When I started grammar school, each pupil was given a Dr Barnado’s collection box, shaped like a house and made of paper mache. Everyone handed in their box on a chosen day each year and the amount collected duly recorded on the base. The same box was kept throughout your school days.
I vaguely remember an envelope coming home from school with me for donations. We also had to handsew a dress, when I was about 11, for some poor child via Red Cross. I bet it looked wonderful. I think my Mum was horrified.
In all my tree climbing uears I never got stuck until I was in my late teens and I mean quite literally stuck as in jammed. I showed a Holly tree one Xmas time to a guy I worked with, it was growing by a field on a nearby road, I volunteered to climb up to get some Holly and got one leg jammed in between two branches. It was quite painful but luckily he was able to reach up and give my foot something to push against. I did fall out of a tree once in my early teens, hit the deck flat on my back, it was quite a distance to the ground, the fall knocked all the air out of my lungs and left me gasping desperately for breath. Fortunately it had rained previously so the ground wasn't rock solid and I was very lucky to get away with nothing broken.
I don't remember the ladybirds either, but I do remember the volcanic eruption on Tristan da Cunha when the entire population was evacuated. I can remember sitting in school assembly and being told all about it, I presume people were asked to donate things for the evacuees. Funny how some things stick in your mind.
Liane, Your Cap firing tank took me back, I was a tom boy too, the only girl with 4 older brothers, no dolls for me, one Christmas I got a radio /remote control(with cord attached) Tank that fired plastic bullets, I loved it,had great fun with it.
How spooky, I was thinking about them the other day. Our booklets were handed out at Sunday School, called Sunny Smiles and lots of the babies were children of colour. Am I allowed to say that? At the time it was seen as an innocent way to raise money for orphanages and so forth. Apply today's mores and it is wrong on many levels. just shows how the world has changed.
I had a Triang tank, its main gun "fired" white "smoke" { talc by memory} and a sparking machine gum (lighter flint on a rough spinning wheel), hours of fun.
I used to love the smell when the caps had fired - brings back memories. btw my mum got her revenge - when she cleared out her loft a few years ago my tank got binned
I feel quite jealous. I really want one. I had a cap gun. I remember getting it for my 6th birthday - it was so shiny; I loved it, and there was a sweet shop in town that sold the rolls of caps. I adored the smell of spent caps. When I was a bit older I was allowed an air rifle and used to spend hours tipping cans off a fence. No dolls here either.
I was a girly girl. Loved my dolls. But I do remember the boys next door with rolls of caps and banging them with a hammer. Then of course I also used to get into Dads shed and saw bits of wood and whack nails into them. Dad would stand there....‘don’t choke the b***** hammer’. He taught me well because I can still drive a mean nail.
For me the saying was "Let the hammer do the work". As for caps, me too, but I did "progress", I won't go into too much detail, but it did involve drilling holes in a block of metal, rivets and match heads "DON'T TRY THAT AT HOME".
I had an air rifle from my mid teens right up to the time we came out here, I sold it before we left, didn't want the complication of declaring it to customs. I think having an air rifle helped me to be graded as a marksman in my first two weeks of being in the army and my first shoot with a .303 rifle. I liked shooting bits of broken terracotta plant pots with my air rifle, the bits would 'explode' with a cloud of red dust. In my single days at my parents place I would hang an Aluminum cigar tube from the Oak tree and set it swinging, very satisfying hitting a moving target, a guy at work smoked cigars so I had a good supply.
I had an artillery gun that did that, can't remember the make but like you had hours of fun, I could also shoot things the size of a pea with mine, at the appropriate time of the year I used Hawthorn berries as ammo.
