DaveTThomas

A 1960s childhood. A bath and hair wash once a week. Bedtime after the Magic Roundabout at 6pm. Watch with Mother for an hour or so after school on a black and white TV where you frequently needed to reset the horizontal hold buttons and replace the valves. Eating whatever meal was put in front of you. Because you didn't get a choice. No snacks between meals. Sixpence a week pocket money for sweets or a comic. Always playing outside on bikes, hand made go karts and pushing our dolls in toy prams. Being happy if you got bath salts or talc as a birthday present. Or a hanky with your initials embroidered on it. Being taught to tell the time, your times tables, tie your tie and shoelaces before you started school. Getting a small smack on the bottom for answering back. Getting the cane or slipper at school. Mums still did the housework and dads cut the grass or washed the car. Mum went shopping most days because you didn't have a freezer. And if you had a twin tub washing machine, you were well off. Ready Steady Go or Top of the Pops to see your favourite groups and singers. And how exciting when space hoppers came to the UK in 1969. Occasionally on a Friday, you'd get fish and chips for tea and put your empty bottle of Corona out for the man to come and give you your deposit back. Saturday afternoon at Nan's watching the wrestling or Sunday tea with winkles you'd need pins to extract the contents from. The coal man and rag and bone man were regularly visiting your street. And the late Sunday afternoon dread as you had school again tomorrow. Were we happy? Of course we were. We knew no different. Were we anxious? Of course not. We probably didn't even know the word. We just played make believe and did as we were told. Children need boundaries and routine. Both sadly lacking now.