What memories would you liked to of shared??

[Eric]

Ah, the days when a thrippny bit got you into the movies on a saturday afternoon ... bonfires ... conkers ... candle stumps in jam jars made great lanterns ... your mac made a helluva fine cape if you felt like being Superman ... French onion sellers ... goldfish for old rags ... spuds thrown onto the fire until they turned black ... toasting forks ... the wireless ... the midnight flits ... visiting my gran and sitting with her while she listened to Gilbert and Sullivan; she had all of their stuff on a massive collection of 78 r.p.m. records ... played them on a real gramaphone ... not electric of course. ... my prize possesion, a bag of about a dozen or so marbles ... the annual Middle Club trip to Blackpool. It seems so long ago. Thing is, we had it better than did our parents and our grandparents.

[davebtelford]

'Fast' food - Kenyons pie shop down a cellar on Blackburn Rd. facing Corporation St. for steak pudding & peas after the pictures.

Going too & from school from age 6 with no adults in attendance and with the door key on a string round my neck so I could get back in after school.

Sun curtain at the front door to stop the paint from bubbling - our front faced south.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Having milk delivered straight from the farm.......no choice as to skimmed or semi skimmed....but, you old have half a pint straight from the churn into your milk jug...then you put a Lacey doily weighted with coloured beads over the top to stop the dust or flies getting in.
No-one I knew had a refrigerator or freezer...so no frozen fish fingers, burgers or peas.
The birtwells ice cream cart came round every weekend and you would go out with your glass dish...or you would choose a cornet.....sprinkled with raspberry vinegar(yum).....or you could have an ice cream sandwich. The ice cream was buttery yellow and the taste was far superior to anything you can buy in the shops today.

[entwisi]

OK, slightly different era but probably just as alien to todays teens..

my home computer had 1K of memory,output was black and white to a TV, if you added a RAM pack it went to 16K , problem was they wobbled and reset whatever you were doing.
no such thing as downloads, everything was stored on cassette tapes and loaded from your domestic tape player which you had to spend ages getting the volume "just" right for it to work. games took upwards of 10 mins and you never knew if it was going to work till it finished.

You could copy games if you had a tape to tape stereo ( or more likely your dad did ). Amstrad seemed to be king of the roost when it came to reliable copies...

Handheld games were LCD only and extremely basic

Digital watches were red LEDs that only lit up when you pressed a button

Honda Cub ( or chicken chasers as they were affectionally named due to the sound they made with a busted exhaust ) were the field bike of choice for 10-14year olds

[Mick]

Originally Posted by shillelagh

remember these ....

yep I remember them long woody things with bits sticking out
and it hurt when you climbed them and fell out

[Margaret Pilkington]

Originally Posted by Mick

yep I remember them long woody things with bits sticking out
and it hurt when you climbed them and fell out

You could hang ropes on them and make a great tree swing...play Tarzan(well the boys could).
Many happy hours were spent on rope swings...that, building dens and bogeys(they weren't green and slimy). They had wheels on(usually pinched from an old pram) and if you took one to the top of Carter Street you could achieve a fine rate of knots by the time you reached Victoria Street on the 'factory bottom'.

This was real exhilarating fun, and it was healthy(well, it was unless you met a bus on Victoria Street)because you had to drag the bogey back up to the top of the hill to do it all over again...many many times.

[westendlass]

My mum shouting us all in for tea (five of us) from the front door, Sunday nights after the bath watching Dads Army in front of the fire. Sheets and blankets instead of quilts and people's pet dogs booted out to take themselves for a walk! I can also remember it being that cold in winter that my mum had the oven on with the door open just to get some heat in to the house. Happy days!

[Eric]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

You could hang ropes on them and make a great tree swing...play Tarzan(well the boys could).
Many happy hours were spent on rope swings.

There was a great rope swing at the bottom of Swales's pasture, out over the Stink ... we used to go looking for bird's nests, blackberries, and pignuts down there ... a bottle of spanish jink and hey ho, off we go.

And train spotting ... locos had character back in the day ... I remember seeing "Silver Jubilee" come through Accy Station ... they said the numbers on it were made out of bars of silver ... and you could save a halfpenny on the platform ticked by buying a half-priced single to Ossie for three ha'pence. Helping Basil Brierley rub down his horse, Tommy. And playing in the piles of junk he had on his allotment ,,, and there was even more junk at his place off Lower Barnes Street ... there were four allotments together back of Rishton Road ... three of them were owned by guys with the first name "Thomas" ... Thomas "Basil" Brierley, Tom Noble, and Tom Pilkington, and my grandad's middle name was Thomas ... he had the other allotment ... we had chickens, a vegetable garden, and a greenhouse where my grandad grew tomatoes. And glads that were taller than I was. I remember there was an elderly couple who lived on Stone Row ... every day the old girl would trot off down to the Village Blacksmith (Dutton's house) with a big jug which she would get filled with beer. In summer they would sit outside drink the beer, and chat to people passing by. Playing inside the old chimley at the paint works ...

You know, the more I think about this stuff, the more things come back to me.

[Margaret Pilkington]

yes Eric...isn't memory a wonderful thing?

[Eric]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

yes Eric...isn't memory a wonderful thing?

And we had time to absorb life ... it had solidity, like a plate of double pudding, chips, and peas Change wasn't constantly being shoved in your face ... not much of "bigger, better, newer, faster." Stuff was built to last. It had a life span of more than a couple of months. Like my gran's old gramaphone ... a great piece of furniture made out of real wood ... none of that veneer garbage ... and if it were around today, not only would it be worth a bunch of money, it would still work! And values ... they were solid too. You didn't need political correctness, you knew the difference between right and wrong.

[Margaret Pilkington]

You have nailed it Eric...maybe that is why the youngsters today seem to have so little regard for personal interaction...all they seem to focus on is their devices.
Devices have no soul, no feeling, no personality. (and I like my devices - though only a very basic mobile phone..it makes calls and sends texts, but nothing else).

[Eric]

I'm not opposed to change per se, facing it stubbornly and stupidly like some modern day Canute ... nor do I favour regression, a retreat to a Golden Age that never existed. Steam locos were impressive, but, alas, at 25% efficiency, they just had to go.

But I do think that change should be scrutinized in detail, not accepted as a bundle ... you know, like the ones that tv providers offer. What I do object to is that "change" has somehow become synonymous with "progress" ... building more lethal weaponry is not even remotely similar to advances in medicine. And then there are the false claims ... ok, let's be honest and call them "lies" ... spouted by the developers and purveyors of technology, and other assorted big businesses. A faster smart phone ain't gonna make you happier ... a car that will park itself doesn't improve your life ... supermarkets are selling "stuff" not, as they claim, "a satisfying shopping experience" ... whatever that is ... if you belive the ads, it's something like an orgasm.

What I object to ... I'm on a real rant, eh ... is that so much "chage/progress" is driven by corporate greed. Microsoft, Samsung, Sony et al, are in the business of making money, not improving lives ... anti-social networking and the devices that facilitate it are, in no sense ,a "boon to mankind"; it's just another way of getting at your cash. And they accept no responsiblity for the downsides of "progress", high and deadly rates of obesity is just one of the dangerous negatives. Technology and the science behind it are receiving all the attention. What is being neglected is us ... our humanity. You can't fix social, moral, and, yes, spiritual problems by building a whole bunch of better mouse traps. If you've got a problem with mice, get yourself a cat for chrissakes.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Eloquent as always Eric, and it must be my age or something because I agree with every word.

[Margaret Pilkington]

If you refuse to embrace some of the modern technology then you are looked at with mild amusement.
I was in Manchester before Christmas and was asked to put my name to a petition of some sort. I said to the guy 'right, where do you want me to sign?'
'Oh' he says ' you don't actually sign anything - you send a text message to this number'
I told him I couldn't do it as I had no mobile phone.
'How do you keep in touch with your friends? He asked.
'Haven't got any' I said.
I left him scratching his head. I wasn't sending any text messages so that I could be bombarded with advertising spam.

When I took my old(but bomb proof) Nokia phone to have a new SIM card put in(I act old and daft so that they transfer all my data onto the new card ) the girl was derisory about it and said I would need to change it to a new 'smartphone' sometime in the not too distant future.
I told her that when they bring out a phone that is smart enough to do my washing, ironing, and housework......I will be first in the queue for one. Till then they could stick 'em up their jumper.

[westendlass]

I wonder what today's young people will remember fondly in thirty years time when everything now seems so old fashioned. Will flat screen TV's become a hologram in the corner of the room for instance?