What do you remember- seems impossible now

[mike175]

I knew someone who converted one of those old gas fridges to electric . . . using a 25 Watt soldering iron element! . . . he ended up with a very economical fridge . . . 

He was an electrician by trade, so please don't try this at home 

[Emjaybee]

I remember my father being consoled by an old Aunt, I was being held up to look at a shiny thing that reflected my face. The shiny thing was attached to a big wooden box.

I later found out that this was the funeral of my sister who died in 1944 - so I was only four years old. I could also tell my Mum that my other sister who also died in 1944 had a blue dressing gown and I saw her on the stairs. My brother died in 1942 yet I knew that he was in a bed in the downstairs front room, I was only two!

The facts were confirmed by my Mum when I was of an age to ask about the brothers and sisters who were buried in the churchyard.

I have been told that true memory doesn't start until about 4 years.


Mike
(Stilll sad at the these losses after all these years)

[Tipple]

Hi,

Does anyone remember the "camping coaches" at Abergele, North Wales - it was the only holiday we could afford   I seem to recall that we sent a trunk containing our clothes in advance by train and we collected it from Abergele Station!  The beach was awful though - all stony!

Tipple

[millymcb]

It still is (unless the tide is completey out)
 
Milly

[andrewalston]

I remember punched cards, punched tape

In fact I was a nerd and could read the tape by looking at it - use a tool to edit out unwanted lines,

p.s. I also remember 8" floppy disks

I was ambidextrous with a hand punch. You needed to change hands after a hundred cards or so. Rebuilt a punch I found rusting away, and vowed never again! You have to align 12 precision punches at the same time, against spring pressure.

8" disks? I used both hard sector and soft sector versions - as late as 1998!

school pens which were a metal nib on a long piece of wood and you dipped it in the ink well? Was always a hassle to get a pen that hadn't got a bent nib

Also when lering to write using the books that were full of close lines - bit like music score without the musical pieces - and lines and lines of the same letters until you could do them without the lines.

I was Ink Monitor for a time. We used a shade which nobody else would touch!

I recently found a reference to a book of handwriting samples published by a distant cousin who was Writing Master at Ackworth from 1779 to 1821. I wonder if it was still in use in my day? There was certainly something along those lines!

I love the idea of the Magic Cupboard

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C Clarke, 1961.

[rancegal]

  I remember watching the bombers stacking up in the evening sky, ready to go on a raid. I was  nearly 3 when the War ended.

  When we lived in York, the school where OH worked had several computers (early '80s) He used to bring one home during the holidays.  If you wanted to play a game, the program was on a tape cassette which you had to switch on so that it co-ordinated with the computer.

  I remember taking the accumulator to be recharged. It was very heavy. My grandma's house still had gaslights when I was a child, and in the mid '60s when I was at college in Saffron Walden, there were gaslights in one particular street.

[gazania]

A couple of days ago, I took my young grandson to the shops.  As used to happen when I was a child in the late 1940s, my kids in the 1970s and with my older grandkids in the late 1980s, we went to the newsagent to buy a comic (magazine) as a treat.  In 2011 there are no comics.  Instead he spied a pencil case with an embedded solar calculator. He was happy as no doubt were the rest of us in our time.

Gazania

[glenclare]

Remembering
 
Did anyone else have a set of Sunday best clothes ?
Having to wear a hat and gloves if we went out on Sundays even when very young .
We got Green shield stamps for wedding presents in the way couples would be given gift cards now.
Having to learn how to use a fridge and freezer in our first house after I got married as my Mum has never had either.
My husband having a car phone fitted to his company car, and it looked exactly like a house phone !
Using a teabag to make a cuppa for the first time!
Travelling on trains with corridors. They were great if you were lucky enough to get an empty compartment but when it was busy....!!

[Rishile]

I had a set of Sunday best clothes - and best shoes. 

These later became school shoes and then play shoes.  By the time they got to play shoes they were probably two sizes too small.

I also remember trying to show my mum how to use a twin-tub because she hadn't seen one before.  Before that it was the mangle.  This would have been in the 70's.

Rishile