tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17813889469807647182024-03-12T18:58:54.548-07:00What will I tell my grandchildren?KARENhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12320120856064925074noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1781388946980764718.post-83929275597167054282012-07-08T07:00:00.002-07:002012-07-14T03:11:50.387-07:00For my grandchildren<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I will tell them that I am much older than Google, Facebook and all the other things they can’t live without. I'm hoping this blog will be an insight into how little we did have back in Nanny's day, and how we just got on with it, lived with the money we earned. How borrowing was a dirty word - if you wanted it, then you just saved up. Treats were for Christmas and birthdays - there was never the constant whine of 'I want'. We could play out without fear of being molested. Health & Safety didn't really exist. If you did something that caused pain or resulted in bleeding, then you made darn sure you were more careful next time. Life was about learning from your mistakes, especially for the ones that didn't listen to advice, and wrapping in cotton wool was pretty much unheard of.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I do wonder how we survived....</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-size: small;">First, some of us were born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, eggs, tuna from a can and didn’t get tested for diabetes. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">C-sections were rare, apart from the unlucky few, who would be knocked out completely. Epidurals and spinal blocks were in the realms of science fiction. Somehow we were expelled into this world the way that nature intended, with little pain relief, just the use of forceps if extra traction was required!! </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies, in cots covered with lead-based paints. No safety mattresses, handknitted matinees jackets and bonnets that had long ribbons to tie under the neck!!</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">There were no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or
cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we didn't wear helmets on
our heads, just flip-flops and 'clackers' on the wheel spokes made from cardboard and pegs. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no
booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tyres, and even sat in the front seat for a treat.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from 'germs'. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter and bacon, dripping on toast. And, we weren’t overweight… WHY?
Because we were always outside playing with our FRIENDS… that’s why!</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">We would go out in the morning and play all day, it was fine as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">No one was able to reach us all day, we had no mobiles. And, we were OKAY. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">We did not have Playstations, Nintendos and Xboxes. There were no
video games, hundreds of satellite TV channels, no video movies or DVDs, no
surround-sound or CDs, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no
Internet and no chat rooms. There 3 channels BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. Childrens programmes started about 3pm, and stopped when the news started at 6pm. Programmes finished about 10-11pm with the pictures of the testcard, and the playing of the national anthem. Everything was in black and white in the UK until 1967, but we didn't get our first colour TV until1979, which we rented! </span></li>
</ul>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cWnYvZAGl04/T_mP413f4oI/AAAAAAAAAVU/qJH6s-Zxvw8/s1600/Test+card.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cWnYvZAGl04/T_mP413f4oI/AAAAAAAAAVU/qJH6s-Zxvw8/s200/Test+card.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Test Card </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<li><span style="font-size: small;">Children were 'seen and not heard', so if i wanted to stay up late, I would sit in silence and try not to move, in the hope that my grandparents (who looked after me after my mother died from 5-10yrs) would forget I was there. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"> There was
barely any telly, no mobiles, iPhones or iPlayers, no Internet, computer games,
or PlayStations. We had only the simplest of equipment: jacks,
marbles, skipping-ropes, bats, balls and bicycles.</span></li>
</ul>
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<li><span style="font-size: small;">We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. Just a clip round the ear, and told to be more careful.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">We would get spankings with wooden spoons, or just a bare hand and no one would think to call social services to
report abuse. If you got told off at school and your parents found out, there would be another telling off for bringing shame to your parents. I can remember teachers using the ruler across the knuckles, but I think by the early 60s the cane had become a thing of the past.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">We were given guns for our birthdays, made up games with
sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we
did not poke out very many eyes. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">We would invent our own games up; making perfume from rose
petals, holding snail races, picking blackberries, making
dens in the woods. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">The idea of your parent bailing you out if you broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Takeaway food was limited
to fish and chips. There were no pizza shops, McDonald’s, KFC, Subway or
Nando’s.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">We might not have heard of avocado, but we hadn't heard of obesity either.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Meals were home cooked from scratch. There were no ready meals, ready made pastry or packet dumpling and pancake mixes. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Even though all the
shops closed at 6pm and didn’t open on a Sunday, somehow we didn’t starve to
death!</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Only girls had pierced
ears.
</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">Our
teachers hit us with canes, or a ruler across the knuckles, and would throw a blackboard rubber at us if
they thought we weren’t concentrating or chatting in class.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Mum
didn’t have to go to work to help Dad make ends meet because we didn’t need to
keep up with the Joneses!</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Our mothers were the first recyclers in an age of
austerity, darning socks over a wooden mushroom,
turning lights off, washing out plastic bags to re-use, removing buttons from out-grown garments, unpicking knitted jumpers, winding and washing the wool to re-knit into something else.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">At school, we had individual desks with inkwells, none of this group learning at round tables. At the end of the day the chairs were placed upside down on the desk lid so that the cleaners could sweep and mop.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">For us, the latest technology was a lever fountain pen. Your index finger would be permanently stained blue from resting on the nib. There were no ink cartridges when I first started school. I still think cartridges
are wasteful — a few drops of ink wrapped in all that plastic.Writing in biro was forbidden, and we had hand-writing lessons using a special italic nib.</span></li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b> Our parents
seemed to understand the intrinsic need for children to take risks and learn
the basic life lesson, that 'actions have consequences'.</b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, </b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>problem solvers and inventors ever. <br />The past 50 years has been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. </b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and learned how
to deal with it.</b></span></div>
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</ul>KARENhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12320120856064925074noreply@blogger.com2