Things you remember that make you feel about 100

My ex was a RC DJ ?

Tony Blackburn???

I remember when the you went to the cinema and the film would be paused half way through so that you could go and buy sweets/cornetos from the woman at the front carrying a big tray.

We had a BBC computer and thought it was the bees-knees.

The council estate we lived on was a bit rough and my brother got spat at as he was the first kid in the street to stop on at six form instead of getting a job. On the back of that I remember when YT schemes were introduced and my dad forbidding my brother from doing this as he wanted them to go to sixth form and get alevels instead.

Oooh who was it? are you allowed to say? That would make him older than me ?

God no, no one anyone would recognise or remember! He was closer to my father in age than me by quite a bit ?

As somebody else mentioned (sorry new hitched won't let me check back for who) i clearly remember getting up early on a satruday to watch the kids tv programmes (The Wide Awake Club i think it was called). Anyway if it was too early all you got on the screen was the test card which I see to remember was some girl with a crayon or a bear or something?

I remember shops closing on sunday, but as we lived in a jewish area they were allowed to open on sunday in lieu of saturday. so we went there if you needed a pint of milk

another cinema one, kia-ora that tasted of plastic

and quosh orange squash in glass bottles

knoodles, which were knorr's answer to pot noodle

coloured vinyl, my sister used to rush to virgin to get these as they were limited

those floppy single things on the front of magazines

and quite an embarrassing one ? but i remember the first asian family who came to our school...everyone was fascinated and wanted to be their friends ?

she was playing noughts and crosses on a blackboard with some weird clown doll, iirc...

My Dad fixed TVs as a sideline and used the test card to get the horizontal and vertical hold and the colours right.

Someone mentionned the football results - remember the clacky typewriter thing that used to click across the screen typing the results while a man read them out? We used to guess what he was going to say. (There were hours on end when there was nothing on TV - much like now really ?)

Eeee I remember the same fuss when a chinese family started at our school and we were all fascinated by them.

Great thread this! For me, it's:

Old-fashioned telegraph poles, disused, that were still on the side of one or two roads.

Top of the Pops at 7pm on Thursday.

Tall glass milk bottles and the sound of milk bottle bottom on concrete at 5.30am.

First and second class postal deliveries: one early morning and one early afternoon.

Quarters of sweets from newsagents.

Fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.

One black dustbin put out weekly.

The Miners' strike and the Falkland's War.

La-la-la-la-la-la Look In! magazine.

Coins with holes in?? And the introduction of 20 pence pieces.

Walking everywhere or getting the bus.

Mum getting the gas meter emptied and having fun spending any surplus.

Saturday afternoon wrestling and motor racing.

Remember most/all of these...

• taping the charts and ignoring Steve Wright and Mr Angry when they scolded us 'Dont tape off the radio!'
• The test card and three channels
• Breakfast TV starting
• Our first car/phone/video/sandwich toaster
• Telling everyone in the room to 'Ssshhhh' whilst holding two forefingers in the air and thus letting them all know you were about to press the 'play' and 'record' buttons simultaneously on a 'tape-recorder'. This was you making a compliation tape for your mate. silence ensued - well apart from the occassional cough/titter. I loved the day I got my double tape-deck ghetto-blaster....
• Now Thats what I call Music 1 (except it didn't have the '1')
• Stylophones
• When you came to a police checkpoint your parents encouraged you to be seen, ie. jump up and down/lean over to the front of the car. Terrorists didn't travel with children apparantly,....
• Robin Hood Boots

I'm sure I'll think of more...

Going to the cinema and being able to see two films - one before the main feature ! Oh, and Tribe perfume anybody ? (Pink and purple box)

<random> The X in the middle of the blackboard on the test card is in the exact centre of the test card. </random>

Actually, something that did make me feel really old a couple of years ago was being a Guide leader in a unit, where one of the girls was a big Nirvana fan. Only when I was at school and Nirvana were a big thing - Kurt Cobain was alive.

Orly this happens me daily. My son (unbeknown to me) spent months hunting Prince vinyls, he arrived home one night with Sign 'o' the times tucked under his arm which he'd won in a poker game. He was ecstatic, until I told him that I had every Prince vinyl from 1973 stashed away in his grannys loft.

I often find myself singing along to whatever noise is coming from his room only to have him query how I know it - well I remember it the first time around.

Another thing I was surprised about - at work I would make references to (what I believe to be) popular culture and the kids look at me as though I'm from Mars. Not one of them had heard of Merlin/Camalot or Shindlers List! I was astounded- especially in light of the recent BBC Merlin series. Philistines the lot of them!

I just saw the topic about Neighbours and it reminded me that I had an australian penpal, for the sole purpose of finding out what was about to happen in Neighbours ?

In my first job, I had an electric typewriter. I had to do corrections by backspacing carefully and typing the letters again on strips of tippex paper, hoping it was all lined up properly! One day I was allowed to book time on "the word processor" which took up a whole room.

As a child, we'd often ride in the back of my Grandad's estate car, with the seats folded flat to give us extra room to play ?

I remember the stink of the smoking carriages on the underground, if you were unlucky enough to be standing by one of them when the doors opened. In fact, I remember when I was very little that the non smoking carriages were the exception. We must have all been marinated in fag smoke in London in the 70s.

We still have some of the tapes we (seperately) made from the top 40 on Sunday evenings. I know David "Kid" Jensen did the Capital Radio charts but that wasn't the proper one. Who did the Radio 1 charts in the mid 80s?

Which was also broadcast on Radio 1 at the same time.

ETA: PL, the two DJs I remember doing the Top 40 were Bruno Brookes and Simon Goodier

What a brilliant thread. This has made me feel really misty eyed and nostalgic for my childhood and all the things I thought were normal that my daughters will think positively medieval.

Remember wash in wash out hair colour, there was an add with a head split down the middle - toners, or something?

Yes, olive oil being only used to break down ear wax ?

chocolate bars being wrapped in paper, not plastic (like bounty, which had cardboard in it to separate the two halves)

Rabbits hanging in the butchers window. Just a bog standard butcher, not a game one.

Playing out in the street til late at night in the summer

elastics for skipping

wooden tellies. getting a colour one was a major big deal. We didn't have remote control or teletext til 1990!

I remember 3 channels on telly, closedown and also MW being where you'd find radio 1. no breakfast telly, we all got up to watch it the day it launched but then my mum wouldn't let us watch it as she thought it was bad to watch TV before school. We weren't allowed to watch Grange Hill or much ITV as that was seen as poor quality and a bit subversive ?

There were loads more ice lollies around. Funny feet, zoom, mivvis, all the sparkles, about 4 types of mini milks... there's so little variety nowadays.

Bet no one else remembers Tracy (a comic) I think it eventually merged with bunty. comics used to merge all the time.

Disc cameras in the 80s. never got one, always wanted one.

flash bulbs that came in sticks that you'd slot in to the top of your camera. going to get your photos and finding they were all blurred and crap, but you still had to pay for em! but it was v exciting going to pick up your pictures.

I was at uni 91-95, we didn't use computers until my MA, we all had electronic typewriters. no one had their own computer, waaaay too expensive. I remember getting an email address in my MA year but couldn't work it out ? you had to type out your dissertations. when I first worked on brookside in 96 they had Wang computers (black screens, green writing) which were so hard to use and the scripts came in as hard copies and were typed up in a typing pool. they only got transferred by hand on to computer later on.

around 1990 I used to work in John Menzies and we too had to do that credit card machine thing with the carbon paper. I snapped more than one card, I hated it.

I remember Flump working in the fag kiosk of Gateways too, around the same time, telling people not to buy cigarettes as they were bad for your health.

also talking of flump - remember Radion washing powder? I remember her holding up a customer's pack as she was on the till and pronouncing 'radionnnnn!' much to their bemusement.

MrsB, I worked in John Menzies too, I forgot about the credit card thing. i also rememebr them paying me £2.27 per hour!

They were uber stingy, weren't they Mal? My mates in Sainsburys and Bejams etc got paid WAY more per hour than me. And they got to sit down at the till, we had to stand ?

What a great thread. Loving everyones memories.

when I worked in my local spar, i got 70p and hour it went up to £1 when I turned 16.

I used to save 1/2pences and had loads saved then forgot about them and the time ran out to change them at the bank.

Begging my mum to give something for the rag and bone man, just so I could get a balloon and a lollipop.

Getting my £1 a week pocket money, which was enough to get a bus into town, buying a record and a mars bar. And then going home and listening to it constantly on my first record player, which was portable.

Putting money in the tv and waiting for it to warm up. Also putting money in the electric meter.

Spacers, texan bars, splicers, wham bars. mmm

Playing kerby, hopscotch (or beds), german ropes and jacks (I think they were called), the game with stones and your threw one stone up in the air, while picking up one stone and then 2, 3 etc.

Also the thing you could do with string, making it into a cradle by wrapping it round your fingers.

The local paper shop, where I went every week to get my Mandy, Bunty and Judy comics. Ended up with quite a big collection. Wish I'd kept them.

I had to Sindy's didn't like Barbie. One blonde and one brunette. I also had the brown carry case, which came with a fold down bed and wardrobe.

And walls ice cream cones, with the ice cream wrapped up separately and you had to put the block of ice cream in the cone, which wasn't round.

Taping the top 40 religiously every week and being really annoyed when madonna and FGTH were no. 1 because they wouldn't play them (Like a Virgin and Relax) and trying to press pause at the end of the song before the dj started talking.

Taping the John Peel show late at night quietly so my mum wouldn't complain about the noise.

Writing love letters in purple ink on lined A4 paper

Using my cousin's lipstick to draw lines on my face like Adam Ant then dancing round the house singing 'Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do?'

Asking my dad if I could stay up to watch Bob Geldof sing "I don't like Mondays" on Top of the Pops, but falling asleep on the sofa before it was on

The excitement when my dad's ship was in dry dock and we were allowed to have the ships video player for a week during the school holidays. I believe we watched Never Ending Story and Electric Dreams several times over.

Ghostbusters

Mrs B (I think it was)

I remember Tracy magazine. I got it from the very first issue. For some reason the stories have really stayed with me

There was one called "Hard Hearted Harriet" she had loads of siblings she was looking after but unbeknownst to them she was dying so each week she got rid of another one in some way (farmed out rather than killed!)

There was one about a 13yr old girl who appeared from nowhere and was very old fashioned. It turned out she'd had a spell put on her to remain at 13yrs old forever. Her name was Frances but had been other variations (such as Fran and Fanny) in the past.

One about a cat statue which sent out signals to other cats and made them behave oddly. It transpired that it had come from Egypt and was a strange and evil God!

Why on earth my brain has retained thse (and many other) stories I don't know!!

Fantastic thread ?

mojos, fruit salads and blackjacks from the ice cream van

half pennies and pound notes

Getting a pint of prawns wrapped in paper on Sundays from the shellfish stand

Buses with conductors (and me pretending to 'drive' sitting in the downstairs front seats)

- actually everything about routemaster buses, from the pull bell to hanging off the rear platform holding the pole

Smoking on buses / trains / cinema - and wondering how the train/bus floors never caught fire as they were made of wood with ridges in

Working out with my friends how old we'd all be in the year 2000

Jelly shoes, jelly bags, scoubidou

and a couple of work ones

My first Saturday job at Bejam - I got paid £11-£14 for a Saturday and spent half of it on fares there and back and lunch

My very first mac as a newbie in-house 'graphic designer'... LCII 4/40, 4mb ram, 40mb hard drive and a 12" screen...

? Hard hearted harriet! I remember that! Haven't thought of it for 30 years and now I can see the pictures in my head!

Shaders and toners, mrs b. shaders for blondes, toner for brunettes. they were rubbish.?

and harmony hair colour, that lasted for six washes. woooooh!

i also remember tracy comic, it merged with mandy or dreamer and i was gutted. and when comics merged there was always a 'letter' from a 'reader' saying how great it was as she read tracy and her sister read mandy and now mummy only had to buy one. yeah right.

tracy did some special addition story books magazines, i remember one about a girl called sally who lived with a cruel auntie and wanted to be on the stage. but auntie made her work in her launderette and one day she threw a dyed dress at her and stained her face. she was about to go to an audition so she dressed as an indian squaw and did a song about that, so noone would know.

my memory is as random as PFL's ?

PFL et al, you have made my night. what a memory you have! I can barely remember any of the stories, but I absolutely loved Tracy mag. I remember she had a budgie, and it was always on the front cover. It made me want to get my own budgies.

ooh I think I can remember a couple of stories - there was one about a computer called 'Mum' who looked after a little girl and then in the end she got her own family and she threw "Mum' (who was quite harsh I think) on the fire and the display screen lit up the legend 'Goodbye, I loved you' as she walked away and it actually made me cry.

I think it was part of the same story as this girl who tracked down her long lost father to Co Antrim. I remember that clearly as that's the first time I ever was made aware of Northern Ireland.

Also there was a competition to win a handheld, v early space invaders style game where you had to find the little alien space invader in the body of the comic somewhere, collect them all and then cut em out and send them into the magazine. I remember being convinced I'd win one and then I didn't, I was gutted.

I am sure I had a letter published in Tracy but I can't remember what it was about. ?

I used to love those story book mags, lots of the comics did them didn't they? I used to get them bought for me at the campsite we went to every year in Devon. I can still smell the campsite shop smell, it sort of smelled of plimsolls and freezers where you'd keep your ice blocks. I also remember getting the comics' summer specials which I never liked as much even though they were bumper issues.

Oh and the sad thing was I had a huge collection of Girl, Tracy, Bunty and Look in magazines, as well as all the Smash Hits from 1984 onwards (first issue was Strawberry Switchblade on the cover) and I only quite recently got rid. must have been about 10 years ago.

how I wish I'd kept them, I'd love to read them all again now, especially Tracy. sigh.

Drinking from paper straws

Driving my Mum mad in Bejams for ice magic.

Wearing a naf naf jump suit to a wedding

Mini Pops

Being in London with My Parents the night before Charles & Di's wedding - very hot night, lots of fireworks.

Going to Spain (Mojacar) on a 'Horizon' package holiday on Orion Airways, as the woman in Hogg Robinson said it was the 'in' place to go to , 1 hotel on the whole beach & the BBC Holiday Programme filmed us, Sarah Kennedy made me cry.

Recall the space shuttle going over our house on a jumbo.

Going to Circus World in Florida on the first Tampa route with Laker Airways.

Moonlighting, knotts landing - Did Dallas used to be on after bbc breakfast time (9.25am)? I remember bbc BT having a flipchart & a chart with who shot JR.

Oh I used to ice magic, especially the mint flavoured one.

also cremola foam

and soda stream.

and the whistle lollipops - can you still get them?

Melody pops ? Yes - and they have a slider in them, so that you can play a tune. There's even printed music on the inside of the wrapper (neither of which I remember from childhood)

And on the sweets theme - when candy sticks were called candy cigarettes, and had a pink tip, one end.

The "Humphrey" straws from the Unigate milkman - "Watch out watch out, there's a humphrey about!"

Magazines l bought were Jackie, Blue Jeans and Photo Love (a girl in my class at school was in a photo love story once.

I remember our class being told that one of the class parents had divorced, and she was really upset and to be kind to her - It was a real shock to us as she was the first person in our school to have divorced parents. (and the first time I had heard about divorce)

mum and dad having "proper" dinner parties,and the women wearing long dresses and fur coats - we used to sneak into parents bedroom and stroke the coats!

Spending my 60p dinner money on 10 JPS cigarettes instead of lunch in the sixth form.

Getting a zx 80 computer and impressing my dad by "programming" it to write my name over and over on the tv screen!

Hot pants, jump suits, flying jackets, harrington jackets, loafers with the tassles on the front,

smarties in a box

mums car with plastic seats - our legs used to stick to the seats in the summer.

my bike that folded in half and had a dynamo on the front wheel to power the light - the faster you pedalled, the brighter the light!

playing board games like Mouse Trap, Miss World, Frustration, Operation, and Mastermind with the little pegs!

making daisy chains,and whistling through blades of grass by making a slit in them and holding between your thumbs and blowing.

Clackers (two hard balls on string tied at the top that you banged together) being banned from school as they were "dangerous" - playing french skipping and cats cradle

"Tickle" deoderant.

Having a "princess Di" (the style she had when she got engaged) haircut.

Having a trimphone

Tuning into to the police radio frequency on our big stereo/radiogram (it was the size of a sideboard and the tuner band lit up when you turned it on)

Staying up very late to see who shot JR (Dallas) and also to watch Torvill and Dean win the olympic gold.

Being allowed to stay up late to watch Armchair Thriller and also Hammer House of Horror on Saturday night.

Watching the foreign dubbed programmes in school holidays like Heidi, and White Horses.

Only reason we got a colour TV was so that dad could watch the snooker (Ray Reardon etc) and not get confused by the ball colours as he did on the black and white tv.

My bedroom windows having frost on the inside in the mornings in cold weather (no double glazing then!)

Just a few there!