Childhood memories

[Jack-Schitt]

A thread to reminisce/chat shit about those mostly care-free days that we’ve left behind. For some those memories will be further in the distant hazy past than others.

The idea for the topic came from wanting to share the video that I shortly shall – which was initially just going to go in the “When I saw this I laughed…” topic – but then I thought it could launch a thread of its own, as there is (hopefully) a lot of good memories can be shared from those days when all we had to worry about was playing outside in the sun, and being home in time for tea.

Anything relating to your childhood experiences can go in here; from schools we attended (or didn’t often attend as the case may be), games we played, places we used to hang out, kids TV shows we used to like, etc. You get the general idea.

I want to kick us off with something that it still surprises me how many “grown-ups” are unaware of – which is some of the ‘naughty’ adult humour that they used to get away with slipping into some of the kids tv that as children, we were oblivious to.

Enjoy this clip from Rainbow. One of the worst offenders.

Then it’s over to you. What TV shows did you like? Anyone remember the likes of Chocky? Some of the old BBC Schools series were pretty good. The Boy From Space. Dark Towers.

Any others you can think of, or anything else related to your childhood memories is welcome.

[Flahute]

My childhood was shite until I discovered that getting into a girls knickers was pretty easy and I liked the way beer made me feel. This made my teenage years great, I then fucked off to sea at, what now seems to be, an insanely young age and carried on with my quest to fuck as much quim as I could and to drink much beer.

[lifeintheslowlane]

What television shows did I like? I used to have to go to my mates house at the end of the road to watch TV for several years. About 1 in 10 families had a TV in the early '50s.

[pap]

Nice thread, Jack Schitt. An opportunity to crystallise a few memories.

I lived in Coxford in the early '80s. I’m going to cover that. We lived in semi-detached house which was very bright by the standards of today. The prize possession in the house was an Amstrad stack system, which allowed you to “tape”. Remarkable. I remember us buying the first ever edition of Now That’s What I Call Music on vinyl.

I’ve got a lot of memories of that place. I’m going to do the fond and non-controversial ones,

We rode bikes a lot. 50p was your pocket money, and it bought you a fucking big mix-up from the shop on Aldermoor Green, if you were that way inclined. There was an old people’s block just up the road and I’m ashamed to say we spent some time playing knock door run. One old fella proper gave it. Used to gesticulate and shout stuff at us as we disappeared into the distance. He looked quite co-ordinated, so he got the tag “Kung Fu Man”.

I got into my first ever fight. Was getting bullied off the nipper over the road, used to run in crying to my mum, until she eventually said “If you come in here crying again, I’ll give you something to cry about. Stand up for yourself”. I did, it wasn’t pretty, and the lad ended up going to hospital for concussion checks. He never bothered me again, though. Mum not quite so hawkish afterward.

Film shows. An ephemeral thing which involved some bloke turning up with a projector and a screen, showing you the best bits from Superman and Star Wars. I’m not sure it was entirely legal, if I’m honest.

First ever girlfriend. Didn’t really have a lot to do with it. I was just then informed and then subsequently snogged in my bedroom. Didn’t last long. Her dad was a medallion man. For the best, probs.

I owe my dad a few firsts. In true Jeremy Kyle style, I didn’t know unionhotel was my dad at the time, but I was acquainted with him, and he did seem to lend us loads of shit. First of all, computer games. Went round his gaff, and played on the Atari 2600. Superman and Combat, iirc. There was one bit of Superman I was total shite at, but the old man was very gracious and didn’t say so.

Also; VHS. We were lent a video and a vast quantity of tapes when me da went off on hols. That was pretty rare at the time, and I remember being blown away by it at the time. Being able to watch whatever you want? Amazing.

Finally, I remember gigantic British Bulldog games on Aldermoor school’s fields, and getting into shit every night with the old dear because I had grass stains on my knees, and you were expected to wear your jeans for a couple of days at a time back then.

[Map-Of-Tasmania]

On your gonads?

[TheCholulaKid]

Originally posted by @pap

you were expected to wear your jeans for a couple of days at a time back then.

Eh? My jeans are lucky if they see the washing machine once a week. It’s why they smell so good.

I grew up in a shit hole in mid Hants. There were loads of building sites though which was fucking great. Throwing stuff around and climbing scaffolding.

Mate of mine lived in a fucking nice house and always used to have pirate videos. Watching Kentucky Fried Movie with a boner. And ET (without the boner). American Werewolf in London and Amityville Horror scared the shit out of me at the time.

[pap]

Originally posted by @TheCholulaKid

Originally posted by @pap

you were expected to wear your jeans for a couple of days at a time back then.

Eh? My jeans are lucky if they see the washing machine once a week. It’s why they smell so good.

I’ve got 11 pairs of 501s.

[pap]

Originally posted by @areloa-grandee

On your gonads?

Don’t labour the point, GA. The original post was intended to be a one off amusement, not an ongoing invite for other threads to be derailed, especially when other people are putting in a bit more effort to elicit a reaction.

I don’t give a fuck about having the piss taken out of me, but you’re ruining other threads. We can go to the Beef Thread and do battle if sir is suitably upset and feels hard enough. I hope that won’t be necessary.

[Map-Of-Tasmania]

Originally posted by @pap

Originally posted by @areloa-grandee

On your gonads?

Don’t labour the point, GA. The original post was intended to be a one off amusement, not an ongoing invite for other threads to be derailed, especially when people are putting in a bit more effort to elicit a reaction.

I don’t give a fuck about having the piss taken out of me, but you’re ruining other threads. We can go to the Beef Thread and do battle if sir is suitably upset and feels hard enough. I hope that won’t be necessary.

Derailment ? Never! Was intended more as a recurring jest… Like a long haul yarn, that pops up its little head of joy when both least and most expected… I will however, refrain from its continued use if there is consensus that it has become dull and stale… Hard enough? Hahahaha

pap sir- I’ve seen your pic- I would just pull your hair

[TheCholulaKid]

Yeah, fuck you GA - Pap would’ve definitely upvoted my post if you hadn’t pissed him off, right Pap?

[Map-Of-Tasmania]

I will up vote you in recompense and award myself s cock of shame

[pap]

Originally posted by @areloa-grandee

pap sir- I’ve seen your pic- I would just pull your hair

The site has some reasonably modern features, but physical contact through the Beef thread isn’t one of them.

Take a look at that post I wrote and honestly ask yourself if you can do a better demolition job than I did myself. If you can add something to that, go for it.

[Map-Of-Tasmania]

I hang my head in shame I will ban myself for a week and force myself to read my old Enid Blytons from my childhood. I still have my originals with their rather gender stereotypical roles and saucy names - Magic faraway tree has more Dick and Fanny than Paps video collection

Shadow the sheepdog - from about 1954 (have an original copy from my dads childhood collection) features a story on ‘Gipsies’ stealing the sheepdog…

[Fowllyd]

I grew up in Bishopstoke, where my parents live to this day (in the same house that we moved into in August 1960, when I was a mere eight months old). Then, as now, the top end of Church Road, from the top of the hill down past the Foresters, was semi-rural in character.There’s been relatively little new building there in my lifetime - three bungalows replaced an old timber yard (I can only vaguely remember the yard being there) and the garden of the big house up the road was built on and is now Bishop’s Court. There was a gravel pit on the west side of the hill, overlooking Allbrook - that’s been filled in and grassed over and is now a field, but I can remember seeing hundreds of sand martins’ nest holes in the back wall of the pit.

Across the road from parents’ house is a small rec and a couple of fields, with a footpath that leads past the fields to a (very) steep wooded hill that takes you down to the water meadows of the Itchen, with a small stream (called Bow Lake for some reason) dividing woods and meadows. This was our playground. We’d play in the woods and stream and, in the summer, swim in the river - which was, as chalk rivers are, fucking cold. Now and again we’d be chased away by fishermen, who paid large sums to the local farmer to fish the river - they stil do, come to that. There were also a few patches of unused land, all now built on - next to the Foresters, at the top of the hill near the old allotments (Dartington Road these days). The latter had an old underground water tank that perhaps should have been locked shut, but wasn’t. Inside was just a giant cistern, with a commensurately enormous ballcock - but no water. Presumably it once would have provided water to the village, supplied by the pumping station at Twyford (well worth a visit in itself if you like things such as huge steam engines and Victorian industrial architecture).

We road bikes all over the place - I remember cycling up some way past WInchester on more than one occasion, which wasn’t bad going on the single-speed bikes we all had. There was a dirt motorbike track on the edge of Stoke Park wood, along the road that leads to the cemetery from Stoke Common Road - we’d ride our bikes round that as best we could, wishing they had engines (a piece of stiff card stuck to the forks gave a decent enough motorbike sound for us, though).

One TV show I remember better than most others is Batman - the proper one with Adam West. We would watch it religiously; it was always shown on consecutive evenings, with the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder apparently doomed at the end of the first episode, only to escape and eventually triumph in the second. We’d watch transfixed, and get very indignant at our parents, who would roar with laughter throughout the show. It was only years later, when I watched the same programmes as a teenager, that I realised why they’d laughed - those shows were brilliantly written, and worked superbly on more than one level. To a child they were gripping and serious, to an adult they were camp and hilarious, with any number of fantastically funny lines, invariably delivered totally deadpan.

[Bearsy]

Originally posted by @TheCholulaKid

Eh? My jeans are lucky if they see the washing machine once a week. It’s why they smell so good.

Pfft i go months srs washing jeans fucks them up

[Jack-Schitt]

Originally posted by pap

Nice thread, Jack Schitt. An opportunity to crystallise a few memories.

Cheers Pap. I thought so too at first (well obviously, or I wouldn’t have started it ) – but then I was just going to let it drown quietly in the deafening silence.

I was quite surprised to get in tonight and see someone had breathed life into it, and dragged it back up to the surface.

Thanks for your post too, it was a good read.

Originally posted by pap

I remember us buying the first ever edition of Now That’s What I Call Music on vinyl.

Ha, I remember the second but not the first. You were one step ahead of me.

Originally posted by pap

50p was your pocket money, and it bought you a fucking big mix-up from the shop on Aldermoor Green

Was that the old Circle K? Think it might have been a Sperrings before that. If so, I remember walking to and from that shop myself.

Originally posted by pap

Finally, I remember gigantic British Bulldog games on Aldermoor school’s fields

Ahh, yes. I have fond memories of those, although not in the same place as you. Some of the older kids in our little kind of cul-de-sac used to organise games for all of us, centred around the main meeting place of a huge old oak tree on the green. British Bulldog, 9-9-in, and the most exhilarating one (which you’ll most likely not know by the name we gave it) – “escaping the were-wolf”.

There used to be an ice-cream man came 'round our way, big hairy beast of a turkish man called Tony. It all started when he short-changed my little bro, and my brother being the lovely loud-mouthed little tearaway that he was, his reposnse was – “Oi - Tony! You’re a rip off!”

Tony somehow misheard this as “Oi - Tony! You’re a were-wolf!” Which for some reason that still puzzles me to this day, managed to annoy him sufficiently that he lept out of his ice-cream van, and chased us down the cutway between some of our houses, yelling “don’t you call me a fucking were-wolf you little cunt!”

Well that was that. From that point onwards, to us at least – a were-wolf he most definitely was. And we enjoyed letting him know it on a regular basis. Hence, “escaping the were-wolf” became a popular pass-time for many of the local kids. We’d hide, and spy on him, then “wolf him” when he least expected it. One of the best ones ever, we encountered him stuck in traffic, behind a police car at a set of red lights. He got the full treatment that afternoon, from very close range - as we knew there was not much he could do about it. In this day and age, the thought of a grown man getting away with driving around in an ice-cream van, and chasing kids around seems absurd. Ohh, but those were different times.

I used to love most of all, our massive games of nine-nine-in (large-scale hide-and-seek for the uninitiated). There’d sometimes be up to 25-30 or so of us playing. Whoever was “it” had to count to 99, and we’d all scamper and lose ourselves far and wide. Sometimes we’d run for ages, quite far away. The “it” group would enlarge with captured hiders as the game progressed. With the object for those hiding to get back to base (the large oaktree) touching it and shouting “9-9-in” - before the defenders/seekers got there before you to end your game with a “9-9-out”. The larger the group of seekers, the further away they would risk a long race back and venture a long way from base to find us. So we had to put in the effort to get a fair trek away.

One time, me and my best friend had ended up hiding about a 20 minute run away. We must have stayed hidden in our place for well over an hour. When we finally, gradually, gingerly began to edge our way back to base, and found a place much closer to see if the ‘coast was clear’. We could see no-one. We assumed we were the last to be found, and everyone was out looking for us. We figured the closest ones must’ve been hiding themselves to catch us out when we tried to make it back.

It turned out everyone had gone home, and we were both quite late for dinner.

[Jack-Schitt]

Originally posted by @Fowllyd

One TV show I remember better than most others is Batman - the proper one with Adam West. We would watch it religiously; it was always shown on consecutive evenings, with the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder apparently doomed at the end of the first episode, only to escape and eventually triumph in the second. We’d watch transfixed, and get very indignant at our parents, who would roar with laughter throughout the show.

Haha, same mate. I remember the one with Adam West in, and also that I could never understand why my dad thought it was so funny. It was usually Robin’s “Holy Contributing to the Delinquency of Minors Batman!” moments, and some of Batman’s ‘deductions’ that would set him off.

Cheers for your post Fowlly, that was a nice read. I love reading people’s memories, especially when they’re happy ones. It puts you back into that state of mind by default, as you recall the times, and the way they made you feel. I certainly am one for living in the present moment – but I do enjoy a good reminisce over fond memories.

If the topic might actually end up taking off, I’m sure I’ll add more of my own as they arise. But not much point if I’m just talking to myself. I do enough of that already. Or so my alters tell me anyway.

[Numptyboi]

School was good fun, i remember. There were a few of us n’er-do-well’s that used to knock about, but in hindsight we had a bit of entreprenurial spirit running through us. There was a short craze for the parents to brew their own beer or ferment their own wine with home brew kits, that appeared to be a bit short lived. One of the Dad’s was throwing out his wine kit, so we salvaged it from the bin and made our own that we intended to sell at school. All went well with the brewing process (i was lucky enough to have a small shed that my folks didn’t go into) until the day of sale. Taking 18 bottles of wine into school is no easy feat for a group of 4 lads, but we got there and sold them to anyone who would buy them. Unfortunately, 12 year old kids didn’t take heed of our “drink sensibly” motto and the school playground was bedecked with chunder and broken glass. Our (ahead of its time) recycling policy on the bottles, in tatters, we had to abandon the business, although we’d learned some valuable lessons.

The second ruse involved computer games. In the old days cassette tapes were screwed together, so it was a piece of piss to buy a game, buy a blank C15 computer cassete for next to nothing, unscrew the cassettes, swap the reels and take back the game to Smiths to get the middle aged women to exchange it. Flog the original and pocket the money for a free game. It could be done about 2 or 3 times before suspicion arose. But it did enable us to buy a tape-to-tape cassette recorder which made copying games much easier.

The most lucrative schoolyard business was undoubtedly the top shelfers. Back in the day, those of a less academic bent were grouped in the expectation supressing “Remedial Class”. Armed with a low self esteem and a desire to gain mates, these chaps were more than willing to nick a top shelf magazine for 25p each, which we then sold onto younger lads for quite a bit more. Being in an all boys school, the number of potenial punters was never in question. We must have peddled a good hundred or so mags before, unfortunately, getting caught when one of our less shy customers decided to spank the monkey in class and our growing enterprise was shut down immediately, following a grassing up.

It made school quite fun. Eventually, I left with a pathetic number of exam passes, but could have been the next Branson if “Toggles Thompson” hadn’t decided to get his piece out in French, the shitbag.

[pap]

It’s odd how 60’s Batman gets treated. I still have fond memories of it, especially the film which was just an utter piss-take. I’m not sure what I like best, the Batcopter being shot down and miraculously landing at a foam convention, or the Bat-Anti-Shark repellent they just happened to have onboard.

Tim Burton’s films changed a lot of perceptions, and I seem to remember the 60’s show being roundly mocked at the time. We wanted a dark, brooding Batman. In retrospect, the Burton films were still great fun by the standards of the films that came after, even if they did take massive liberties with the source material.

This’ll be news to few, but Adam West is in Family Guy, starring as Mayor Adam West. Does the whole thing in his dazed Batman persona. He’s excellent in it.

[Goatboy]

Good thread. Unfortunately I left most of my childhood memories in various fields in the late 80’s/early 90’s.

I will sit in a darkened room with a few josticks later and see if I can brave the looming fear and cement a few recollections.