Memories of childhood..

I can remember a girlish fight I had once - I think I was about nine yrs old.....Goodness knows what it was about but there was a lot of rolling on the floor and hair pulling. I guess I was a better hair puller than her because I managed to pull a small clump out from the roots... she went screaming in to tell her mum who came out and started telling me off.
 
 In the meantime someone had run to my house to tell my mum and she came out too. The two mums didn't approach one another- they  each stood in front of their own front door - about 6 houses apart -  shouting abuse at each other and sticking up for their own kid.
 
Soon, other people had come to their doors to see what the shouting was about and all the kids stood round gawping... They had quite an audience really, but it didn't bother my mum once she was in full flow.
 
I lived in a rough & ready mining village.  If you were posh you didn't survive very long there!!
Slanging matches between mums was quite common on our street in those days ... Of course the kids made it up the next day but it took the mums longer - Oh happy days..


Be good to hear some of your childhood memories - good or bad. :;smile:

A couple of years ago I got an unexpected email from a dentist in the South of England. He thanked me for saving him from being bullied at school. It seems that I, who was then a 6th former in the last year at school, found him being threatened by a 5th former. The latter was much bigger than the chap who wrote to me, but I was bigger still and I told him that if I caught him bullying he would get a thumping! (Does that make me a bully? :;smile: ). I don't know how he tracked me down, all the way from England where he had ended up. The joys of google I guess.

And he's never forgotten what you did for him... That's wonderful Ciderman. :;smile:

Anybody who had a settles childhood with two loving parents are very lucky.

 There was a time in my childhood when I was deeply unhappy.  My parents were divorced and mum took a job once as housekeeper to a widower with three children.  It meant moving 40 miles to a different county - new school etc. I settled down well in my new home and Barbara, the daughter of the family became like a sister.  For two years we were inseparable  and then one day mum & I went back to live with grandma & granddad and I had to start back at my old school. I can't remember what explanation was given to me but it didn't help. I was heartbroken - I missed Barbara so much that I used to cry myself to sleep at night and in the daytime I'd dream that she's come to see me for a visit. Of course she never did. 

I was like this for months and months until I finally realised I wasn't going to see her again.
I got over it eventually but I think that was the most miserable time of my childhood..

The power of the internet eh Bigman?
A few years ago I decided to trace Barbara the girl in my story. It wasn't hard. The village where she lived had a website and before I knew it the webmaster had got back to me with her married name and address.
I contacted her but the reply I received wasn't what I'd hoped for.

 She said she didn't want to have any contact with me because that time in her life was very unhappy and she didn't want reminding of it. She was referring of course to her mum dying and my mum coming to look after them. Then of course she must have felt the wretch when we moved away...

I would have loved to have seen her but had to respect her wishes.

I can remember having a conflict with a girl at school,
it was all over some boy who she saw talking to me on the way home one day,
because she fancied him too she, kept picking on me at school.
One day in the playground she got hold of my hair and would not let go.
I tell you it was painful, so had to make her let go,
so i decided to bite her on the arm.
but it backfired and she passed out.
Both of us ended up in the heads office and we  were severely told off.
But it did make her let go.

That served her right meerkat. Good for you.

Did she leave you alone after that?

My parent separated when I was eight.  Back in 1940s Wales that was enough for mothers to call their children off the street when I appeared.

Until my early teens I was a lonely, bewildered and frightened small boy (now I'm no longer lonely and frightened, but still bewildered!) , all credit to my Dad, a single parent before the term was ever invested  who gave me an upbringing which only saw me questioned by the police when I turned left on my bike without stopping!

My wife was savagely abused (physically and mentally, not sexually) by her mother and father and was taken into care.  Once again in the early 50s that was almost unheard of.


It's a miracle that either of us let alone both, thought that marriage might be worth trying.  

That was in 1961!

Hearing these sad stories makes me realise how lucky I was. The only child of a devoted couple for all of their lives. They took me to faraway places with strange sounding names . Dad was an RN officer who put in for overseas postings when ever they came up. Bermuda, New York, Singapore, and finally to NZ. After 3 years on loan to the RNZN it coincided with a commission period and he had to either sign on and go back to UK or opt out and stay here. So here we are. The only sad part of my life is that he died too young at 55 and my mother was lost without him and spent the rest of her life mourning his loss.