grange Hill
The Wombles
Wait Til Your Father Gets Home
Mary, Mungo and Midge
Playschool
Rainbow
Magpie
Why Don't You . . .
How
TisWas

Donny Osmond
David Cassidy
Bay City Rollers

Disco at the Youth Club

Text books wrapped in wallpaper for school

Flicks, DAs, Feather Cuts, Mullets. Farah Fawcet (coke can curls)

Shin length skirts (usually light green, bottle green, or beige) with waspy belts
Parallel trousers - (light green, bottle green, beige)
Cheese cloth blouses with a tie at the waist
Platform shoes
Granny shoes
Wedges
Jesus Sandals
Storm Grey and American Tan tights
National Health Specs

Anne French Cleansing Milk
Mint/Strawberry/Lemon flavour lip gloss
Cinnamon Toast lip gloss
Blue or green eye shadow
Clearasil
Silverkrin
Timotei
Vosene
Norsca bubble bath

Apple Core necklaces
Initial necklaces
Coke bottle necklaces

Tinned peaches and cream with bread and butter
Bread and butter pudding
Spam fritters
Homemade Chips cooked in lard and egg
Faggots
Fray Bentos Pie
Vesta Curry
Camp Coffee
Mr Kipling's Cakes - for a treat!!
Trifle or just jelly and custard
Big T Roll
Angel Delight
Carnation Cream
Eating raw rhubarb out of the garden dipped in sugar

Fab Lollies
Jublees
Very long straws of fizzy stuff
Space Dust
Gobstoppers
Polos
Sugared Almonds
Pink/Yellow/White Bonbons
Spangles
Opal Fruits
Drumstick lollies
Curly Wurlies
Swisskit bars
Rainbow Drops

Spirograph
Etch a Sketch
Games Compendiums - always rubbish but so exciting!
Proper selection boxes
Crepe Christmas decorations
Dot to Dot

Lovely!

Puffalicious · 28/05/2025 18:01

DancingDucks · 28/05/2025 17:11

Getting quenchy cups from the ice cream van.

Mum making ice cream floats when we got home from school after the Alpine lorry had been on a Wednesday.

Caravan holidays in Scarborough.

Playing badminton in the street.

Messing about in the wood with my friends in the summer holidays.

Are you Scottish? Quenchy cups & The Alpine man were what I called them. Ice cream floats had to be with American Cream Soda.

MorrisonsPlatter · 28/05/2025 18:02

Jumpers for goalposts, germolene.

TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 28/05/2025 18:02

You were seriously ill if you got a trifecta of Lucozade, Ribena and a bunch of grapes.

DancingDucks · 28/05/2025 18:04

Puffalicious · 28/05/2025 18:01

Are you Scottish? Quenchy cups & The Alpine man were what I called them. Ice cream floats had to be with American Cream Soda.

Yes, born and bred in Glasgow. 😊

Gotback · 28/05/2025 18:04

Brian Cant's & Oliver Postgate's voices. Nogbad the Bad. And here is Hedgepig to wake up the Pogles. Sir Basil & Lady Rosemary, Bayleaf the gardener. Oh dear having a little 😢

TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 28/05/2025 18:04

Being forced to watch the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special, like it was a great treat.
Hmm

chloechloe · 28/05/2025 18:06

Maps spread out on car bonnets

Spending all day in the woods until teatime

10p mixes from the ice cream van

Wackaday

Grange Hill

Knock-a-door-run

Radio and TV times Christmas editions

3 tv channels and the test card

Waxed Barbour jackets so big you’ll never outgrow them

National Trust family membership

gianfrancogorgonzola · 28/05/2025 18:06

Eating chips in the car in the rain

x2boys · 28/05/2025 18:06

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?

Whilst drinking lashings of ginger ale and eating homemade cake ,kindly farmers wife had given to us.

Mistyglade · 28/05/2025 18:06

Getting a used pile of Jackie magazines from mums of the older girls on the estate.

See also, buying a pack of 20 Bensons for your stepdad at the only shop on the estate because everyone knew everyone.

Puffalicious · 28/05/2025 18:07

DancingDucks · 28/05/2025 18:04

Yes, born and bred in Glasgow. 😊

Snap! Typing from the South Side as we speak ❤️

LakieLady · 28/05/2025 18:08

BMW6 · 28/05/2025 16:48

The Test Card on telly.
Waiting for the valves to warm up when you switched telly on.
2 channels - BBC and ITV.
The Wooden tops, Andy Pandy, Watch with Mother

In winter the bedroom net curtains being frozen to the window INSIDE as no heating in bedrooms at all.

We must be a similar age, @BMW6 . In my brother's day, it was Camberwick Green, Pogles Wood and Trumpton. (He's 10 years younger than me.)

Also sherbert fountains, flying saucers and sweet pink "shrimps" that were probably made from ingredients that all now have E numbers.

Saturday morning pictures at the ABC cinema...

ETA: wrestling on tv late on Saturday afternoons!

EndorsingPRActice · 28/05/2025 18:08

British tv programmes, play school, jackanory, blue peter
Visiting my gran for a roast every sunday
Getting fish and chips for the whole family Saturday lunchtimes ( and yes at age 7 I walked there and back on my own and managed the order for a family of 5)
Dad doing the pools and then getting excited at Final score Saturday afternoons
Playing out with friends on bikes most summer evenings and Saturday afternoons, going to the local outdoor pool for whole days with friends in the summer holidays
70s/80s childhood was brilliant

TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 28/05/2025 18:09

Getting your mum twenty fags for Mother's Day.
🤣

Andoutcomethewolves · 28/05/2025 18:09

Being packed into the boot of the car with your cousins to drive to Weston Super Mare because your older siblings had the actual seats. Then having a donkey ride on a very depressed donkey, then ice cream and fish and chips and putting some change in the slot machines on the pier.

Admittedly this may just be a my family thing rather than universal British 🤣

someonehastoberight · 28/05/2025 18:10

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?

With lashings of ginger ale!

Femalefootyfan · 28/05/2025 18:11

Holidays in either a caravan or a seaside guest house where you got breakfast and evening meal and basically had to leave for the whole day in between these meals.
Breakfast offering in said guest house usually included half a grapefruit and evening meal generally had a soup starter, in July or August 😂

Buying loose sweets that came in a massive jar that were sold in ounces.
Watching Sunday Night at The London Palladium

Horrace · 28/05/2025 18:11

These are making me smile and cry at the same time.
70s and 80s kid here

namechangeGOT · 28/05/2025 18:12

Coming home from school and watching Home & Away & Neighbours.

ice Cream van.

Boring Sundays making your own fun because children wernt as forced to partake in ‘activities’ as they are now.

our caravan at Bridlington and playing out ALL day.

ice poles from the corner shop.

the smell of my dad coming home from work at night and coming and kissing up goodnight in our beds - he always smelled of the cold night air - he was a beat Bobby in our town and he walked his beat then walked home.

x2boys · 28/05/2025 18:12

madameimadam · 28/05/2025 16:51

Going swimming in the local baths then walking home eating hot salty chips and shivering from still-wet chlorine-smelling hair. Maybe getting a cup of Bovril from the machine…

At my local baths you could buy the hottest ,hot chocolate known to man in those little brown plastic cups grim a machine i always burnt my tongue.

Andoutcomethewolves · 28/05/2025 18:12

x2boys · 28/05/2025 18:06

Whilst drinking lashings of ginger ale and eating homemade cake ,kindly farmers wife had given to us.

Don't forget playing with Timmy the dog! Every British child has a Timmy!

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

witwatwoo · 28/05/2025 18:17

Brian Cant, Floella Benjamin, Derek Griffiths
The Best

Puffalicious · 28/05/2025 18:18

Children's and teens' magazines. I had Twinkle, then Bunty then Jackie.
I used to love those books of cardboard cut-out 'model' ladies with mix and match cut-out outfits that you could change by fitting them over the shoulders of the stand-up lady, using little paper tabs at the top. I was obsessed with those.
Fuzzy Felt, Etch-a-Sketch and Spirograph.

*Headdesk. Are you me? 🤣