"I'll have a witches hat and two screwballs please Mr Whippy!" (Childhood Memories)

Member Name: Fishbulb

Product:	Childhood Memories
Date:	15/08/02 (534 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Not having any money, but not needing any or caring!!, No responsibilities / motgage/ husband / debts / bills / I could go on forever, Small enough to say silly things and get away with being 'cute'

Disadvantages: Not tall enough to reach the goodies in the high kitchen cupboards, Can't go shopping for booze / knives / cars, you don't know what you've got until it's gone

What a lovely category to write in, childhood memories huh. Hmmm….well, it was all so long ago and after obliterating my body with alcohol now over the last several years it’s hard to tell if it’s my memories or me that is fading. But let me share with you some things I remember from being a smaller me!

I had Fred Bassett Curtains, they were mostly brown, but very nice with little Freds’ all over them - remember him? He was the inspiration for my first (socially acceptable) word “gog”, it was completely overlooked by my parents that I may have been trying to say God – but from there on in my life took a different ‘trouser-leg’ of time. I had these curtains for several years, later on, I gained a Victoria Plum bedspread that had little Victoria Plumbs’ on it and if I remember was also predominantly brown (as was most of the décor it seems in the 70’s)

I was (and still am, I guess, LOL) an only child and being a small family, my parents moved us up from ‘the City’ to Milton Keynes back in the early 80’s. When we moved here, I met the girl who was to become my best friend through my childhood. Jennifer.

Jennifer was a pretty girl with very dark hair, not quite black and we soon became the best of friends. Jennifer’s birthday is 15th December, mine’s the 17th, we were exactly 1 year and 1 day apart in age – this made our friendship even the more special as we shared a similar birthday. Jennifer used to go to ballet classes and when I found out I wanted to go too. Our Mum’s used to walk us over to the hall in the next estate to our class on a Tuesday evening, most of the time we’d run on ahead because there was a brilliant park with lots of really big swings and monkey bars and a climbing frame – the faster we ran ahead, the more time we got on the park until our Mum’s caught up with us. Oh, to have that sort of ene
rgy now…… *takes a sip of coffee and decides that now would be a good point to go and have a ciggie*

Phew, that’s better; now back to my thoughts. Jennifer, was a nice girl, but could be a bit smug and sometimes quite spiteful and I will never ever forget one particular day we went to our ballet class. Next door to the hall was a little shop and sometimes we were allowed to go in and choose some sweeties, on this day, Jennifer pushed me out of the way in order to whizz around the shop first and there was poles in the shop from floor to ceiling (no idea what they were for) and we used to swing around them – Jennifer shoved me over to swing around this pole and did – smack bang into a pile of boxes on the other side – nice big black eye for Jennifer there! Ha! If she hadn’t pushed me over, I would have been sporting a shiner – I never did thank her for that.

We had pets galore in our house, if it was homeless then it would end up living with us – one day Dad came home from work with a box and told me he had a present. When I opened it up, I didn’t really know what to think (to be honest, I don’t think I was 100% sure as to what it was, just looked like grass and a rock to me) Dad put the box down and reached in for the rock inside and pulled it out and held it eye level to me and as if by magic, a head suddenly appeared from inside the rock, then two front legs and two back legs! A Tortoise – Dad had brought home a tortoise, cool. He’d been abandoned along the railway tracks and Dad couldn’t bare the thought of him trying to survive on his own.

Hmmm… the tortoise thing brings me nicely onto Barney, my ginger cat. On the day of the Harvest festival assembly at school, I was sent from my classroom to give the headmaster a note from my teacher – on the way down I spotted a kitten outside the doors. Obviously I opened the doors to stroke it,
I really felt sorry for it, it was a blustery day and he was so tiny. Anyhoo…. Off I went to the headmaster, still thinking about the kitten, then back to class. A while later we were called down to attend the assembly and to look at the food we had collected for the local old folk when who should I spot? My kitten, turns out that as I hadn’t pulled the door shut, it had stayed open long enough for kitty to get in and cause some havoc with the tablecloths on the food display – it was quite a palaver. One of the teachers threw him outside. I told my Mum I wanted to keep him but she said no and when I got home from school, Mum & Dad had brought him home for me – he was sleeping happily on the top of a stepladder in the living room (we were decorating at the time)

Winter and Christmas were always great too as a kid, it seemed to snow all the time, which meant sledging!!! We had a hill at the end of our road that we used to sledge down in the winter, in the summer we used to fly our kites on the top of it and one day, me & Jennifer even found a drunk passed out early in the morning – we poked him with a stick (aka Rod and Todd on The Simpsons when they find Krusty the Clown passed out on their lawn) “Is he evil?” “He sure smells like evil!” lol.

Birthday parties. As a kid, I had a birthday party every year (as did Jennifer) her Mum used to make our respective birthday cakes, and I was never allowed to have the same thing as Jennifer (because she sulked) Our birthday parties always seemed like the most appropriate time for our Mums to get drunk – one year my Mum danced about with my knickers on her head, needless to say I was mortified….hmmm…perhaps that ought to go in my embarrassing moments op, but nevermind.

Christmas Eve was always spent with Jennifer and her Mum at our house, we were allowed Babycham and snowballs. Yummy! As a child, I often had red wine and le
monade with meals, as my Mother was Spanish, but we used to drink the Babycham out of those little glasses, really shallow, like martini ones – wow we thought we were the business!

When my mum passed away (Nov 1999) I had the job of clearing her house and found boxes upon boxes of stuff from when I was a child, my Sindy House (including her bath, wardrobe dining table etc) funny thing is, all of my landlords furniture looked like bigger versions of this – very tasteful! I found my old Brownie uniform, a stack of cuddly Wuzzles, Roland Rat cuddlies all manner of stuff – not forgetting my record collection, which comprises several ‘Alvin & the Chipmunks’ albums (my favourite was always the Christmas one) Father Abraham & the Smurfs (for some reason, I have a German version of this album too – let me assure you Smurfs singing in German is one of the funniest things ever, even as an adult)

As a kid I entered every competition going (and it seems won a lot of them too) I won a trip to London to the Zoo and the Science Museum along with lunch for 3 other people. A Mr Freeze (remember those 12” long ice pop things – my favourite was the blue one) Kite, Frisbee and outdoor games set with) and most memorable was winning a cuddly rabbit in a colouring competition – we went to collect it (me & Mum) on our pushbikes as our family never had a car. The rabbit was over 4feet tall and Mum had to cycle the 3-mile journey back with it in her shopping basket.

We chewed Hubba Bubba bubblegum does anyone remember the drink that made a brief appearance of the same name / taste.
Buying ½ penny sweets (cause you get twice as many)
Marathon was not called Snickers and Opal Fruits were not whatever they are now. Coke was 10p a can!
‘Crazes’ in school included, marbles, jacks, French skipping, conkers, swapping stickers, handstands and ‘rock and roll dancing’ (well, that
217;s what we called it) Being able to wear mismatched clothes and not care – more precisely deliberately wearing mismatched clothes, I’m taking florescent green shorts, red shirts and multi coloured shoes – yes, all at once!

Well, there’s a little insight to my childhood and the things I remember, but the one thing I miss everyday and really don’t want to dwell on in this category (cause it’s not the time or the place) is my parents. I lost my father to a quick, brutal cancer that took him within a few months, he died September 1995 – my Mum died inside at the same time she watched her childhood sweetheart taken by the big C. She finally gave up the fight to stay alive and joined him in November 1999.

That is why it is important for me to thank you for letting me share these things, because I will never be able to redeem ‘the truth’ if you like from my parents as to what it was really like back then - all I have left is what you’ve seen before you today.

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