Is anyone else bored of seeing those nostalgia poems doing the rounds? Those sentimental "we were poor, but happy" rose-tinted efforts? Here's an alternative:

Does anyone remember steak and kidney pies?
And rickets and whooping cough
And mams with black eyes?

Fishermen returning with their catch on the tide
Single glazed windows with ice on the inside
Dad home from work, for his tea was a kipper
You knew not to act up
Or he’d give you the slipper

Haslet and corned beef and faggots and tripe
Scrumping for apples that weren’t even ripe
Cartons and packets and jars and tins
All went together, before wheelie bins

We had health and safety before it went mad
Was dying in the workplace really that bad?
When mam cleaned the house with nowt but Domestos
Your uncle at work, breathing in asbestos

Outside toilets with a really loud flush
Pages from a porno mag under a bush
Milkmen and binmen and coalmen and nurses
Grannies with pension books tucked in their purses

A smack on the bum and a clip round the ear
You’d get a good kicking if they thought you were queer
Drinks from the hosepipe on a hot summer’s day
When kids out of wedlock were taken away

Not many channels on the living room TV
But plenty of laughter for you and for me
Hancock and Steptoe and Morecambe and Wise
And rickets and whooping cough and mams with black eyes

Times weren't easy, but we were always happy
You could say things like Chinky and Eyetie and P*ki
Foreigners weren’t everywhere, you knew where to find ‘em
They were working for peanuts, not seeking asylum

But who could forget mix-ups, and Caramacs and Smarties
And dads getting plastered and fighting at parties
Wolf whistles, winks, and a pinch on the bum
Benny Hill, Bernard Manning and tits in the Sun

Back then we were cheeky, but we were alright
You didn’t get hassle, as long as you were white
School days were magic, best years of our lives
We just used our fists then, we didn’t carry knives

Homework, detentions, pencils and pens
Long summer holidays we spent making dens
Teachers were brutal, bloody insane
Any excuse to give you the cane

Cortinas and Escorts and Vivas and Maxis
Milk floats and buses and pop wagons and taxis
Drink driving was nothing, we could handle our beer
Fine till those adverts giving everyone the fear

Chip pan fires and the houses they burned
All sorts went on and blind eyes were turned
Bicycling nuns and dog-collared vicars
Putting their hands down little girls knickers

You knew where you were with steak and kidney pies
And rickets and whooping cough
And mams with black eyes

excellent that. can relate to a lot of that stuff. brutal teachers. we called physics beating up time due to the physics teacher we had. mr.pick, but he was never ever called that even by the lasses.

We also had a half back line of NEWTON MOORE STAMPER

watty moore my first football hero.

You can bring back most of that for me, even the teachers to fear, we could do with some of that these days.

apart from football its no bloody thanks for me. was brought up in the late 40,s and 50,s in real fear and not respect for anyone. kids seen and not heard and to be a normal kid you feared asking anyone for help if you and any mate needed it just in case you got another slap. as for cars of those times it seemed an achievment just getting there and back without a breakdown or the regular puncture.

Mine was Tommy McGuigan.

Ernie Pythian and Jimmy Mulvaney!

Really? Along with doffing your cap to the gentry who were far more important?

My good old days were before that. Can't relate, sorry.

I don't regret any of my childhood, it was fantastic and so were my football team.

The Good Old Days was a shit television programme also.

Brut,Old Spice,Hai-Karate.. my first splash on's..the birds couldn't get enough of me.

Birds, what about the women? A night out with a couple of wood pigeons and feathery romp later doesn’t appeal to me.

You’ve been watching too many Downton Abbey box sets.

It was horrendously shite.

How many kids, apart from the ones that did a murder, ‘regret’ their childhood?

Asking for a friend

[quote="phil"]I'm not sure you can regret your childhood, can you? Regret means to feel sad or bad about something you have done or failed to do. Most people's childhood just sorta happens to them. You don't really get to play an active role in doing or not doing it.

only thing i regretted about my childhood was when i was made to go to school. funny how i was never ill on a wednesday as it was football in the afternoon.

And horrendously popular. Mams loved it, not that there was much in the way of alternatives with only two or three channels.
All the same, I don't consider progress to be 40 channels all regurgitating the same bollocks. Not that I'm actually a telly watcher or owt.

I never watched TGOD myself but that doesn't help when you're in the room anyway.

I am old enough to remember this programme but not that old that my mother liked it. Her mother maybe but a programme that was surely 40 years after it's time. Bizarre.

Would anyone want to be 20 again, I know I wouldn’t, but childhood days were a joy to me, you adapted to what you had. I know it’s a cliche, but wonder how we did things that would give social services the vapours.
You can’t whine about the good old days if you enjoyed them.

I ‘d class the period it was supposed to be set in as being about 1900 and hadn’t a clue what I was sat on the floor watching but he used massive words.

Not forgetting the hugely unfunny Arthur Askey and his mate Ted Ray. And the world seemed to love Gracie Fields. As for Danny the frigging street.... god preserve us!

By the way, the trade of plate spinning seems to be obsolete these days.

Yeah, that was tedious, who the feck that that was entertaining.

Danny la Rue...???

The singing dog on Opportunity Knocks raised Hughie Green's eyebrows.

My Mam went to Opportunity Knocks in the seventies and Hughie Green, the dirty old get tried to get across her.

I remember when there were reports of chip pan fires in the Mail. ‘The Fire Brigade were called out at 6.15 this morning to a chip pan fire...... ‘ chips for breakfast or deep fried weetabix in batter?

[quote="Mr Irrelevant". And the world seemed to love Gracie Fields.
not those who had the bad luck to have to work with her did. her indoors late dad used to be a trumpeter with geraldo and she was his most hated artist of that time.

There was some "wastage" though I never personally knew anyone who came a cropper playing in the streets.
I flirted with danger many times and had a few frights, but for me looking back, that was just lessons in life.
My mam never had a black eye nor did I experience 9/10 of the stuff in the poem, so "good old days" is OK by me.

I remember working with a girl who’d been working in summer shows and someone made the mistake of saying Cilla Black was canny...

When I was little we lived in Queen Street, the baby-sitter took me out (I was 4) and met her friends. My dad came looking and found me ‘playing’ on the mothball fleet in Swainson Dock.

Anyone else play on the Tarzan swing at the old Waterworks building. At peak height you had a 50/60 foot drop and trusting your life to a rotten frayed rope.

I rode the rapids at Broken Scar on a inner tube once..

I'd love a catapult for Xmas.