part 8

I had a Sindy doll & my sister had a Debbie (her name was Debbie too lol) Had the dreaded codliver oil capsules every day along with vitamin C & fluoride tablets. HArdly anyone I knew had pierced anything LOL until the girl across the road pierced her own ears with a needle & a potato! She was my hero hahaha

My mother used to put my hair in rags to give me ringlets too. When I was 16, my friends and I all had long hair and we used to crouch down over the ironing board with brown paper over our hair and iron it to make it super straight.

My mum was despaerate for me to have ringlets. I'd go to bed every night with my hair firmly tied in rags! The curl never held LOL Now I've got such wavy hair it peeves me off hahaha. Remember Mum entering my sister in a lookalike comp at the Industries Fair one year as Buffy from A Family Affair - she looked just like her but was so shy she ran off the stage in tears LOL

Remember there was no shampoo. Mum would wash my hair in the handbasin with soap. She would cook the meat till it was dry and stringy. Rice puddings.. yuck.. Picking cooties outa dads hair while he sat reading a book. Peeling sunburnt skin off mum.. yuck yuck

and who remembers the dreaded "Bertie Germ" at the school dental clinic?. My two sisters and I all had the same dresses,trouble was, I got the hand-me-downs and when mine was too small I progressed to Christines,while she got Susan's (who got something new!!) and THEN I got Christines -which used to be Susan's -it was HARD being last in line. I had a hoola hoop and I could hula it right up to my neck and back down to my knees.

i remember years ago we had these neighbours and we would call them the muppets cause the mother wore no teeth and her chin would touch her nose, well one day they were outside so i sang the muppet song to them u know the tune and i was laughing when i was singing it so they could hear me, well dad was behind me and i got a good kick up the ass, those ppl are still called the muppets till this day and yes i still sing the tune quietly under my breath when i see them

Mum SCRUBBING the back of my neck for all she was worth - thinking my tan was DIRT! I was in Girl's Brigade & my sister & I would skip off to Sunday School each wk & leave Mum in bed still asleep - we were such GOOD girls LOL

Ohh just remembered the time I wanted to bake a cake for the G/B cake stall - I turned on the gas, lit the match, then opened the oven door - BOOM! lost my fringe, eyebrows & lashes - & gave Mum a heart attack LOL

Playing a game with sticks....I dont know what it was called but we used to race out to the footpath and play with all the neighbours after school and after dinner. You had sticks about a foot long and laid them out vertically with about a foot space between. You ran through them then had the choice of moving one to the end of the line hence the gaps would get bigger until you were leaping. I remember it was a lot of fun. Most of my childhood toys and play involved mimicking what mothers do. What about wooden tops and teasets....

What did you all get whacked with by your parents I had a well sanded stick, it was about a yard long and 2 inches wide and had my name inked on it. Hurt like hell. My father used to wave it round all the time.

Ah Keenkiwi, you reminded me..The word SCRUBBING brings back memories of weekly having to scrub the doorsteps with sandsoap. Some benches had the wooden tops that required sandsoaping as well. Why is it that way back when and as the eldest and a girl I seemed to spend a good part of my weekend cleaning and scrubbing and you know nothing much has changed really!! Not like kids of todays world...

my parents used... the bamboo shillaylee, jug cord, garden hose whatever he put his hands on first yet we still till this day respect them even for what they did ouchhhhhhhh but u knew what u were going to get a hiding for yet we did the same over and over again, or am i speaking for myself lol

A leather belt.. As a youngen I crawled under the house and my big excited find was this leather belt. I was so chuffed about it BUT it was buckled up and hung on the door handle to use at any given opportunity. AND the opportunities seem to come around so quickly didnt you find. My mother had a quick hand as well. I remember having to sit at the table until EVERYTHING was eaten from my plate. It didnt seem to matter that I was gagging on boiled leeks that were stuck in my throat!! From that experience I never made my children eat everything on their plate but they did have to make a good go of it to get dessert. I loved rice puddings, junket etc. We had brain fritters, black pudding, tripe....mmmm.... can still smell them all cooking.

I wonder how many kids today would be able to read something like this thread and recognize so many things that are familiar? anyone else's parents bottle fruit in the summer? We used to take a trailer and wooden fruit boxes over to Hawkes Bay and bring back pounds and pounds of various fruit. The kitchen would be steamy, smell of syrup for a week as we hung round to gather up the peelings for eating. A lot of hard work but we always had fruit on hand in the winter as there was never any of this imported stuff.

ohhhh - my mum used the jug cord, her slipper or jandal, flyswat (ohh did that HURT) and this nasty looking leather thong thing my aunty gave her - it had a plaited loop for a handle & all the thongs hung down about a foot or so - it was a SCARY thing!

oh yuk brain pudding make me heave what about tripe is this tha same as what u meant #371 dam i never made my kids eat that either but i remember my daughter not liking peas and she would reach so in the end someone told her to push them under her plate so she did and i never new this for a long time the little toad, she was allowed pudding once she had eaten her tea as well and all the time she was hiding what she didnt like, dont worry she has a baby and i remind her of this lol

Bottled fruit.... OH yes.... I remember that. In fact I did it myself for many years. A very syrupy sticky kitchen that drew the flies. Yuk! Love it but its cheaper to buy now really. We seemed to live on mince, mutton and stewing steak! Chickens were a huge expensive treat, my how things have changed. The only time I had a fizzy drink was at xmas parties at the end of the year. We had the kitchen lion that required polishing. It was my job with the electric polisher that had its own agenda haha. Many a time it got away on me.

My grandmother had a stack of old plates in her kitchen cupboard - if we were grumpy about something we were expected to go into the kitchen, close the doors and SMASH plates until we felt better! Then you had to clean up the mess before you could leave the room LOL Was a great stress release, but the clean up was a b*tch!!

polishing with one of those heavy polishers was one of my chores, as was cleaning out fireplaces and resetting them for lighting later in the day. Cant imagine asking a child to do that now. Another one was polishing everyone's schoolshoes in the evening...the smell of nugget lingers to this day.

There was no talking about what you did wrong back then. It was slap, bang, smack and no questions asked. Well for me anyway. There was no talking or discussing anything. No reasoning or chance for explanations. I wasnt told about menstruation until the morning I got my period on our way into town. How uncomfortable was that trip!! A book was placed on my bed from the doctor later that week with words I didnt even know the meaning of. My did I improve on that one!!
One year..all the bottled fruit stored on a shelf in the washhouse, fell down in the middle of the night! Yukkkk the sticky mess. Who had a copper ? scary things boiling away. Got a wringer machine when my sister was born

reading about the smacks with 'weapons' god these days the kids would be removed from the 'abusive' household. I got the jugcord, ouch, but hardly ever smacked my kids and only with my hand. Am babysitting my 23mth old granddaughter at her house while her parents are away on holiday, my 8mth pregnant daughter is staying to help out as I work part time. GD parents do not smack her but use the naughty corner, GD was spitting out her water instead of swallowing it, has been going on for awhile,at least since christmas, so I did what her parents do and used the naughty corner, straight after she spits out the water and I gave her a smack over her nappy, she gave a grizzle and we haven't had a spit since. Daughter was horrified but I begged her not to tell GD parents!! I'm an abusive grandma!!!!!!!!

Remember the Rawleighs Mandelivered the foulest tasting stuff. Could never work out why my mother made us take it "clean out your bells" - didnt have a clue where my "bells" were - was years before I found out she meant bowels!

We had a big old thick leather fanbelt for whacking. Used to hide it, but if caught got twice as many round the ass. A clip around the ears was common. Never had any long term affect.. Brain still functions ok.. lol

Our house was different, or so our friends thought..we discussed anything and everything. My dad was one of only two vets in PN and we taken by him to some cases. Took it in our stride to see stallions serving mares, spaying cats and neutering dogs etc. Often got into trouble at school for sharing this at morning talk time.lol

Oh shoe polishing.... I had to polish every morning prior to leaving for school. We didnt have a fire place but I did go to brownies where I learnt that art. Thats where I built and lit my first fire and made my first rice pudding. I remember riding on trams in Wellington. Getting my bike wheels stuck in the tram lines and falling off!! Riding freely around the streets without helmets and with less cars. Playing elastics and big jump ropes. There was some ditty that went with the skipping about Roy rogers. (Hi Roy Rogers, how about a date. Met me at the corner at half past eight....) I never had a bbq as a child at all. I dreaded Sundays going out visiting people every weekend. BORING!

I remember the old wringer washing machine. Sister and I were playing with it and her arm got caught and went through it. Had to go to hospital for skin grafts. She still has a lot of scaring 45 years later...

Coppers, yes...and big wooden tubs. A huge long wooden spoon for the coppers. Mind you everything was probably mainly cotton back then. The wringer washing machine was fascinating. We never had one. My M-I-L had one which I learnt to use as a teenager and really enjoyed the novelty. I remember the old scrubbing boards and sunlight soap. Thank goodness they are no more. I remember the beautiful delicate china my grandmother used to have. She had a saying "hells bells and buggy wheels" no idea what that meant either. Bless her.

My youngest sister put her index finger up into the motor of our wringer washing machine as it was working..still has a munted finger that is useless. Thinking of some of the other things we did it is a wonder we survived. My mother swore that when she rang the hospital they automatically asked which of us it was that needed urgent treatment!

I was the same - woke up with it, went out to Mum & showed her my pj bottoms, my sister laughed and I got handed a pad & told to put it in my pants. What a shocker that was. My daughter got hers on New YEar's Eve morning - I took her out for a Mummy Date & she was well informed with starter packs from Carefree & Libra. Was determined she wouldn't be traumatised by it :-)

blueo for the whitening sheets etc. Thick eiderdowns and aircell blankets on beds with kapok mattresses on wire bases.

I recall Mum made piles of half gallon jars filled with ginger beer made from the 'bug'. All stored under the house and at regular intervals one would explode so we had bangs in the night as well. I remember my Dad packing his half gallon case with the two bottles and heading off to the pub to have them filled each weekend. Fish and chips wrapped in newsprint. Some places still do this. Asking for threepence worth of scraps on the way home from school. Asking also for vinegar and sauce (worcester) on your chips. Ah, those were the days....

was very lucky not to need skin grafts. My cousin & I were playing with the bubbles while Aunty hung the washing. Thankfully Aunty was very quick at releasing the wringer!

remember my mum making ginger beer and how we had to leave it for 3weeks or more, it was the most beautiful ginger beer that i had tasted, and the maori bread she used to make, not sure what that was called but dam it was all good

My partners father was the ginger beer and lemondade man who delivered in those large brown gallon jars, on the Shore hundreds of years ago. I was counting up how many men "visited" my mother in a week ! OMG the butcher, the bread man, the milkman, the ice man (we had a larder, no fridge till the late 50's), Mr Rawleigh, the grocer, the postman and on and on. Its a wonder she didnt have an affair !!

my grandmother said that too LOL and 'you'll bust your fu-fu valve' LOL Fluffs instead of farts. My poppy chased me around the garden with the spade once for saying SH*T - think I was 3 or 4 hehehe

Keenkiwi, you did exactly the same as me haha Took the pj pants and showed her. Little did I know that I had been having little starter periods for ages prior to. I thought I hadnt wiped my bottom properly and knew I would get into trouble for it so when I had my incinerator duty in the weekend I burnt my pj pants haha. Mum could never figure where they had all gone. I was handed a pad, belt and safety pins. Was told "thatscalled your period, you get it monthly, it helps you to have babies and your cousin (who is two years older) has only just got hers". That was the extent of it! My tum was soooo sore that day but no asprin or disprin (what ever it was then) offered, I told my girls way before they would get theirs so they didnt have the shock I did. I remember the blueo as well. Used to dangle on a string and was apparently good for bee stings too.

blueo was good for bee stings LOL I had tons of them from playing in the clover LOL.

Diana's Pancake house on Willis St Wellington Where the gang used to go in the we small hours after dancing the night away at uncle alberts Artic with a band called Shiner.. good the lead singer was hot as used to shake my butt right infront of him.. oh the memories.. Being the tallest.. buying drinks under age at the speak easy.. .lol.. oh yeah ..the hungry horse and old mark and roland often wonder what they are up too and the soho bar next to uncle alberts.. Now we cant forget Carman can we.. what a doll... always looking out for us.. never had to worry to much about muggings and stuff.. they were the best days of my life... 400