Hi
Some one sent me this email, I was having a bad day at work and it did cheer me up.....but it also made me feel very old.
Its quite long but if you have got the time its well worth reading.
"Close your eyes and go back in time....

Before the Internet or the Apple Mac.
Before semi-automatics, joy riders and crack....
Before SEGA or Super Nintendo...

Way back........

I'm talking about Hide and Seek in the park.
The corner shop.
Hopscotch.
Butterscotch.
Skipping.
Handstands.
Football with an old can.
Fingerbobs.
Beano, Twinkle.
Roly Poly.
Hula Hoops, jumping the stream, building dams.
The smell of the sun and fresh cut grass.
Bazooka Joe bubble gum.

An ice cream cone on a warm summer night from the van that plays a
tune:
Chocolate or vanilla or strawberry or maybe Neapolitan or perhaps a
screwball

Wait......

Watching Saturday morning cartoons....short commercials, The Double
Deckers,
Road Runner, He-Man, Tiswas or Swapshop?, and Why Don't You

or staying up for Star Trek.

When around the corner seemed far away and going into town seemed
like going somewhere.

Earwigs, wasps and bee stings.
Sticky fingers.
Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, and Zorro.
Climbing trees.
Building igloos out of snow banks.
Walking to school, no matter what the weather.
Running till you were out of breath, laughing so hard that your
stomach
hurt.
Jumping on the bed. Pillow fights.
Spinning around, getting dizzy and falling down was cause for
giggles.
Being tired from playing....remember that?

The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team.
Water balloons were the ultimate weapon
Football cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle.
Choppers and Grifters

I'm not finished just yet.....

Eating raw jelly. Orange squash ice pops.

Remember when...
There were two types of trainers - girls and boys, and Dunlop Green
Flash - and the only time you wore them at school was for P.E.

You knew everyone in your street - and so did your parents.
It wasn't odd to have two or three "best" friends.
You didn't sleep a wink on Christmas eve.
When nobody owned a pure-bred dog.
When 25p was decent pocket money
When you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny.
When nearly everyone's mum was at home when the kids got there.

When it was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner
at a real restaurant with your parents.

When any parent could discipline any kid, or feed him or use him to
carry groceries and nobody, not even the kid, thought a thing
of it.

When being sent to the head's office was nothing compared to the
fate that awaited a misbehaving student at home.

Didn't that feel good?
Just to go back and say, Yeah, I remember that!

Remember when....
Decisions were made by going " Ip Dip Dog Ship ." (yeah I know)
"Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest.
Money issues were handled by whoever was the banker in "Monopoly".
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was germs.
And the worst thing in your day was having to sit next to one.
It was unbelievable that British Bulldog wasn't an Olympic event.
Having a weapon in school, meant being caught with a catapult.

Nobody was prettier than Mum.

Scrapes and bruises were kissed and made better.
Taking drugs meant orange-flavoured chewable aspirin.
Ice cream was considered a basic food group
Getting a foot of snow was a dream come true
Older siblings were the worst tormentors, but also the fiercest
protectors

If you can remember most or all of these, then you have LIVED.

I remember all of them. Im 43 this saturday.
Mick

I remember them but i'm not telling !!
happy birhday mick :)
Liz

Me too, and I am 39 in February!!

Yep Craig, I remember nearly all them & your right, it did make me feel old, but boy I sure have lived!!!!! :)
Christine2

Very good, it has made me take a trip down Memory Lane !

I must have lived very well !! :D (still am !)

Lucy

Now I am depressed .....I go even further back than most of those memories :D 25p being decent pocket maoney HAH! Thats 5 bob......I used to get 6d a week ;) and there was NO Sat am TV progs ...in fact it seems to date from about 1975 or so ....I was 20 then :D :D

Melody

I'm with you on that Melody, 3d pocket money & I was rich for a few days !

But, I still remember most of these ... ahh, nostalgia !

One thing though "The smell of the sun ... " are you sure this was in the days before drugs ? :D

oooooohhhh. I remember them all too.

Fablab, I used to get 3d pocket money too. A threepenny piece known as a "thrupny bit" :) :)
Dot

That's the one, brass with many sides & a portculis on one side ... that was my pocket money for the week just over 1p in todays money !

Happy days. :)

Me too Melody
Anne

Aah those were the days! I remember 1/3d pocket money 6p and that went a long way glass of coke and a sausage roll up the street on a Saturday morning. 9d got you into Sat morning cinema, sixpenny Cadbury's Dairy milk and about 6 or 8 squares. Horse riding 7/6 an hour 371/2p. Thing ain't what they used to be :-)
Anne

LOL

I was a *Saturday Girl* at Woolies in 1970 ...and I used to earn 19/6 per DAY!! After decimalization the wages went up to £1.05 per day. Ciggies were 12 and a half p a pack of 20's. I was on the dole after leaving schhol (only for about 4 weeks) and I used to get £3.85 per week in 1971 :)

Never had it so good :D

Melody

Even i remember most of those things

Like, when the summer seemed to last forever, and you couldnt remember how to write or hold a pencil when you went back to school.
Going on a summer holiday and running around naked on the beach,
the misery of a helium balloon unwisely let go off! (i still well up when i see a balloon floating off on its own) and the same upset when the icecream fell off your cone.

Sherbet dip dabs, and when 50p would buy you enough sweets to share around adn still you would all feel sick after.

Sweets tasted brilliant, the best thing in the world, whereas now they taste of sugar and chemicals.

The horror of having called your teacher 'mum' instead of 'miss', getting the back of my legs slapped for backchat!

Doing handstands on the field.

The day a dog walked into the playground and only i would go up to it.

The kid who wet themselves in assembly! The kid who would always throw up at dinner, adn set off three other kids.

Kiss chase, when you were too young to want to kiss anyone.

Sledding down grassy slopes on a piece of cardboard. Staying up really really late on bonfire night and cooking potatoes in the embers.

Hot summers, the smell of hay, sleeping in the field shelter with the ponies and having a rat walk over your sleeping bag.

Riding bareback to the pond and taking the ponies swimming, building over ambitious cross country courses in the woods adn falling off repeatedly trying to jump them. Having bareback races across the stubble on the newly cut hay field, no bridles either, just headcollars with the top band let out as far as it would go.

Two of us riding bareback together to the post office to by sweets.

Ponies bolting across the common to join the hunt, and learning a lot of new swear words off the hunt master!

Falling off your bike adn getting a really big graze on your knee and the purple stuff that your mum put on it.

Other peoples mums giving you a clip round the earhole for being cheeky.

The littlest hobo, why dont you and Wackaday on the telly, sneaking downstairs with your duvet to watch them on a saturday morning.

Swapping stuff at school, getting a b******ing of your mum and having to ask to swap back.

The big kid on your first day at school, the one with the permanent bubble of snot hanging out of his nose, spots, bean juice down his front, and even though every one said he was only five, you could see the facial hair and reckoned he was more like fifteen! Crying for your mum to take you home!

Nit nurse, and eye check day!

Sunday school!

Emma

These are fanstastic

Last night my dad e-maild me some piccies - one was me with 7 friends taken at my 12th birthday party - how great trying to see if I could remember them all.

Very nostalgic

Pam n the baby boys

That really is good! :D
Childhood memories, :D I remember it all.
Nicky

I remember most of that Craig- He-man, Octomus Prime etc etc- I was a Tom boy:) And Emma you must be more my age because I can remember wakaday and why don't you, dangermouse etc:) And oh boy did the summers go on forever:)

Stacey x x x

I can remember, when my mum wouldnt let me watch Grange Hill because she thought it was too grown up for me, watching He-Man, and She-ra, and thundercats, and blue peter, Stacey, which were your earliest memorys of blue peter presenters, Mine were, Janet Ellis, the bald guy, simon i think, and the pets, Goldie and the cat, Dissapearing Jack!

I can remember seeing 'real' punks on the bus, with proper mohicans, all colors of the rainbow! and the bus fare was only 12p! and when Snickers bars were called Marathons, adn when ciggarettes where advertised on the telly.

Not that old though, im only 22, now i feel really old, ohhhhhhhh progress, its all happening now!

Emma

It was John Noakes, Valery singleton was it, it Peter Leslie? The dogs are morte memorable petra and Shep (before the Guide dogs) and the siamese cat.

I remeber when Mini skirts were not a choice, but even old ladies wore skirts above the Knee, and then for a year or so it was floor length dresses as day wear, weird!

I do like the fact that we now seem to have a choice in fashion styles and lengths to choose from, to suit (or not) our age and figures.

I paid 10p on the Bus for years, and continued to pay child fare until after my 21st birthday!

Jason was the Siamese cat. Get Down Shep who could forget it. Years later when I was working we got talking about John Noakes and it turned out my friend could imitate him, really useful :-)
She had just finished doing the imitation when this bloke came to the counter and he had the exact same accent. Everybody rushed away to laugh in corners and I was left biting my cheeks and trying to serve him
Anne

Don't forget Patch. I think he was one of Petra's pups.

Brainless,
Peter Purves. I remember him, Val & John best on Blue Peter. I vaguely remember Chris before that. I used to get him & Peter mixed up. I thought they looked quite alike.

I remember after assembly at school, the housemistresses (old dragons:)) used to get all the girls to stay behind and kneel on the floor. If your skirt didn't touch the floor you were sent home to change :o:

I thought they were near retiring age but when my son left the same school at 16, one of them was still teaching!!
Dot

Emma I thought you were about my age from the stuff you remembered:D

Stacey x x x

happy happy days, i was there and did all that, the milkman who i went to school with was on about the conker tree up the road being still full of conkers,we both laughed and said god we would of had that stripped when we were kids, thanks i enjoyed the memories, regards tina

How about playing 40-40 - anyone remember that. Scrumping in local orchards (naughty but nice).
Daring to go in the air raid shelters - still in our school playground up to the 1960's.
8 aniseed balls for 1d. My brother saved up for ages and went into the sweet shop for 2s6d worth! :)
Summer swimming in the local lido - water was always freezing.
Lorna

We had to go swimming in the local open air pool when I was at the High School here in 1968-71 . We used to march crocodile style down there and then peer in dread and fear at the chalk board outside which always had the water temperature on

:D

Melody