As Bravenet won't post my reply to ishi in the previous post's comments I'm posting it here:

Hi ishi, if I was using my blogs to earn some income I might well keep them seperate. I just do mine for fun so I decided to put them all together onto the one blog to make it easier for me. I also thought that having all the subjects on the one blog might make it more interesting for people to read.

I just wanted to let you know that I won't be posting any more childhood memories here, all future posts will be on my One Step Up blog.

It seemed like a good idea at the time to have seperate blogs for different subjects but it's too much! I will be leaving my machine knitting blog as it is but everything else will be going on the other blog.

One thing I've noticed about this Bravenet blog is that the comments don't always work. I have received notifications that someone has commented and although they show up on my dashboard they don't show on the blog so nobody can see them. This makes it look as though I've deleted them for no apparent reason which I haven't. So if you commented and your comment isn't appearing please don't be offended - it wasn't me, it was Bravenet.

I plan to eventually copy all of the posts from here to One Step Up  but I won't be deleting this blog, I'll leave it here for the time being.

I hope to see you soon at the other blog.

Talk to you later,

Susan.

My birthday is two weeks before Christmas. I always thought this was very unfair when I was a child as my brother and sister both have their birthdays in the Summer. When people used to ask me what I wanted for my birthday and Christmas I always had a hard time thinking of things so I always used to say "I don't know."

I could think of things I would have liked for my birthday but then when it came to Christmas presents I couldn't think of anything else.

If my birthday was in the Summer I'm sure I would have been able to think of plenty of things I would have liked.

A phrase I got used to hearing was "I haven't got you much for your birthday but I've got you a nice Christmas present." This didn't seem fair to me as a child. Why should my brother and sister get a good birthday present and a good Christmas present?

I suppose to an adult it's not such a big deal but to a child it feels like favouritism towards the others!

When I was sixteen I had a hand held electronic Space Invaders game. It was made by Grandstand and was called 'Invader From Space'.

It was like the Space Invaders arcade game and I used to play it over and over again. It was very noisy though and there was no volume control on it.

Unfortunately our house was burgled and my game was one of the things that the theiving toe rags took.

A few years ago I just happened to be browsing round ebay and I found my game so naturally I had to bid on it and I won.

I bet you're all dying to see this game aren't you?

Here you go:



Yay! I won. The game is over once you reach 1,000 but the only way to restart it is by turning the power off then back on again.

I bet I used to drive everyone in the house mad with that game. Maybe my Mam and Dad were pleased when it got stolen - they got a bit of peace and quiet. I hardly ever play my replacement game apart from the odd occasion when I'm feeling nostalgic.

Did you have one of these or something similar?

Talk to you later,

Susan.

For my birthday one year (I think it was my seventh birthday) my Mam and Dad bought me a Close And Play record player.

I remember it was red and you opened it up, put a record on the turntable, switched it on then closed the lid. The needle that played the record was in the lid so when you closed it the record would start to play.

I thought I'd have a search online to see if I could find one of these record players and found this:



I can't imagine that it did the records any good, can you? I mean, opening and closing the lid whilst the records were playing must surely have scratched them. But at seven years old who cares about a scratched record?

Talk to you later,

Susan.

We used to have a Rediffusion telly which was early cable TV and gave us 4 channels whereas people viewing through aerial TV only had 3 channels.

We had BBC1, BBC2, ITV Tyne Tees and ITV Yorkshire (which was our extra channel). It was great having Yorkshire because that meant that we could watch Tiswas on a Saturday morning - Tyne Tees (which was our local ITV channel) didn't show that, I think they had something called Fun Factory. When BBC2 wasn't broadcasting we could listen to Radio 1 through the telly.

There were no controls on the telly for changing channels, instead there was a big knob on the windowsill!

One year for Christmas my Mam and Dad bought my brother and sister and I a Binatone Pong game:


(The picture was found here)

We were so excited but our excitement soon turned to tears when we discovered that we couldn't plug it into the back of the telly because we needed a special adapter with us having the Rediffusion cable TV.

Can you imagine the disappointment?

In those days the shops didn't re-open on Boxing Day so we had to wait a bit longer before we could finally play our wonderful Pong game.

I found a video of a game exactly the same as ours which amazingly still works:



How the memories came flooding back when I found that video!

That game gave us hours and hours of entertainment. We could never in our wildest dreams have even guessed what the games would be like some 30+ years later.

Did any of you reading this have one of these games, or did you have a Rediffusion telly with an extra channel?

The adverts on TV nowadays are rubbish. Most of the time I have no idea what they are trying to sell me and the advert has nothing at all to do with the product. They try to make the advert all arty-farty or like an epic film, just to sell you their product which you probably don't need anyway.

When I was a child I couldn't wait for the adverts to come on the telly - the adverts were usually better than the programmes. One of my favourites was the Smash advert. Now I realise we don't really need  instant mashed potato and little tin Martians have nothing at all to do with the product but you have to admit the advert was funny:



The way they laugh is so contagious, it always brings a smile to my face.

They certainly don't make them like that anymore.

Talk to you later,

Susan.

I'm sure we all remember Spangles.

They were square shaped boiled sweets in various fruity flavours.

Were they fizzy? I can't quite remember whether they were or not (it was a long time ago!).

I seem to remember them as being in a black wrapper with white or yellow writing but despite searching the internet I can't seem to find a photo of them in a black wrapper.

Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.

Whilst searching for photos I came upon this site where I found this old advert for Spangles:



Still no sign of the black wrapper though.

Am I imagining things? Does anyone else remember Spangles in a black wrapper?

Talk to you later,

Susan.

Bravenet comments doesn't seem to be working for me. I'm trying to reply to Mik's comment on my last post but for some reason it's not showing up.

Here's what I was trying to say:

It was the same narrator on The Herbs, The Clangers and Bagpuss - I think it was Oliver Postgate. I'm not sure but I think he also did Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog.

If anyone else is having trouble leaving a comment you could instead leave a message on the tag board which is in the sidebar.

I did have the same problem a couple of weeks ago but I thought it might just have been a glitch - obviously it's a problem with Bravenet.

Talk to you later,

Susan.

Who remembers The Herbs?

It was a children's programme which was set in a garden and all the characters in it were named after herbs.

There was Parsley the Lion, Sage the Owl, Dill the Dog, Sir Basil (the king of the Herbs), Lady Rosemary, Bayleaf the Gardener and Constable Knapweed to name just a few.

Each of the characters had their own little theme song which they sang whenever they made an appearance.

Here's Parsley's song:



A few years ago I found a video of The Herbs in a charity shop for about 50p so I bought it.

When I watched it, none of the episodes showed Parsley consulting his magic book.

Do you remember, when he needed to find out any information about things he would say "I'll just consult my magic book" then he would wave his paw and his book would appear with a 'ping' and a flash of light.

So how come he never did it on my video?!?!

Are there any TV programmes you remember fondly from your childhood?

Talk to you later,

Susan.