The Good Old Days

Norkie

Norkie

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I took wifey out for lunch last week and we got to talking about things that we had or saw or did when we were younger.

Like...

A man used to come round on his bicycle and ring a bell. People would come out with garden shears or carving knives. He would turn his bike upside down and attach a leather strap type affair to the pedals and a grindstone at the rear. He would then sharpen them for a penny or whatever each.

The baker would come round with a tray of bread rolls and cakes on a large wooden tray on his head. He would try to tempt mum into buying more that she could afford!

Remember the Corona truck with all the bottles of pop on the back. The crates, wooden crates, were angled inward as they were stacked one upon the other! 3d a bottle refund when you took them back as well!

The road sweeper man had a battery powered truck drawn behind him. He would sweep up and shovel the sweeping into the little truck.

I remember our local council, we lived in social housing back then (1960's) they sent a man who painted the timber effect pattern on the front door. I watched him with wide eyes as he did his work.

What about you?
 
I remember the Corona truck; there was also a paraffin truck where you would fill a bottle of your own with said substance, to use in those dreadful paraffin heaters.
In Hong Kong, there was the "popsi-man", this Chinese guy would pedal his tricycle around with the freezer compartment on the front, would get to a block of flats and sit there ringing his bell and crying out "Popsi, Popsi", and we'd all come down to buy ice cream (coconut flavour my favourite, sometimes Durian flavour if you could get it) and ice lollies (we called them Pepsi's like the Americans).
 
We had two ice cream vendors, Tonibell and Rossi :) Tonibell had a plastic boat that he would curl two ice cream pyramids into and cover them with nuts and coloured sugar granules.
 
I remember all of the above.

I remember conkers and clackers and football cards and football coins. Playing in the street when no one had a car. The excitement of a bus ride to the seaside and wanting to sit behind the driver to see how to drive. Going on holiday to Blackpool and eating crisp sandwiches on the coach. One thing I suddenly remembered the other day was getting a pair of football boots for my birthday and being frightened to wear them in case they got dirty. A pair of kids football boots was a big buy for many in those days.

Thanks for the memories :D
 
I remember going to join the 'Cubs' the junior Boy Scouts and how proud I was to turn up in my full cub uniform! Great stuff. Must have cost my parents a fortune :)
 
Tonibell & Mr Whippy,
Paraffin man
A green grocer in a van coming door to door.
My school days Saturday job and Weds evening, selling / delivering meat from a van ( no I wasn't driving :D )
Rag and bone man from the back of his van.
Knife and shears sharpener from the back of a van.
And the smell of freshly laid tar on the roads when it was done properly, with a road roller.
 
Ere up north we had the Black pea man every Friday evening as I recall
Tricycle with a heated compartment up front, take your own basin
 
Cobra said:
Ah yes nitty Nora the school nurse.

And that.

No internet, what did we do eh?
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I seem to think that there were things called books. And if we wanted to know what our friends had for breakfast we could always ask them when we met. Though strangely we didn't ask for a photograph.
 
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Of course there was always the bin man that would collect the bin from your gate, empty and return it.
Not forgetting the coal man that would put it in the "coal shed"
 
Clive K said:
And if we wanted to know what our friends had for breakfast we could always ask them when we met.
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I don't remember ever feeling the need to ask a friend what they had for breakfast,
Thank God for facebook :D
 
Cobra said:
Of course there was always the bin man that would collect the bin from your gate, empty and return it.
Not forgetting the coal man that would put it in the "coal shed"
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And the bin men cleared spills from the road as they were emptying them
 
As above plus.

I remember on a Sunday as a 10 year old (around 1960) being sent to the Off Licence on my bike to buy my Dad a couple of bottles of beer (returnable bottles) with proper screw-in stoppers. and if granny was coming for lunch a bottle of "loose" sherry straight out the barrel and 10 Woodbines. No one asked any questions about being under age its the way it was in those days.
 
Cobra said:
I don't remember ever feeling the need to ask a friend what they had for breakfast,
Thank God for facebook :D
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Mind you. By the time that you had taken the photo, finished off the roll of film, had it developed and printed several months could have passed. It wasn't unusual to have two Christmases and a summer holiday on a roll of 24 exposures.
 
I used to go and visit my granny and grandad, and the road where they lived had a grassy area outside a crescent of houses. My brother and I would play in the old WW2 bomb shelter.
 
When I was 5 or 6 I remember the milkman had a horse drawn cart.

Having the foil tops of the milk bottles pecked by birds.

The CO-OP greengrocer coming around on a Saturday and I'd get a bottle of Cream Soda or Dandelion and Burdock

Warming a coin and putting it on the frost on the inside of a window to peek out.

The French onion seller.

The dentist having a drill where the power was delivered by a series of what looked like pulleys and having a tooth out with gas as the anesthetic.

Much later, in the 1980s preparing for a holiday by going to the library to borrow OS maps of where we wanted to go and the books on the area.


Dave
 
Tringa said:
When I was 5 or 6 I remember the milkman had a horse drawn cart.

Having the foil tops of the milk bottles pecked by birds.

The CO-OP greengrocer coming around on a Saturday and I'd get a bottle of Cream Soda or Dandelion and Burdock

Warming a coin and putting it on the frost on the inside of a window to peek out.

The French onion seller.

The dentist having a drill where the power was delivered by a series of what looked like pulleys and having a tooth out with gas as the anesthetic.

Much later, in the 1980s preparing for a holiday by going to the library to borrow OS maps of where we wanted to go and the books on the area.


Dave
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Foil tops on the milk bottles! Pecked away by the birds each morning to get to the cream. Wow!
 
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Dogs copulating on the pavement. White dog poo. Park keepers, pullovers as goal posts, glass bottles returned to the shop for threpence refund, threpenny bits and tanners, working men's clubs full of working men and football matches starting at 3pm on Saturday and finishing by ten to five so you knew that you hadn't won the pools by tea time.
 
Bowl of cold gravel for breakfast....
I remember as a 7 year old staying on my grandads farm, and trying to carry a full milk churn from the dairy to the stand from which the milk lorry would collect the full ones and return the empty ones
I remember being allowed to stand up behind my grandad on the back of the tractor when he brought bales of hay back from the fields where they were being baled
I remember my dad scooping the cream off a bucket of unpasteurised un-brucellosis-tested milk straight from the cow, for his breakfast (no wonder he died of a heart attack young with clogged arteries)
 
Saturday mornings the coal lorry would come around, littering the street with broken peat briquettes and lumps of stray coal, we would have 'coal wars' - literally firing them at one another! - The ice-cream truck would follow soon after, we'd collect ice-lolly sticks and play what we called 'chop-sticks' or some more creative kids would make baskets out of them - we'd also collect chestnuts, pierce holes in them, use a shoe-lace to knot them up and play 'conkers' - of course there was often cheating involved [clear varnish, roasting them to make them tougher etc] - the girls would collect 'fancy pages' and make perfume out of dandelions and daisies [or nicer flowers lifted from one of the nicer gardens!] - one of the most popular games we played was 'channels' [some called it curbs] but when all the kids on the street combined we'd play rounders, red rover, baskets [the person who was the basket had to guess who it was that kicked them in the ass lol, tv times ["It's on ITV, sat night at 9pm, begins with ...." ] and another game that might not go down so well today 'catch a girl kiss a girl' - oft played in a local cornfield. So many more games and memories, different world back then [early 80's to 90's for me]
 
Sitting on Mum's lap, steering the car up the hill (at 7 years old...) Being sent over the road for ciggies (same age.) The Nott's boy (70, if he was a day!) delivering the groceries (until the late '90s IIRC!).
 
We didn't know it then, but they were the good old days. Fell off my motorcycle, ambulance there in under 10 minutes, straight into A&E, broken collar bone strapped up, wounds stitched and sat up in bed before my parents arrived to lecture me about the perils of motorcycles! By the time I got home, the next day, dad and his mate had fixed the bike (all parts were in stock!). My collar bone took a while longer than the bike but I did ride it to the hospital for my physio appointments!!!
 
French guy used to come round on his bike selling onions
The tinker who came and sharpened your knives/scissors
The man from the Pru (prudential) every week to collect the insurance payment.
 
Dinky toys, Matchbox toys and that tower thing in toy shops, full of toy vehicles. Airfix models, the smell of the enamel paints.

Adidas kick trainers.

Coalmen, delivering coal into the bunker, or 'cot' as my dad called it. Then the bin men, coming into the back gardens for the 'ash bin'.

Zeraschi's ice cream van, with homemade ice cream. Alpine pop van. Milk on the doorstep, usually with opened tops where the Blue Tits had taken the cream off the top.

My Raleigh Chopper.

Freemans catalogue and putting an X next to what I wanted for Christmas.

My dad's 2 stroke Lambretta. :love:

This could end up a very long list.
 
Nod said:
Sitting on Mum's lap, steering the car up the hill (at 7 years old...)
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Mum never learned to drive, but yes sitting on dads lap driving his MKII Jag, about the same age.
Steep said:
The man from the Pru (prudential) every week to collect the insurance payment.
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Ah yes, I forgot about him.

Dale. said:
Freemans catalogue and putting an X next to what I wanted for Christmas.
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That'll be the scantily clad women then :D
 
Clive K said:
Rickets, nits, frost on the inside of my bedroom window.......

Happy days!
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Oh yes, ice on the inside of the bedroom window but I don't remember the country grinding to a halt when it snowed.

Having milk delivered every day and the sound of the bottles clinking. There was a rail line just yards from our front door and the trains used to "toot toot" and there was a farm at the bottom of the road and the cows used to walk past our drive twice a day. As a kid I was frightened of them as they were just so big and noisy and smelly but everyone used to go out to scoop the poop for their roses.

Happier times.
 
woof woof said:
Oh yes, ice on the inside of the bedroom window but I don't remember the country grinding to a halt when it snowed.

Having milk delivered every day and the sound of the bottles clinking. There was a rail line just yards from our front door and the trains used to "toot toot" and there was a farm at the bottom of the road and the cows used to walk past our drive twice a day. As a kid I was frightened of them as they were just so big and noisy and smelly but everyone used to go out to scoop the poop for their roses.

Happier times.
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I used to be a milkman and in the severe winter of 84/85 I had to leave the electric milk float wherever I could and carry two full crates up the hills. And I had about thirty crates to deliver!

But tell that to the kids of today and they won't believe you........
 
Crikey, some people talking here about the 80's/90's and here I (and some others) referring to the 50's/60's! Now I feel old!
 
To be fair though, looking through the posts/memories, there's very little between the 60's to 80's, unlike the vast leap from 80's to the 'naughties'
 
Cagey75 said:
Are we lesser for it? :ROFLMAO:

The 80's is the new 60's, get over it Boomers :D

Gen X FTW :cool:
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The 80's.... I was working for CDC then Systime Computers in Leeds before moving into field service with DPCE so my next addition to the good old days is 80's computers.

I hurt my back trying to pick up a CDC SMD drive. Only about 30mb too.
 
woof woof said:
The 80's.... I was working for CDC then Systime Computers in Leeds before moving into field service with DPCE so my next addition to the good old days is 80's computers.

I hurt my back trying to pick up a CDC SMD drive. Only about 30mb too.
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Being an 80's kid [born '75'] I can at least appreciate some form of that, having to use 'floppy discs' and cassettes to play video games - anything up to 30 mins loading time, criminal!!
 
When I was a youth I hated old people talking about the good old days.

Now I'm an old person I hate old people talking about the good old days. Even more.
 
I remember the Corona lorry and getting IIRC 1d for returning the bottles.

Mars bars for 7d
Two Blackjacks & two fruit salads for 1d and if I only had a ha'penny I could buy two chews..

Travelling on the bus to school in fog you could cut with a knife, or so it seemed.

As for the 70's and my first full time job as a path lab technician and the introduction of computing to the hospital. Haematology got a DEC mini computer that was about the size of 4 or 5 five drawer filing cabinets with the lovely green or orange monitor screens

Plus on the odd time I visited the main computer suit with it's air conditioning, Winchester drives as well as huge barrell drives that seemed to head crash all too often and cause headaches for any doctors seeking test results.

Pirate radio in the SW London area.

Short wave listening and getting QSL cards from across the globe.

Enjoying both science & workshop practice.....on one occasion a school trip to visit the British Hovercraft Company factory on the IoW.

So many things happened back then and all too few remembered in detail.
 
1963, my three year old sister opened the front door, stepped outside and vanished into snow - real snow. Football in the streets - oooop north, no cars around then, used to have black feet when we finished. We had an outside loo (next to the coal bunker) in the sixties, folks would probably get a human rights lawyer for that nowadays. Ice on the inside of the windows, putting on shirt whilst in bed. Sunday evening, bread and dripping with cold beef, pickled onions and mustard. Friday was fish and chips, down to Entwhistle St, long line of people all doing the same. Saturday - walk to Burnden Park over the fields, cross Bradshaw Brook, buy the local paper - The Buff - see who was in the team, keep the pictures, paste them in the scrapbook. If Bolton were away, then it was Gig Lane (Bury) or a special treat, Maine Road to see Manchester City (Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee, Joe Corrigan etc).
Life was much simpler then, everyone seemed to be slimmer, definitely more exercise, walking to school, football in the playground.
Happy days.
 
Corona Man. Dandelion n Burdock. . Making sandwiches out of anything in the cupboard. Drink council pop, put it all in bag n disappear for the day on our bikes. No idea of time on the weekends. Came home when you was tired n hungry. Pegging bit of cardboard on wheel spokes for " go faster" sound. N a real ding ding bell to go round corners.
 
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