I was an apprentice mechanic, earning £7.15p a week, (1973) 3 day week and all that crap. First car was a Ford Anglia 105E 896DUS paid £5, for it, Wash, Polish, Moody MOT sold it to an ex-girlfreind from Springfield Grove £30, Then sold her brother an 2000E Corsair with a cracked block for £50. Them was the good old days!
Ronnie knew about the crack in the block! Plastic Padding... and keep the water topped up . Without the block cracked car was £150 of anybody money. Plus he was a Spanner!!!
Ah, the good old days when lads built “camps” I built one when I was around 9/10 just up by the laundry at the Sam Bartram entrance when I ran away from home from the umpteenth time I went back there and stayed there it was my little safe place.
Sliding down the heights on the arse of your trousers, digging your heels in as you neared the bottom normally with a stash of cakes and biscuits from the unigate milk floats or a box of fruit from the greengrocers in the village which every Herbert knew locally you could gain access to from the adventure playground behind St Luke’s. Going to the chippy in the village asking for a bag of cracking and if you found a few chips in there it was a double bonus.
Picking mulberries from the tree alongside Charlton house, scrumping fruit trees in the gardens in the house opposite the Village hall.
Deliberately knocking on various mates doors knowing they would be eating and often getting invited in to join them, retrospectively thinking back I’m thinking a lot more people knew my circumstances then I was aware of as a child. Strange how thinking back they seemed like great times, happy times at school even though I was little bastard, great times living at friends homes until I outstayed my welcome, never wanting to go home to my mothers house. When I did, I went straight to my bed and invariably the door would open and I remember thinking hopefully it was a good hiding!
I was an apprentice mechanic, earning £7.15p a week, (1973) 3 day week and all that crap. First car was a Ford Anglia 105E 896DUS paid £5, for it, Wash, Polish, Moody MOT sold it to an ex-girlfreind from Springfield Grove £30, Then sold her brother an 2000E Corsair with a cracked block for £50. Them was the good old days!
My first car, early 1960s was a 1951 Ford Prefect. I would take it down the road to the petrol station and by the time it had gone the 100 yards or so the radiator would be burning hot. Not to worry though. For 10 shillings ($NZ1) I would get 3 gallons and a squirt. I filled up yesterday paying $2.29 a litre.
I was telling my kids about my memories of getting to school in the mid 60s. The 3 of us used to take turns to wash in a bowl around the fire, where we got dressed.
It was always so cold that a balaclava was mandatory under your parka coat as were woollens. It was nearly always foggy, but on route to school, sightings of hedgehogs and stray dogs were regular occurrences.
Balaclavas...blimey, that brings back memories
Armed bank jobs, that’s something you don’t see much of these days.
Banks, that’s something you don’t see much of these days.
Who remember the winter of ‘62/63 were snow laid on the ground from Boxing Day to early April, we only had an outside toilet (also were the coal was kept) and first the first one up had to tunnel there way out through the freshly fallen snow. The ice was thick on the insides of windows and the water you took to bed at night had 1/2” of ice on it in the morning. You had to light the coal after you had defrosted the coal (leak in roof of the coal bunker the icicle was fall height). Epic snowball fights and an ice slide that went diagonally across the playground must have been a 100 yards with a brick wall to stop you, still known as the broken nose wall. You wandered off from your igloo, sorry house in short trousers (didn’t get long trousers until I was 11) and got to school your legs were blue with cold, and you cried when you started to warm up. Oh school stayed open all and every day as it was warm and hot food was available, the school milk had an inch of frozen cream on top and had to be placed on the radiators to defrost.
We were poor, no very poor, my mum as was traditional cooked a chicken (bought by nan otherwise we wouldn’t had a Christmas dinner) on Christmas Day, and also traditional through it in the pot on Boxing Day, we were still finding chicken bones in April, that chicken stew lasted over 3 months, mind you it had ox tail, wild rabbit with pellets still embedded, and anything else that was found or nicked. Vegetables for the pot become heard to get as they were frozen in the ground. We only had one room with a coal fire, oh and of course the kitchen were we could keep what was laughingly known as warm.
Now those were the good old days!
God I do. I was 11 and remember walking to school in short trousers and the weather was so bloody cold it was unbelievable. My dad wad digging in the garden in April and struck permafrost!
Blimey, I was beginning to think I was the only one still left alive who remembered that winter. Another thing I will never forget is the smell of wet woollen socks and gloves, being dried out on the school radiators, gloves were wet because of the epic snowball fights, socks because the holes in the sole of your shoes and being sandals they weren’t very suitable. My Nan actually brought me some proper shoes in the February.
We made a snowman in the garden which lasted for what seemed weeks even after the rest of the snow had gone, and it melted from the bottom up so the last bit to go was the head.
Our Dad, a talented carpenter, made us a toboggan (a sturdy piece with metal runners, I think my brother still has it) and we took it up the hill by the Observatory.
Interesting that when people talk about their childhoods in the 60s or 70s, a theme that comes up a lot if that their Mum was at home or worked part time and their Dad was hardly ever there as he worked full time and did all the overtime he could and you were still lucky if you had a week on holiday in a caravan at Sheerness.
Food was pretty much always prepared from raw ingredients as well, and the staple carb was potatoes, so that's why your Mum usually only worked part time at most. Rice and dried pasta were only used in puddings, the only other pasta you ate came out of a tin. There's both good and bad in that - you'd get better food than now, but it's a lot of work particularly if your Mum doesn't enjoy cooking and lugging enough potatoes to feed a hungry family back from the shops
All of the above, and you ate what you were given.
But my Mum learnt to give me only what I ate. Which was embarrassing when the vicar came round one evening and I was eating dry bread and the rest of the family had steak and kidney pie.
Interesting that when people talk about their childhoods in the 60s or 70s, a theme that comes up a lot if that their Mum was at home or worked part time and their Dad was hardly ever there as he worked full time and did all the overtime he could and you were still lucky if you had a week on holiday in a caravan at Sheerness.
Food was pretty much always prepared from raw ingredients as well, and the staple carb was potatoes, so that's why your Mum usually only worked part time at most. Rice and dried pasta were only used in puddings, the only other pasta you ate came out of a tin. There's both good and bad in that - you'd get better food than now, but it's a lot of work particularly if your Mum doesn't enjoy cooking and lugging enough potatoes to feed a hungry family back from the shops
Interesting that when people talk about their childhoods in the 60s or 70s, a theme that comes up a lot if that their Mum was at home or worked part time and their Dad was hardly ever there as he worked full time and did all the overtime he could and you were still lucky if you had a week on holiday in a caravan at Sheerness.
Food was pretty much always prepared from raw ingredients as well, and the staple carb was potatoes, so that's why your Mum usually only worked part time at most. Rice and dried pasta were only used in puddings, the only other pasta you ate came out of a tin. There's both good and bad in that - you'd get better food than now, but it's a lot of work particularly if your Mum doesn't enjoy cooking and lugging enough potatoes to feed a hungry family back from the shops
The good old days in the 70s when almost everything we did was designed to kill you.
Adventure playgrounds with no health an safety, Go carts put together with 4 inch nails, Bikes with no breaks and your dad telling you to use your feet on the ground to stop, with Blakey’s it didn’t stop.
Making a 4ft dart with a stick and a cornflake box for the flights, then throwing it at your friend 50 yards away, Being able to walk around with a shief knife and not even think about stabbing someone, just playing splits.
Hot bottle I lost the tip of my thumb, Sledging down plum pudding in Greenwich park, Skateboarding down devils dip from the top by the observatory.
Going to Charlton and defending the covered end.
My grand children say that it sounds so much more fun than they can have, there right.
It was awesome, and all that was before motorbikes and track cars.
When players stayed at the Club for 10 years rather than 10 months!
But most of ours were shit
The word "shit" as a description is all relative to the standard they were playing at and one made up of the likes of Keith Peacock, Killer Hales, Paddy Powell, Flash Flanagan, Bob Curtis, Phil Warman, Steve Brown, Steve Gritt, Nicky Johns, Colin Walsh and Peter Reeves wouldn't be too bad would it?
Hanging in our bathroom is a Newspaper Headline Calendar featuring a Charlton game every month through the ages - sports pages from the Daily Mirror no less. Headline for June is WHAT A CRACKING START! from August 20, 1953. Picture at the top is Firmani scoring Charlton’s first goal after two and a half minutes.
”What a game to start any season, this Charlton 5-3 win over Sunderland.
The Sunderland international all-stars came to town, and in the first half didn’t know what hit them.
I do. It was a flood, a torrent, a deluge of Charlton crimson shirts that swept through, over and around this Sunderland defence until it became sorely bedraggled indeed. Sleek, precise forward play such as the Valley has seldom seen flowed from the South African feet of O’Lynn, Leary and Firmani. It brought a Firmani goal in just two and a half minutes and Leary and again Firmani. A Tommy Wright goal made it 3-1 at half time.
But just as we were composing obituaries for Sunderland, Len Shackleton carved out the chance for Ford to beat Bartram with a delicious head lob in the 47th minute. Five minutes later Ford rapped in a penalty to make it 3-3. But with 25 minutes left a Frank Lock penalty set the Charlton flood flowing again. Hammond got the 5th eight minutes from time”
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Our Dad, a talented carpenter, made us a toboggan (a sturdy piece with metal runners, I think my brother still has it) and we took it up the hill by the Observatory.
Go carts put together with 4 inch nails,
Bikes with no breaks and your dad telling you to use your feet on the ground to stop, with Blakey’s it didn’t stop.
Being able to walk around with a shief knife and not even think about stabbing someone, just playing splits.
Sledging down plum pudding in Greenwich park,
Skateboarding down devils dip from the top by the observatory.
there right.
I thank the Lord that i am a child of the 60's and 70's and have memories of freedom, happiness with sprinkling of drama.
”What a game to start any season, this Charlton 5-3 win over Sunderland.
Eight goals - glorious goals, lucky goals, furious goals - vicious shooting, superb flowing passing movements, deathless moments at goal.
The Sunderland international all-stars came to town, and in the first half didn’t know what hit them.
I do. It was a flood, a torrent, a deluge of Charlton crimson shirts that swept through, over and around this Sunderland defence until it became sorely bedraggled indeed. Sleek, precise forward play such as the Valley has seldom seen flowed from the South African feet of O’Lynn, Leary and Firmani. It brought a Firmani goal in just two and a half minutes and Leary and again Firmani. A Tommy Wright goal made it 3-1 at half time.
But just as we were composing obituaries for Sunderland, Len Shackleton carved out the chance for Ford to beat Bartram with a delicious head lob in the 47th minute. Five minutes later Ford rapped in a penalty to make it 3-3. But with 25 minutes left a Frank Lock penalty set the Charlton flood flowing again. Hammond got the 5th eight minutes from time”
Memories. I was at the game.
”