Things you remember that make you feel about 100

I had a Sindy in 1965, they started over here long before Barbie. I also had a Tressy doll with hair which "grew"!

I remember London "pea soupers", Churchill's funeral and JFK being shot, the seafood man coming round on a Sunday teatime with a barrow and various metal jugs in different sizes so you could buy a pint of winkles and have them for tea, with bread and butter and a pin to get them out! Only two channels on tv, Watch with Mother with the original programmes (Andy Pandy; Rag, Tag and Bobtail, the Woodentops etc). Farthings, ha'pennys,half crowns etc. Prices in guineas!

I started work in 1971 at the National Coal Board in Doncaster and it was one of the very few places with a computer - the computer itself was about double the size of a transit van and had to be in a special dustproof room - it was programmed with punch cards and punch tape which girls used to do by sitting at big typewriters which punched holes in the cards ready to feed them into the computer.

Being kicked and spat on during the Miners Strike of 1972 when trying to get into work!

I remember that too, going to the greengrocer's, they didn't have a till either, just a wooden sectioned drawer.

I remember when Woolworths had a meat counter and a cigarette kiosk. (cigarette kiosk only closed in the 90s though)

We had a mobile butcher that used to come round the streets. My nanna and grandad had a mobile fish and chip shop (before I was born though)

Not that long ago, but programmes like Why Don't you. Watching Jim'll fix it, the fall guy, and the A Team after tea on a Saturday afternoon.

My dad used to take us to watch it beign built as a day out!!!!! I think he thought we would be impressed by all the huge earth movers - I still wind my parents up about the patheticness of our trips out!

I remember typing **** on a calculator, turning it upside down & laughing at how sophistcate & hillarious it was.

For me that does make me feel 100 cos that was from my childhood!!! ?

Also Incredible Hulk & murder she wrote on a saturday after Nans!!! x

Wasn't there a little story that went with it too? Something along the lines of; there was a girl, she was X years old (type number into calculator) she was a size X (type and mulitply) but wanted to be Z (type etc.) so she went to the doctor and the doctor said take Y tablets, Z times a day but she ended up (turn calculator upside down to reveal the word boobless).

Oh how we laughed ?

Collecting Green Shield stamps........and pink ones (S+H) too, although they were quite rare.

Foul tasting tongue after licking the stamps to put in the books you got after your father had filled up with petrol at a quadruple stamps fuel station.

I had a barbie from a canadian aunty in the 70's. I was jealous though of Sindy cos I thought she was prettier, if snootier.

1/2p Mojo sweets.

The bloke who ran the local Spar chasing the slightly older girls round his shop and sticking his hand up their skirt and NOONE THOUGHT THAT WAS AT ALL ODD just 'tchoh, that Gerald'.

Getting things like Mr Ben, or Trumpton, or Chorlton & the Wheelies out from the library for my 4 year old and knowing the theme tunes better than I know my own telephone number.

Having a 3 digit telephone number!

1 bus a day from our village to Banbury, at a totally indeterminate time.

Geoff Amos travel, lilac coloured buses. (northants..)

When we were being driven around in the Citroen Vista (all 7 of us and the dog) our grandad used to tell us we were "off to find civilisation" , and to count building site cranes. Rock and roll!

I remember, and I'm not sure if it was just local to us or not, where we lived was a terraced row of houses back to back with the next terrace and so on and in the really really hot summers that we had (specifically 1976 when there was a drout and all the grass turned yellow) that where bits of tar had dropped on the cobblestones (think Coronation Street), they used to form bubbles and we used to go round finding tar bubbles to pop and went home covered in the stuff.

We had a laburnum tree in our back garden as well and were always being told "don't touch it, its poisonous" so we never did. I can't remember the last time I saw a laburnum tree - maybe they've all been chopped down/cut back.

I also remember my mum checking the premium bonds numbers to see if we were going to win lots of money. I also remember having a "pools man" who came every week and collected your coupon. We also used to do Spot the Ball as well and me and my sister used to see how close together we could get the crosses without them touching - never won though.

We also used to have a lot of power cuts in the mid-70s and always had a bit stash of candles "just in case". I too remember the bread strike and also a loaf of bread being about 7p.

Jubillee year when absolutely everyone had red, white and blue bunting somewhere in or on their house and the ceramic plates and silver coins made especially for the occasion. I think I still have a 1977 one.

I also remember duvets/quilts being a new concept - we always used to have sheets and an embroidered sheet on top with frills on and if anyone had a shagpile carpet, they were really really posh.

I'm off to polish my zimmer ?

The code for London being 01 ?

When I was a child living in London we didn't have codes, we had names for your area so my number was Renown 5490!

Really shonky ads in the cinema for the indian restaurant 'just 5 mins from this cinema'.

Pearl and Dean - Pa pa pa pa pa pa paaaaaaaaAAA!

Having the world's highest and most deangerous climping frame in the school playground, over cracked concrete..oh yes and noone died. Reguarly had someone 'cracking their head open' falling off it. Also loads of air raid shelters dotted around the woods, and broken glassed prefabs for us to play in, full of broken glass and great rods of rusty metal. Noone died.

British bulldogs. Never really got the rules,but then I was not very tough.

Spangles! Pacers! Snaps (bit like quavers). Wagon wheels really WERE bigger.

moving on to the 80's a bit - mismatching luminous socks.

Jokes that centered round an unfortuate girl called 'fuckerada', the punch line being 'I'm trying as hard as I can missus'.

Another one, in pre-central heating days, having the gas fire on full blast to warm the room up and my mum telling me not to sit too close because I'll get chilblains (sp) I still, to this day don't know what they are ?

My mum still has one. She's had the same numbers sine 1975 and before that my grandad did the same ones and I don't think either of them ever won anything. It's amusign as my mum isn't the least bit interested in football!

I remember many of the things on here. I also remeber having bins without wheels and the bin me actually coming round to the back of the house to collect them and then putting them back again, that then changed to them leaving the empty bins on the kerb and then wheelie bins that you put out yoruself.

Using your Saverstrip on the bus to school. Ker-Ching!

You still can in Scotland, only I think it's maybe a tad more now. ?

Is the rag and bone man the same as the "any old iron, scrap iron" man? We still get him every fortnight if it is. ?

They played the 54321 ad jingle on the radio yesterday, such torture. The best chocolate biscuits ever made. ?

The pricely sum of 20p. ? It's on the Barrs bottles.

Making up routines to songs in the playground

Buying Smash Hits if my favourite peiple were in it, or for a good poster. And singing along to the radio with the printed lyrics.

Hairbands with windmill type things on them?

Jellybean shoes and bags

Reversible jumpers - I had Betty Boo

Rollerskates and rollerboots

Our brown wooden TV with BBC1, BbC2, ITV3 and ITV4

No central heating in the house but we did get posh and bought a calor gas fire to heat the rooms upstairs, a man used to deliver the big blue gas canisters

Phone with the round wheel in the middle and if you got the number wrong you had to start again

Getting a 10p mix up from the van, which was actually a bag FULL of sweets! and lucky bags.

The City Bakery van which drove around the schemes selling cakes.

White "holey side" tights that you had to wear with brogues or you'd look like a nerd.

Box pleat skirts for school.

The Belt. At school, when you were being punished.

Comb on Mascara (which has eventually come round again ?)

Being sent to elocution and piano lessons (we lived in a council flat ffs!)

Being sent to the farm for eggs and milk.

Getting a "line" for Goldbergs

The feather cut, The purdy, twinky perms

Pretending to be drunk on half a can of Shandy Max

Gloverall Dufflecoats

Derry Boots (which I refused point balnk to wear, I'd rather have worn wellies!)

Liberty Bodices (a thicker vest on top of your vest!)

Navy Knickers for school

Rag rollers

I just can't get enough of those bluuuUUUUUE Riband BLuuues.

Now that's a real mother for you. Yeeeeeeeah.

• Quite a few people have mentioned car seat belts but do you remember when they weren't "flexible" but fixed solid? So if you had crashed, you'd have really injured yourself!
• Taking a pile of 2ps to the local telephone box and waiting for the pips.
• Queueing up for an ice-cream from the ice-cream van parked outside of school when you could get a cone for 6p or one with sauce for 10p!
• When you did your school work in pencil rather than pen? And every new year at school meant buying a new pencil case?
• When you bought your 99p 7" singles from WHSmith rather than a "record shop".
• Getting up early on Saturday mornings to watch Multi-Coloured Swap Shop.
• Pens that you wore around your neck (with the lid attached to a string!)

The very first conditioner available in the shops - "Tame" and the first fake tan "Tanfastic", Miners Make Up, Petticoat magazine, faberge perfumes (there was one everyone wore, can't remember the name but it was in a yellow pack and was something like Kiwi but not that!) wearing stockings because tights hadn't hit the shops yet.

ETA - Pirate Radio Stations! Radio Caroline, Radio London

When we used to go on holiday my dad always made us check in really early so we could get non smoking seats ? and you also had to carry your suitcase - they didn't have wheels!

The pools on a Saturday afternoon - 'no score draw '

THose little cholcolate things in foil containers that were a penny from the tuck shop -they were lush ?

The wayfarer machines on buses. You got a little ticket from it that was on some shiny sort of paper that when you held in front of the fire the entire ticket turned blue! Don't ask me how we discovered that one.

Sticking with the bus theme.....we had ticket machines on out buses that you could drop your change into. You then pressed a big green button and you ticket came out with an imprint of all your coins on it! Marvellous!!

Texans - Yum!

Stripers - Yum!

Fashion - Waistcoats and white shirts, Silk shirts and leggings, Ra-ra skirts, Puffball skirts, batwing tops, culottes with boots, wallabies (shoes) and shellsuits (together!), Moonboots ?

Adrian Mole

Head Bags

Girls World

We still have street parties in Pimlico. Mind you, the last one I went to was opened by Roman Abromavich and had a champagne tent so not all that traditional. but our street and the street behind do traditional ones.

I remeber when the Tv used to finish (about midnight) and they'd play the national anthem before they shut down. I love a bit of pomp and ceremony, me.

Barbie was first but Amercian- Sindy was supposed to be the British Barbie- I suppose when they realised it was easier to sell Barbie all over the stopped bothering with Sindy as much?

I saw a documentry about it recently, and randomly.

Barbie was introduced by Mattel in the 1950's, whilst Sindy was produced by British company Pedigree Dolls in the 1960's as a more 'British' version and more appropriate to the market. It died on its arse in the States and was bought by Hasbro and remodelled, unsuccessfully, for the American market. Essentially the Mattel bully boys were too dominant a force in the toy market - including sueing Hasbro for infringement of copyright, claiming that Sindy was too 'Barbie'.

Mattel don't take any prisoners. They're currently in the middle of a court battle with MGA about Bratz dolls, claiming that it's their intellectual property as Bratz were the brainchild of a former Mattel employee who thought of them whilst in their employment. If they win out the case (which is likely), they'll pull the plug on everything Bratz as it's too close a rival to Barbie. Toy wars, eh - welcome to my world ?

Cinemas used to play the national anthem after a film......when the credits rolled, there was a mad rush to get out. Anyone stuck in the melee when the national anthem started playing felt obliged to stand still until it finished........how times have changed......

so even in the fluffy lovely world of kiddies toys you get the heartless, soul dystroying, innovation and small business crippling monopolistic bully boys eh? sods. grrrr.

its interesting though, you told me more than the documentry did in an hour?

Yes, all those cuddly toy people are evil, mean bullies ?. Business is business, even in the toy world. Of course, though, it's my job to PR them as Santa Claus.