What our parents did that wouldn't be seen now

NHR- happy memories - but what a dreadful name, wasn't it ;)

NWR is just as bad a name. Last year we were asked to suggest alternative names but so far nothing has come of it. Our group is heading towards being a retired women's register!

While at junior school in the 1960s in London, I was allowed by the school to go regularly in school-time with another girl to take a school pet (hamster or similar) to a vets/PDSA which was a bus journey away down a busy main road. No parental consent was asked for (and when the first girl's father found out he stopped her going but then another girl went with me). We were both about 9 I think.

When my children were at junior school they needed a parental consent letter to be taken out with the class and however many adults for some local activity such as a nature walk in the park.

But my feeling now is - what were they thinking in the sixties??!!

I remember being sent into the village with a note, to buy sanitary towels for the wife of my class teacher who taught lower down the school. I was 11 and the oldest in the school which was why I was sent ,I suppose .Wouldn't happen now.

Greenfinch I was similarly sent alone with a note on behalf of my mother to a local shop - not sure how old I was (at least 7, under 10) but my father was in at the time. Not sure why he couldn't have come with me even if he was too embarrassed to enter the shop!

I used to be sent to the wool shop for "Silcots size 2" which came in a plain brown wrapper.

Not sure where this fits but my Grandmother was one of the first ever qualified "Gym teachers". This was in the early 1920s. She wasn`t allowed in the staff room with the "proper teachers". Despite doing a 3 year course and being fully qualified. She was also expected to inspect the children`s heads for lice. She never complained and just understood that was where she fitted in to school life.
When I was a young girl I was taken along with my GP dad to see patients! Mostly I sat outside in the car but quite often I was asked in with him. Wouldn`t happen now- GPs don't seem to do many home visits! Dad saw all comers at his twice daily surgeries as well as private patients (early days of NHS) and all house calls. He also routinely visited his oldest patients on a just in case basis and also visited any patients who were in hospital. He used to look around at the local Health Centre when he was in his eighties and say "I`ve been replaced by a cast of thousands!!" There was a massive turn out of patients at his funeral.

In my last year of junior school I was proud to be chosen, with my best friend, to be 'coffee monitors'. This meant we could leave the morning lessons 20 minutes before break to enter the school kitchen, boil a pan of milk on the industrial sized cooker, and make coffee in big steel jugs for the teachers to enjoy at break. In addition, we had to fill a flask with coffee for the teacher on playground duty and take it to him or her in the playground across a busy road, all with no adult supervision whatsoever.

One day we were messing about in the kitchen and I swallowed a whole butterscotch sweet (which of course I shouldn't have been eating) and although I could barely speak as I was half choking I wouldn't let my friend fetch a teacher because I knew I would be in trouble. She was so scared she went for the headmaster who gave me a talking to about gastric juices which I have never forgotten, engraved on my memory through pain! He didn't seem worried about H&S or the possibility of being sued by an angry parent.

No risk assessments in those days.....

Nobody has mentioned punishment for children which has changed drastically in our time. The cane was used in school for bad behaviour then, more than likely another walloping at home when parents found out. My sister and I shared a bedroom, and of course we would chat to one another after the light was out out. I can remember we were both walloped for not going to sleep.
We had the same freedom to play out as on previous posts and would clear off for the day with a bottle of pop and a jam butty and nobody worried about us. Of course there was very little traffic in those days. We would go off on our bikes for miles.
Everyone smoked, dad smoked a pipe, mum had her cigarettes and we all sat in one room because the rest of the house was freezing. And if you opened the living rom door and closed it, smoke would billow out from the coal fire into the room. It's a wonder we have any lungs left.
Oh and of course, bad weather was blamed on the sputniks!!

Its amazing the freedom I had as a child to what children have now. I remember my mother asking us to go out and play and not to come back until it gets dark. We would play and explore and sometimes walk miles, we wouls pretend to be "The famous five" from our favourite Enid Blyton books and go exploring and on our bikes taking a picnic with us and making up wonderful adventures. I would be aged about 10 or 11 then. We climbed trees and made tree houses, went fishing for tadpoles and newts, I can even remember my parents letting me camp along with a friend in play tent that was not even waterproof in a field above a local wood all night. I often wonder how we all survived, we did not understand anything about stranger danger then.