Egypt4u

You are painting a very vivid picture MD and a lovely memory for you.

Thank you Horus. I enjoyed writing it too.

The smell of Imperial Leather soap immediately makes me think even now, of my father who died at the end of may 1958.

My mother loved Freesias and I always associated their smell with her. I just wish I could still smell them, I had an infection about 30 years ago and lost my sense of smell for a while and never got it back for the flowers.

My daughters often remark that my house smells of clean washing as soon as they open the door - better that than dog I suppose, though I miss having one.

I love the smell of Bluebells in a spring woodland, it fills me full of delight just thinking of all the year stretched out in front of us, I hate the Winter months
I can't wait for this, I filmed it last year and the two dogs gamboling in the long grass at the end sums up Spring for me.

Brought a smile to my face and put me in a good mood to start the day. Such happy dogs, I hope that one day I will have another. Inshallah.

Very happy video H I wish the spaniel had been let off the lead, then they would have had some real fun.
Brightened up a very frosty morning.........BUT AT LEAST NO ICE PATTERNS INSIDE THE WINDOWS

Grandad, if that Spaniel had been let off the lead we would never have seen him again, he must be the dumbest dog I have ever met. He is my daughters and she was always saying how he ignored her commands, so I took him out for a walk and spent hours with him on a long leash getting him to come back to me. I also had a dog whistle plus a referees whistle to get his attention. The firs time he was let off on his own (along with Annie who will come back) we were lucky to get him back again. He just put his head down and was gone, no stopping him, all my shouted commands, blowing the whistles etc. nothing worked he just ignored us. I have told my daughter to get him checked out as I think he may be deaf, either that or he is just plain stupid. He is a lovely dog, but I am afraid to say that he was not trained well from a pup, he dislikes going in cars which I am sure could have been overcome with more effort and training when he was young. He knows his name, but when called he either just looks at you as if to say "who are you calling" then goes on his merry way, or just ignores you altogether, so I fear that without some serious training he will always be on a leash.

You're indulging in nostalgia! Let me see if I can invoke any further recollections. Well, the tin bath didn't feature when I was a kid. Ours was a big stone copper in the corner of the scullery, in which the water was heated up by a fire underneath. Thinking back, it must have been a funny sight to see all the little heads, one after the other, appearing out of the hole at the top! The last (and dirtiest) one in tended to get their bum burnt, because the fire underneath was constantly being stoked! That copper was used for doing the washing in, boiling the bacon puddings in, as well as bathing us. Heating wise, all we had was a kitchener, which had an oven at the side. It had to be black leaded every week. A really filthy job, and one to be avoided whenever possible. Outside loo naturally. No electricity upstairs. We went to bed like Wee Willie Winkie, clutching a candle. My second to eldest brother loved to read in bed, so he hit on an ingenious idea! He got an old bike with a dynamo, which stood beside the bed upside down, and my younger brother, who shared the bed, had to lay there, turning the pedal for as long as he managed to stay awake, so my elder brother had light to read by! We all slept top to toe in single beds. Usually three to a bed, and the newest baby of the year slept in a drawer until they got big enough to be safe sleeping with the rest of us. One clock in the whole house, which Mum used to wind up every night, and take upstairs to bed with her and carry downstairs in the morning when she got up. It lived on the mantelpiece during the day alongside the only comb we possessed. We always had chilblains in the dreaded Winter, because you had to make the decision to either wear your only pair of socks on your hands or your feet. Most of the time you had outgrown your shoes so Mum used to cut the toe of the shoe off so you wore them a bit longer, although I remember when my two older brothers were at the same school, and had just one pair of football boots between them - no shoes, just the boots - so they took it in turns to go to school wearing them. I'll come back to this post later.

Wow RS. I thought my early years were very basic living but yours sounds near Victorian. Your kitchen (or scullery) copper sounds very much like ours but at least my mother baled the water out into the tin bath. I think we must have had electricity lighting upstairs, I certainly don't remember using candles, only during power cuts. Your brother was very ingenious with his dynamo light. Did he go on to become an engineer? I have mentioned here in the past that I made a crude crystal set and could lay in bed listening to 'The Wireless', and constantly adjusting the crystal pickup and my home made coil.

Going back to smells remembered. We were 4 lads, all neighbours and we would go off over nearby farmland and hedgerows. I clearly remember the sweet perfume of privet in the hedgerows. And that leads me to the Privet Hawk Moth. We would find a chrysalis and keep it until the huge beautiful moth emerged.

We did pin moths and butterfly's to pieces of card and we did collect birds eggs. Non PC today but they were different times. At least if you got up to mischief, the local 'bobby' would reprimand you but that would be the end of it.

Many people think I'm exaggerating, Grandad, but this is the 50's I'm describing, and when I read others childhood stories, I sometimes feel that I inhabited a different world. My brother didn't end up as an engineer, unfortunately. In fact, he died a few years ago at the age of 68.

Your mention of smells makes me think of my mother again. She wouldn't have white lilac or may blossom in the house under any circumstances! And yet I think may or hawthorn blossom has one of the sweetest scents I've ever come across, don't you?

To return to childhood memories, we were fantastic scrumpers! The difference was we didn't scrump fruit. We pinched potatoes and cabbages! It meant that we could at least have chips or bubble and squeak for dinner. I also remember red letter Sunday breakfasts. If we were very lucky, we each had half an egg! During the week, it was either porridge made with water or cornflakes with a dash of cold milk, topped up with hot water. I didn't know for ages that most people ate cornflakes cold, with all milk!

Sheer luxury! we were so poor that three of us used to sleep in a hole in the road and the only time we had a wash was when a passing lorry hit a puddle!
But seriously folks I am loving all of these old memories and experienced most of them myself.

When my brother and I had an operation to remove tonsils and adenoids around 1941, we were wheeled into theatre top and tail on the same trolley.

And if you were like me I had to gargle with Dettol from a tin cup after the operation, an awful memory that stays with me to this day. Funnily enough they can grow back again and once whilst working abroad and constantly getting throat infections I visited a doctor who upon examination delared " a fine pair of swollen tonsils you have there"

Speaking of tonsils brought back a memory, not an old one but recent in the last 5 years or so.

I went to doctor's (not my one) with some complaint of my ears, while examining my throat he asked " when did I get my tonsils out " which really surprised me & told him never.. which is true!

He was taken aback & said " for whatever reason it is a mystery cause they have disappeared"

Now tell me folks...............Can your tonsils really disappear ?

According to good old Google, tonsils start to shrink after age 8 or so. I would have been around 7 and my brother 4.
It also says that they can grow again if all the tissue is not removed during the first tonsillectomy. It says that tonsils normally disappear by adulthood BUT my son had a tonsillectomy when he was about 40. So nothing is finite.
Horus as my brother just had a tonsillectomy he was allowed home after just a couple of days. My surgery took a few more days so I was in the hospital alone but they did give me lots of ice cream so there were some benefits.

I didn't want my tonsils out, but had tonsillitis 6 times in 18 months and was forced to at 11 years old.

We didn't have to drink Dettol but were given soluble aspirin to sip before our cold crispy toast and lumpy shepherds pie each day. We did have jelly and ice cream for our first meal though.

I was in a side ward with a girl of nine and a boy of eight. She also had her tonsils and adenoids removed, he had his ears pinned back and wore a head bandage. We were forbidden to get out of be during our stay in hospital, but we threw our comics onto the other's beds. My aim has never been good. The boy, whose bed was at right angles to us on the other side of the small room jumped out of bed to retrieve the comics I had thrown from the floor - just as the nurse came through the door. She caught him bending, but chose to hit him round the head rather than on the bottom.

On day three I was told I wasn't going home but back to the theatre. I didn't care, we had walked down to the prep room as a group and when I was taken on a trolley into the operating theatre, I recognised the smiley eyes of my favourite doctor and trusted him completely. However.................Apparently the first op wasn't complete and the remaining lump of tonsil was infected giving me a raging fever.

So when I was hustled down the second time on foot into a large room with trolleys and equipment around two beds, one of which had a blood stained red rubber sheet on it, which a masked and gowned person was cleaning. I wasn't frightened, but extremely interested in these busy people, so I tried to stay awake, which was A Bad Move. Much like I imagine a bad trip on drugs would be. But I woke up back in the ward without further drama until the day I left. All well except I still find that my beloved really hot curries are out because of the pain on the scar.

PS Some things in hospital administration are still the same though! Apparently hospital discharge arrangements are still chaotic.

We didn't have a car, so I was expected to go home by bus. Taken out of bed at 6.00am I waited in the main ward to be collected. At lunchtime it was noticed that I didn't have a meal provided, so some bread and buter was served. The day wore on without anyone paying any attention to me until lights out. There wasn't a bed available, so they got me into a cot, but only if I lay curled up, too small to lay flat.

At about 9.00pm my father appeared. The hospital hadn't contacted him until after lights out. He had to get a taxi from our village about 15 miles away to collect me, including waiting time at the hospital a pretty pricey ride even in those days.

Two years ago after my first knee op. without prior warning at 5.30pm I was given half an hour to quit my bed and leave! Luckily one of my daughters was visiting, though out for the day and thanks to mobile phones I left by 7.00pm

Last year I was all ready to leave at the scheduled time when they actually read my notes and found that I lived alone. Information they had held for 6 months. That evening I was transferred to another ward where I stayed for 9 days because they hadn't contacted the home support agency. At home the bathroom is upstairs - I could be based downstairs but I needed to have the commode emptied at least twice a day. When the ladies came to do the necessary it took 5 minutes including paperwork

Fortunately, a stay in hospital was never part of my childhood! I say 'fortunately' but my two elder brothers were both in Moorfields, at separate times, to have squints operated on, and they really enjoyed the attention. So much so, that when my eldest brother caught Scarlet fever and was told he had to go to the isolation hospital, he was really happy and my second to eldest brother was often to be found, sitting there beside him, begging him to breathe on him!