I am in my early sixties and one thing I remember very clearly is that on a Friday night Dad used to take the three of us down to the greengrocers and get the veges and fruit for the week. It was a real treat to walk down and if we were very very very good we would get a bottle of Thompson Lewis raspberry. My nana was in Hutt Hospital for many weeks and we used to visit every Sunday - Mum would go into the ward and Dad would take us to a milkbar and buy us one mallowpuff each. It was so exciting to get a mallowpuff and something we looked forward to.

I remember the milk carts with the horses and women racing out to pick up the droppings for their gardens.

Mum used to make the most wonderful individual potato top pies and also Dad's favourite dessert - Apple Amber. She did so much bottling and preserving as well as working full time.

We used to listen to the radio and occasionally were allowed to listen at night - remember Night Beat anyone? When television was first introduced my grandad was one of the first in the street to get a set so everyone used to go to his place to watch.

What about the school milk that used to sit in crates in the sun and then was given out by the milk monitors and you had to drink it, no excuses would be accepted by the teachers. YUK!!! I grin when my grandchildren tell me about the camps they go on. The most exciting thing we did was go to Denhards Bakery and get shown around and at the end of the tour we were given a slice of bread and a lump of dough.