Crepey continuum

[Cremolafoam]

Over here!

Dm had a Hillman Imp that she drove to her university research job. I was permitted to sit on her lap as a 2 year old when she drove to the shop to buy Consulate minty fags. At 5 I was sent in to the shop to fetch the cigs and ' put them on mummy's account '
I got a Bubbly chewing gum and a quarter of liquorice comfits for my trouble
Hence teeth rot I suppose

X posts herbs!!! Lol@ Hillman imp

Carpeted bathrooms......

Shagpile up the side of the bath? Magenta? Tangerine? Woah, herbs, yr parents sound too groovy for words

No funky motors in our house, just a silver Ford Station Wagon.

oh herbs a magenta bathroom! Blimey I only ever saw one of those in a flat in Glasgow once. it was a thing of extraordinary horror! ours was avocado natch. Plenty of enormous flowery wallpaper too chez nous. I had 'spot and friends' in my bedroom. should have kept it

Our next house had a yellow bathroom, and a blue bathroom, both with 'complimentary' vast flowers on the wallpaper.

Come to think of it, I've always felt twitchy living in this house with only one bathroom. Now it's becoming clear why!

On a faintly S&B note, remember the days of wearing a long skirt or dress to birthday parties? I had a number, all made by my mum, and often featuring that material with elastic shirring in the top.

CV im going to dig out my Sindy and Amanda Jane collection. £200 you say?

a particular favorite for parties I actually still have this pattern. DD would be absolutely horrified.

God Crem - I really wanted one of those tiered skirts. Everybody had them - sometimes with lace trimmings. I made my mother take me to that very trendy shop C&A (which I'll have you know is still going strong in France) to get one.

What year was that?

I had one with a lace trim at the bottom! In navy, with little yellow flowers on.

O
M
F
G

Oh god they were all the rage.

And I imagine every DD on this thread is attired in skimpy shorts over thick tights...

Large VW estate here which my tiny mum drove peering over the steering wheel.
Butterscotch angel delight - yes.

I have carpet in the bathroom of our house - it HAS to go, along with the cork walls (do not ask. - it is tres 1970s)

Tierd skirts - yes, french knitting and french skipping (getting your mum to buy yards of elastic). Playing complicated ball gaes with two tennis balls.

OMG Cremo I actually REMEBER that pattern - I think my mother had it.....

I did not madly enjoy the 1970s. At all. It was not a good time to be a pretentious pseudo-intellectual afflicted with out-of-it parents in Norwich.

Although perhaps I didn't help myself, of course. I went to my Oxford interviews in November 1979 in a blue Laura Ashley brushed-cotton frock with a black velvet ribbon in my hair . It was the day John Lennon died. I remember quite distinctly.

I think my DD went out in longish mini skirt and thick tights today, although she does have the regulation shorts.

MI when I see how I was dressed at 18 compared to my daughters at 16 and 14 I want to cry. I look like such a dork. (Hopefully I dress a bit better now

I am v. like BD in that first half of 1970s = pretty good; second half of 1970s = hellish. I had a very nice American aunt who made me a lovely tiered skirt, but I didn't get to wear it much. I started starving myself with a vengeance in 1978 and I was all very, very skinny drainpipe jeans and homemade piecings and hollow-eyed woe. (and everyone's favourite party guest - NOT)

Cremo and BD, I think my DM had that pattern too!

Strops, I was a chubster through the 70's (although would have been very average these days as children/teens have got fatter!) and into indie music. My DC only like mainstream pop!

Strops, I would have been so of you. I would have been my mother's prize daughter, as demonstrated by my anorexic sister .

Abigail's Party is on tonight - BBC 4 at 10pm

I won't be staying up to watch it - I have to be up at quarter to five tomorrow morning to drop DD and her friend at school for Belgium trip

Oh trust me, MI, you so wouldn't. The anorexia (for that is what it was) drove my controlling ma even more batshit crazy than she already was. After a couple of years and yet another violent showdown, I also went batshit crazy and started eating again. But everything I could lay my hands on, including things that were not food (no, you don't want to know...). So what do my parents do? Do they follow the GP's advice and send me to a psychiatrist (which they really should have done when I started rattling when I walked and was covered in hair where I shouldn't have had any)? Do they heck. They send me to a high-security, high-pressure boarding school. Where I then managed to become immensely (and I do mean immensely) fat. 5.5 stone to 13.5 stone in 18 months. I was completely barking. I have no concept of what it is like to have fun when you are a teenager. I spent the entire time being utterly mad. Of all the bodge-ups I've made in life since, nothing beats the grimness of that time.

Stropps

Oh Stropps
Do they realise where they went wrong now, or do they just pretend it never happened (like my DM does re life with my alcoholic father)? Do you still feel cross/resentful of them?

Oh I think my dad always just blamed me for being tiresome on purpose. He couldn't get his head around it at all. My mother and I were not on good terms for many years and things got worse when I checked finally checked myself into the nuthouse for a year in my mid-20s (oh the shame etc etc and they still pretended there was nothing wrong with me).

I took myself apart and put myself back together in some sort of order after that, but I did then make a daft first marriage which was a bit of a bummer. Still, probably par for the course given my history. However, once I had managed to stabilize my nuttiness and proved myself to be not an entirely catastrophic parent, my mother and I have sort of sorted ourselves out. I've seen enough of the other side of parenting someone not very straightforward and recognized enough of my mother in myself to understand it all a bit better these days. I have also concluded that hormones are responsible for an awful lot more than we realise. I don't think anyone had any kind of a clue that I would go stark raving bonkers when adolescence hit. I honestly was a pretty normal child.

Sorry for that little woe is me blah bit there. Enough of all that. To get back on (S&B) track: I'm blaming you lot for the fact that today I've mainly been wearing these I care not if I look muttony. They are luvverly. And if I look a bit bonkers, it is merely a reflection of the inner truth.

Some sad tales of childhood here....

Nothing so bad in my life, apart from a stepdad I didn't get on with (but who I love to bits now). I went off to boarding school a precocious little madam at 11, and it took me a good while to fit in, but fortunately I'm bomb-proof pretty self-contained, so it came good in the end.

DD1 is very similar to me at that age - currently revelling in being the bright girl in the class and showing off no end, although she's a lot prettier and more popular than I ever was. One of the other girls has started to pick on her a little (the jealousy thing, I suspect), but DD1 is having none of it.