Memories - early or general

Anyone else used to get the concentrated orange juice from the welfare. Used to come in a clear little bottle like a medicine bottle with a screw top.

I loved this juice and used to go with my mum when she used to go and pick it up along with the powdered baby milk in the tall round white tin with blue writing on.

And a spoonful of "malt extract"!!

Hi Mick, I love malt extract. My memories of Paybody hospital, Friday evenings was malt day. During periods where I needed exercise, wooden blocks would be plastered to my full foot & leg plasters so that I could hobble around the wards. What a nuisance I was, even more than now. I begged to be allowed to push the trolley around, whilst the nurse stuck the spoons in gobs. What excitement! A couple of big jars with loads of spoons sticking out.

The other thing that mum gave me was "cod liver oil"

One of the best things I remember was when my dad got his dream car, we had a black Austin A40 and dad traded it in for a Zephyr Zodiac, it was 2 tone green and had white wall tyres. Reg number was TOC607. Cream leather interior, bench front seat, push button start and a column gear change. It seemed massive to sit in.

I used to have a spoonful of Cod Liver Oil and Malt as a child nightly. It was delicious and it's still available.

Can anyone remember the day when their family got its first TV set? I can't. I can remember watching children's programmes such as "Robin Hood" and "Watch With Mother", and as I was born in 1952 we would have had a TV by the mid/late 1950s. I find it hard to believe my parents had bought a TV in the early 1950s, as they were not technology pioneers: they never had a car, only bought their first fridge in 1965, and didn't get a colour TV until 1975, when the black-and-white TV finally packed up.

Extract of malt is what tiggers like best but they don't like honey, acorns or thistles.

Fairly recent studies indicate that most people's earliest memories, on average, date back to when we were 3

Me too, Suitably Chastised. Mum used to walk me to a Family Daycare five doors away to Mrs Neil's where we were just at the age to learn how to write our names and count. Our classroom was her front room and I remember worrying in case my mum would forget to pick me up again. That was in Lime Tree Avenue, Tile Hill. We were a very small class of five. Later I attended Folly Lane school then on to Moseley Avenue juniors. Finally at St Joseph's High School for Young Ladies. Well that's what it stated on the school board outside by the main gate. I had very mixed feelings on my first day there but I needn't have worried. Four years later I was set free out into the real world.

Me too! When I was 3

Sympathy over this weekend for those with pets. When I was a kid bonfire night was about 8 fireworks and a couple of sparklers each. If there was a neighbourhood party there were about 30 fireworks but only one sparkler per kiddy There was a massive bonfire that meant one half of you was medium rare and the other was freeze dried. Now it's days/hours of explosions and every loose bit of wood vanishes in the direction of the scout hut.

Yes, Helen. We used to have one box of fireworks. A few on the ground that went fizz and pop, a couple of rockets that sprayed out a few stars and a Catherine wheel that would not go round! Yes, the sparklers were the best. We have had 2 nights with loud bangs and I daresay again tomorrow. At least I do get a good display a few days before as I can just see the Drayton Manor rockets through the gap between the houses opposite and they usually put on a good display. I can even hear the music if I open the window.

When I was about nine or ten years old, my aunt bought me a box of fireworks as part of my birthday present. My sister and I had never had fireworks before, so we were very excited. We could hardly wait for dad to come home from work to show him my present. Among the fireworks was a packet of coloured matches for kids... When dad arrived we opened the box on the floor of our only room to show him. I persuaded mum and dad to let me strike a match, which I did. The match was a pretty colour but quite smoky, and it spat out small coloured particles, all very pretty. One of the sparkly bits landed on my hand. It hurt. I dropped the match into the middle of the box of fireworks!!!! The resulting display in the living room must have been spectacular. I never saw it - I was running for my life. Of course there was no way of contacting the fire brigade in those days so it was left to dad to try to grab the fieworks and throw them out of the door while my mother chased me up the lane with a carving knife, threatening to kill me if she caught me. That must have been when I learned to run fast. My overriding memory of the dark night was the gas light streaming out of the open door, the billowing smoke punctuated by various fireworks which dad was managing to chuck out into the lane. I viewed all this from the top of a railway embankment where I had fled from my mother and where I was safe from her screaming threats. In the aftermath, the budgie was still chirping in his cage, albeit with a bit of a cough. Our carpet of coconut matting was totally destroyed, our two chairs smouldered outside in the lane, the floor soaking from buckets of water. The outcome... the fireworks were only part of my birthday treat. The other part of my birthday present was for the whole family to visit the cinema on that night [a rare treat] about two miles away in the next village, to see 'Calamity Jane' [the title rather appropriate given the circumstances]. And here it gets complicated... The aunt who bought the fireworks was paying. She was my mother's youngest sister with a good job. She was also coming to the cinema. She was to catch a certain bus in the nearby town and we were to join her on the bus when it passed the bottom of the lane where we lived. It being such a rare treat, there was no way that my parents were going to miss the night out, so after I had been given a good belting by my mother with the strap, we locked up the house, deemed safe enough to leave by my parents and trooped down the hill and caught the bus to the cinema!! Inside, my mother sat at the end of the row of seats so I couldn't do a runner with my sister, and the three adults between us. It was the time of rationing. No sweets. But we were given a bag of plot toffee to share. The precious pieces were handed around. Poor dad nearly choked on his piece. Because there were no coupons left for such a luxury as sweets, the plot toffee turned out to be individual pieces of jelly - torn from the slab before the hot water was added to make it into a jelly for an after dinner sweet. That just about capped my birthday!!! Of course none of us could enjoy the film, so six months later, when the film came back to town, my aunt paid for us all to go and watch it again. My budgie's cough did get better, but dad lost the use of three of his fingers.