snippet 8

what about pixie hats and those long pointed knitted hats with pompoms at the end. And leather schoolbags and scraps and cotton reels with the little nails at the top for french knitting.

I love french knitting spent hours making long snakes. Don't remember what I did with them. And daisy chains What about all those fluffy bits on your cardy that you spent ages picking off and Bloomers with old elastic

I've got one for the girls remember the black italian cloth shorts/bloomers that we had to wear for phys ed and sports at College. Pleated into a waistband with elastic across the back and elastic in the flipping legs.. real glamour !!.not..lol

milk of magnesia..that chalkie stuff..sends shivers down me .warm milk that had been sitting in the sun till morning play.Gross.I still have Andrews liver salts..Like the flavoured one..Getting off the bus and walking a mile to get home.Didnt dare leave the gate open even thought there was a cattle stop .smelling dinner cooking about a 1/4 of a mile from home.Got in just in time to sit down for tea, then dishes and home work

dad made our navy blue rompers also our pleated skirts which were sewed onto singlets with the shoulders doubled six times over so they could be let down as we grew. Hated those rompers tho - they were like bloomers

Dad was the butcher in the teeny country village (Turua ) that I spent most of my primary school days in.. we used to go and help him clean up the shop on a night sometimes. Those were the real butcher shop days with sawdust on the floor and a huge butchers block in the middle. We used a huge round sieve to shake the sawdust through so that any bits of meat,fat and bones were held back and the sawdust fell on the floor again. Later we moved to Ngatea where he ran the abbatoir and we hung around there a lot.. mustn't have had a squeamish gut in those days..lol

and did anyone else have a camphor bag (flannel) on a string round their neck. Think it was meant to keep colds at bay (or maybe moths) And do you remember making cooking aprons for home ecc at sewing and doing chain stitch down the sides. Oh dear the memories.

Hanky pinned to the bodice. We used to have to display them in assembly in Sheffield and it was trouble if you didn't have one. It's funny we didn't wear stockings to school in England so that was a new thing when we came here at 14. On the other hand the boys all wore longs from about age 11, so it was the opposite way round. We laughed when we saw all those knobbly knees on the boys here.

I went to an all girl school in the early 60's punnishment for "being" naughty...never knew I could be naughty, was making bottonholes...I must have sewn over 100

songs - remember belting out How Much was that doggie in the window with my sister, going to the Ice Follies and getting a little white plastic brooch in the form of ice skates, and Adams Bruce in Wellington where you got lovely big ice cream sundaes and the murder house and the little men made out of gauze. Another memory was sliding down the cannon on top of Mt Victoria which would have got me in big trouble if my parents knew I had been up there playing as there was quite a grizzly murder (very uncommon in those days) up on the town belt.

Adams bruce shop in Surrey Cresent and their beautiful fresh orange juice going around in those big containers on the counter.. Ice blocks used to be set in thoses Aluminium moulds with a stick in them and can remember putting a piece if PK chewing gum into a bottle of coke and it fizzing out all over the place..

The panama hat with the hat band, lisle stockings either black or brown depending on your school. We even had seperate playgrounds for girls and boys with a gutter running through the middle to play marbles.I treasured my bag of marbles and all the dirty gutters we played in. Those sure were the days.