Low Factor Sun Block
Factor 4 was considered sun block! If like me you were pale and ginger, you couldn’t get through summer without looking like a lobster half the time. Coppertone wasthe sun cream everyone used to take on their holidays and I’m pretty sure there was 0 sunblock in there. You’d come home red instead of brown…
Jumping Off A Rusty Swing
Back when kids weren’t wrapped in cotton wool like they are now. We did used to do a lot of silly things when we were younger and as if that wasn’t dangerous enough, we jumped onto hard concrete!
Buying Cigarettes For Grown Ups
Were they for your parents or for you? My mum used to send me over the road to get her cigarettes all the time and I’d always get served. People were a lot more trusting in those days. Our local newsagents used to know what I was coming in for all the time. As I got older and started to smoke I used to try and steal a fag out of my mums pack once in a while, but she’d always catch me because she used to count them!
Getting Portion of Scraps From The Chippie
There was nothing more unhealthy than scraps but they tasted delicious, I still ask for them at the chippy sometimes but not as much as I did when I was a kid who didn’t have to worry about my weight. You’d get sent to the chippy on a Friday to get the tea for everyone in the family and you’d come home with a bag of scraps too.
Fizzy Pop
We drink gallons of the stuff which meant loads of fillings at the dentist. Who remembers the Corona man in his van? All the kids on the streets used to chase the van around the estates while he was dropping the corona off. It always came in such bright colours and I don’t think it was particularly healthy for us, but this photo brings back some great memories of my childhood.
Skating around your street on these
Have you seen the state of the skates? They were literally a death trap, an accident waiting to happen. I lost count of the amount of times I fell off these things when I was younger onto the concrete outside my house. I’d hobble in crying to my mum who’d cover my cuts with germolene and then wrap me up with a little bandage then I’d get sent back outside to keep playing.
Wearing one of these skirts to play out in.
I was so chuffed with my ra-ra skirt that I’d wear it all the time, even to play out in. One day, it came to bite me in the bum, when I tried to climb a tree and I got stuck, slipped, my skirt came up and I got my pants stuck on the tree branch. I was stuck there for about 20 minutes before one of the kids I was with went and got my mum. How embarrassing! But at least it taught me never to wear a skirt to play out in ever again.
Blue mascara.
Need I say any more? Blue mascara was all the rage at one time (for some reason). I remember stealing my mums blue mascara out of her makeup bag when she wasn’t around and putting it on my eyelashes without realising it was waterproof. When I tried to wipe it off, non of it would come off and I was left with blue colour streaming down my face like an idiot. It’s safe to say I got a b*llocking off my mum when she got home.
Going on this fairground ride.
When I first saw this ride the front of it had a load of pictures of people laughing and having fun, so I thought it was going to be a pretty fun ride. Oh, how I was mistaken. As soon as I saw the floor disappear, I immediately regretted stepping foot on the ride. As soon as I got off it, I threw up and spent the rest of my day feeling ill. Bad times.
Drinking milk out of bottles birds had pecked at.
Remember when the birds got to your milk before you did? You’d come out to find the bottles like this, but you’d still drink out of it. I couldn’t imagine kids even touching milk like that now. Everyone’s far too fussy and worried about getting ill aren’t they!
Getting a perm.
I’m not saying perms are horrifying, because a lot of people DO suit them, even now they’re not in fashion. But back in the 80s when EVERYONE seemed to have a perm, there was about 60% of those people who looked ridiculous with on. Me being one of them. They were terrible for your hair too, it’s not like these days where hairdressers have all sorts of different products to drench your hair in to protect it.
Worzel Gummidge.
How did we use to watch this programme and not be scared half to death? Whenever I see a picture of Worzel Gummidge, I instantly feel creeped out and I don’t think it’s just me who feels that way about this character. So many people used to write in and complain about the show when it was on, saying it scared their kids too much to watch it. I’m not bloody surprised!!
Mind your language.
Sometimes we’d stay up a bit later some nights and watch TV shows with our parents until we fell asleep. Mind your language was a popular show in the late 70s and it used to have everyone watching it in stitches of laughter. People nowadays though, would be horrified as it probably would be classed as a “racist” show. What do you think?
Carrying our heavy school bags on one shoulder.
I remember having a nice little rucksack with two straps to stop my back getting sore from carrying all my school books, but because it wasn’t cool, I’d carry it with one strap.
Shell suits.
I wore my shell suit with pride, I thought I looked so good in my bright green suit. I looked like a giant ball of green goo in my shell suit. They were baggy, shiny and so unflattering to wear but we seemed to love them. You can buy one in vintage shops now for about a tenner now!
Climbing up the bomb fire before it’s set.
Having a very safe bonfire night just like this lot! Remember when you’d have to wear your trousers over your shoes whenever you were playing with a sparkler? There was nowhere near as much fire safety back in those days as there is today. Kids would never be allowed to do stuff like this…
Used Izal tissue paper.
How bad was this stuff to use? The tissue paper literally felt like tree bark. How they allowed school kids to use this stuff for so long is beyond me. The kids in the my school used to go on ‘strike’ (if you can say that) over the toilet tissue. They’d stand outside the bathroom at dinnertime and shouts slurs at the top of their lungs to try and get the teachers to change the tissue paper.
Ride around on bikes with no breaks.
A lot of kids had second-hand bikes because they were too expensive to buy first hand so a lot of them had bits missing to them. Mine didn’t have any breaks on it and I used to use my shoes to stop my bike from going so fast. I’d literally scrape them across the floor until my bike stopped moving. I don’t think I had one pair of shoes that didn’t have scuffs on them from doing that.
