A Child Of Our Time

[Enid]

Anyone else watch this last night? Was anyone else left with the feeling that the experiments they do are trivial and random and that they only show the ones that work? I suppose I want it to be a straightforward developmental show (probably selfishly as dd is the same age as the kids on it), but I always find it disappointing.

also, had ice on the INSIDE of my bedroom windows on winter mornings... I think my stepdaughter (10) thinks I'm making all this up.

Just remembered, we couldn't afford a proper camping holiday, so my dad made prison-style beds (wooden boards hanging from chains) for the inside of his transit van, and we went to Dartmoor and stayed overnight in motorway lay-bys. Mind you, the bacon and beans cooked on the camping-gas stove was fantastic, esp at dawn.

Aloha - you are making me laugh! At least you had something to eat off the stove. When we went camping, my Dad left the chicken outside the tent and a fox ate it!

Oh, must do work. Must not giggle helplessly at Mumsnet...

me and my best friend used to hitchhike everywhere as young teenagers, even to places like Bournemouth just for the day and back (from Wiltshire) without our parents knowing where we'd been. They knew we hitched all the time though, we couldn't wait for buses or want to pay for them. We used to get picked by all manner of people (always male) but luckily no harm came to us. The thought of my children behaving like we did makes cold shivers run down my spine. But we were free.

We used to go camping and my Dad made a trailer from the chassis of an Hillman Imp that he scrapped and some discarded boards from his work. Aged 3 or 4 I helped him!! To top this off he then made a lid for the trailer from the roof of a Vauxhall Viva that he scrapped. We looked interesting on the M5....

Oh and yes Aloha, lots of icy windows, no central heating but when we were all quite young, a PARAFFIN heater on the landing at night. I can smell it now. Glad no-one knocked it over. Of course no car seatbelts and the grown ups didn't wear theirs anyway. My Auntie Doris (not my real auntie but a fantastic woman from Manchester) only got out of her burning car alive because she WASN'T wearing one. My little brother on my mother's lap in the front on touring holidays,etc,etc

Aloha, with you all the way with ice on the inside, "seeing" your breath in the mornings and racing my sister as to who could be the first to put on FREEZING cold cotton school shirts!

Anyone else have nylon sheets!!! Ours were tastful bright pink and purple! And if you flapped them in the dark you could get the static to light up!!

Ooh and Angel Delight for pud was a real treat!

Loved it all though, I wonder what our dds/dss will be saying in years to come........"we didnt even have Satelite TV!!"

don't talk to me about nylon....

At uni we had ice on the inside of the windows and I remember opening a tin of soup and finding it was frozen solid into a lump of ice... now that was cold!

Cam, you can't leave it there! What about nylon.....! What colour were yours!!!

I remember at Uni putting clilng film up across the window frames and trying to seal it with an hairdryer.

Oh lord, paraffin heaters, yes, and the ice on the windows, and mum drying our undies in the oven in wet weather. Rubber wellies, chapped knees, itchy wool socks held up with elastic garters , wincyette nighties and a Liberty bodice - I kid you not!!

Getting to sit in the middle of the front seat of the car (cars had bench seats in the front in my day) if you were carsick. The smell of car leather, Chanel No5 and ciggie smoke almost make me vomit just thinking of it. And dad's efforts to mend the car - a baked bean can welded onto the exhaust to mend a hole in the silencer.

Those were the days .......no they weren't, it was cr*p!!!

batey, you can't put me through this, I'd managed to forget all about them until today.....pink, green, orange(?) I think the theory was that theywould counteract the lack of central heating but what about the summer and catching your fingernails and the electric shocks and the fact that your mum and dad had cotton?

I'm having a real giggle reading all this!

DH's worst memory from childhood was having to still wear knee-length trousers when everyone else in his class had moved on to ankle-length because his Mum couldn't afford them, but the worst thing about it was they were KNITTED (by his Mum!) knee-length trousers, and if they ever got wet in the rain he had to walk around holding them up with one hand! Oh the shame!

Fantastic jodee. I had a bikini made of terry towelling - you can imagine what it looked like when it got wet. And a home made duffel-coat!

Still get ice on the insides of my windows though!

What about plastic car seats in the middle of summer?! I think that I used to leave a layer of skin every time I got out of the car!

When i was at uni, mum (who then worked at sainsburys), used to get me cheap tins of food when their labels had come off. Oh, the excitement of saving a big can of 'RICE PUDDING' (written in black marker pen on side by diligent mother) for a cold night in with friends. Lost count of the times we opened them and found dog food tho' - thats my definition of 'gutted'.......

Oh, I'm literally crying with laughter. We had a Hillman Imp too. What a name. What a car. My mum used to sit with her feet in the oven and the cat on her lap because it was the only warm place in the house. And in the winter you didn't dare put your shoulders above the water in the bath or you'd get pneumonia. We had a two-bar electric fire on our landing. I remember getting into bed inch by inch as I moved the hot water bottle down to warm the sheets...

We had a Hillman Avenger. I was rushed to hospital when I cut my foot in a Wolsely. And we had a camper type van thing that the wheel fell off on the Langstone bridge on our way back from Hayling island, oh the embarrassment as the cars couldnt pass us. Cold beds, purple and pink rooms. I remember having brown trousers and a yellow polar neck when the Queen came to Portsmouth to visit.

Just remembered my sister and I had nylon purple and pink nighties, and our hall was purple paisley wall paper with pink skirting boards!! Also had the home made garters for my socks, one would always be by your ankle and the other cutting off your circulation!

Aloha, me too on sitting in freezing cold "family" rooms in pubs with a bottle of fizz, watched from the warm by my parents. Are we in parrallel universes?!

You didn't happen to love Crackerjack and be a wayward Brownie did you?!

LOVED Crackerjack, my cotton wool picture of a snowman got rejected from Vision On (still bitter) and I didn't join the Brownies because I didn't like the sound on sponsored silences (now, I bet that surprises everyone, eh?)

Had a fantasic pink nylon nightie with nylon lace on it, though. Didn't they make your hair crackle.

Spooky, I got rejected by Vision On too! Mine was a picture of a worm coming out of a brick! Wonder why! Still havn't got over it!

Do you remember the cabbage holding game on Crackerjack!!!

I was a terrible brownie, they told my mum to discourage me from coming as I didn't fill in my 'nail care' chart and made up rude words to the Brownie song. Mum was gutted as she had spent ages making me my brownie uniform.

My sister and I used to play in the fields behind our house until it got dark, my dad used to come and whistle when it was time to go home for tea - usually some delight like stuffed hearts or spag bol made with tinned soya mince. Sometimes mum would go mad and make something fashionable that she'd seen on the Galloping Gourmet. Our great treats were Butterscotch Angel Delight, blackcurrant Ski and mums home made currant cakes, and I used to love Camp coffee.

We also had a Hillman Imp, but it sat gathering dust in the garage for six years as neither of my parents could drive.

My best friend Tracy was the love of my life, she had a DRESSING TABLE full of Avon Pretty Peach talc and soap. I can still feel the pangs of envy now.