Not too much on my plate today other than to reflect on days long since passed so here's a few thoughts.........

My mum used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread butter on bread on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e. Coli

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake or at the beach instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

We all took PE ..... And risked permanent injury with a pair of Dunlop sandshoes instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors that cost as much as a small car. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

We got the cane for doing something wrong at school, they used to call it discipline yet we all grew up to accept the rules and to honour & respect those older than us.

We had 50 kids in our class and we all learned to read and write, do maths and spell almost all the words needed to write a grammatically correct letter......., FUNNY THAT!!

We all said prayers in school irrespective of our religion, sang the national anthem and no one got upset.

Staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention we wish we hadn’t got.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations. We weren't!!

Oh yeah ... And where was the antibiotics and sterilisation kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played “King of the Hill” on piles of gravel left on vacant building sites and when we got hurt, mum pulled out the 2/6p bottle of iodine and then we got our backside spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10 day dose of antibiotics and then mum calls the lawyer to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?
We never needed to get into group therapy and/or anger management classes.

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED.

I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!

AAAAh, those WERE the days!!!!

You missed out putting pennies on the railway lines, collecting jam jars for pocket money.
seeing if the old man or old lady wanted any shopping done, fishing for tiddlers.

Luv it. I used to get the cane every single day by one particular nun but by god, by the time I left junior school I could rhyme off my tables without a second thought. I am amazed at all the different labels that are placed on what used to be classed as "naughty kids".

Reminds me of this advert



Or the Ronnie Barker version

Walked up that very same hill (Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset) last year and was contemplating doing my own take on the advert. Unfortunately though, the street was packed with bloody tourists wouldn't you know it. That's something else that's changed over the years - people have far too much leisure time on their hands.

Reminiscing of a bye-gone age......Part 2 As you will see, I've still got nothing better to do

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL BORN IN 1930's, 1940's, 50's, 60's, 70's and Early 80's !!! First, you survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, your baby cots were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. You had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when you rode your bikes, you had no helmets, not to mention, the risks you took hitchhiking .. As children, you would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun. You drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle. You shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. You ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but you weren't overweight because...... YOU WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!! You would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach you all day. And you were OK. You would spend hours building your go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out you forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, you learned to solve the problem . You did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........YOU HAD FRIENDS and you went outside and found them! You fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents you played with worms(well most boys did) and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. You made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although you were told it would happen, you did not poke out any eyes. You rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them! Local teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing you out if you broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. You had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and you learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS! You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Agger likes this post, used to get the dap, ruler, cane and stick almost every time I went to school! Hence I bunked off and worked. I retired at 56 thats 4.5 years ago, I'm financially comfy and don't regret a single thing I've done, even if it been wrong, I tell the truth, I do respect others, BUT i tell it like it is!

Nice one and well remembered. Will only add the following :-

Going out to play football after school down the park and 25 a side with jumpers as goalposts and no celebratory histoinics and then walking home alone through the streets.

We used to have jumble sales while our parents were at work, when we got enough money we would go to the swimming baths. When the rag bone man came on our street we would grab anything close to hand to give him as we got a balloon or bow and arrow depending on how good the donation was. I'm sure my mum had to work just to replace all the things we sold or exchanged. She still doesn't know to this day what we used to do. When we take our grandkids away we do all the stuff we did as kids (apart from what I've just mentioned of course) and they just love it,. Rock pooling, fishing, crabbin, indoor games when it's wet, we have a ball.

And we would do it all again just to be where we are!

I know that every parent in my neighbourhood looked out
for other peoples kids as well as their own. They administered
a clip around the ear without bias, and praised the same way.
No one locked their houses, there was no need, everyone knew
everyone. Even the odd 'un's were our odd un's and people
watched out for them. Policemen were addressed by their
christian names by parents and called sir by us. The respect
and trust was mutual.

Oh yes, Ellen - the Rag and Bone Man...........thanks for reminding me. Ours was a right character pretty much out of the Harald's father mould, horse and cart included lol. And Dixon - not of Dock Green of course, rather Levenshulme, Manchester, one of a kind. The fact that my left ear is somewhat larger than the right is down to him.