A whole catalogue of memories here from Kate Greenwood . . .

GAMES/PASTIMES

‘One of the earliest games I thoroughly enjoyed was one that my sister Lucy and I made up called The Sandy Richardson Game c.1972/73. This was a game taken from Crossroads which we watched avidly at the time. Sandy Richardson (played by Roger Tongue) was involved in some sort of accident and became paralysed from the waist down and had lots of doctors prodding his feet to see if he had any feeling in them [see:above]. The rules of our game were to take it in turns to sit on each others bottom and tickle the feet with feathers, knitting needles etc of the person lying down. The winner would be the one who could hold out the longest without moving or laughing (because Sandy would't move). I know this sounds awful, but we spent many a happy innocent hour playing this!

‘As our family went camping every year to Waxham on the Norfolk Coast (only 20 miles from where we lived ) we often met up with the same families who also went to the same place every year and got to really enjoy playing mass games of hide and seek in the sand dunes. That is . . . until Dad announced to us all over a communal camp fire, that he had seen an adder that day . Hide and seek was never the same again. (I also recall Dad trying to scare us by scratching at our tents having just read extracts from The Rats by James Herbert.)

‘When I, my two younger sisters and brother were still at the age to be excited by Christmas, we would insist on all sleeping in the same room on Xmas Eve and played the let’s-see-who-can-get-to-sleep-first game. In our desperation, we used to play Mum’s crap records (The Bachelors, the Seekers etc.) in the hope they would bore us to sleep. It usually worked.’

FAMILY CARS/VEHICLES

‘I have very fond memories of the red K-reg Citroen Diane my parents owned for a while. This car had a sun roof that peeled right back and Dad would let me and my two sisters stand up on the back seat to poke our heads
out of the top of the car whilst it was bing driven at about 30mph!! (what was he thinking of?) We used to put up the hoods on our identical hideous patterned anoraks and would wear kids sunglasses to keep the wind from our eyes and shout in unison “uh oh . . . JUNGO!” (phrase from cartoon shown on The Banana Splits called Danger Island).

‘When my brother was born in 1972 the parents (Dad) decided that they needed a bigger vehicle to carry the Greenwood Family who were now six. So imagine our delight when Dad rolled up in a G-reg matt grey (I think hand painted) Bedford Van. This was the nearest thing to a people carrier in the early 70s. However, we soon realised that this new vehicle would not be as fun as the Citroen mainly because there were no windows in the back (causing sensory deprivation on longer journeys) but also because Dad put in the seating for us himself – a garden bench welded in an extreme upright position with the world’s hardest foam as cushions.

‘Worse was to come. After a couple of Bedford Vans, Mum and Dad were offered an Austin Allegro by my grandparents who were trading up to a Rover Mini Metro. This could not have come at a worse time as I was becoming an adolescent and was extremely aware that this car was not cool. However it did remind me of the funny but often treacherous journeys I had had in the back of this car when it was owned by my Granddad, Hubert Greenwood. He had passed his test at 65 years of age and could never really be described as a “relaxed” driver, constantly feeding the steering wheel through his hands and appearing not to be fully aware of the road/driving conditions ahead.

OTHER TALES

‘I loved any programme on the telly that was scary: Dr Who (especially with Jon Pertwee and his assistant Jo); Paulus (I think this was an Anglia TV production about a little man who lived in the woods); Quatermass and The Twilight Zone (favourites in my early teens) and anything under the name Hammer Horror. All these programmes for some reason would make me convinced that if I went to the loo whilst they were on, a monster or hand would come up the toilet and get me! However, the programme to have long lasting effects was Survivor, which was on weekly in the late 70s. Every week the horror of living as a survivor of a world epidemic was played out and managed to scare me witless. In one particular episode packs of rabid dogs roamed Britain . . . what nightmares I had! This show and the discovery that Mum had failed to fill in my inoculation card past 1966 (was I protected from the polio virus or not?) marks the first time in my life that I began to have real worries and the world seemed a different place to that I had known.

‘On a lighter note, a memory that will still cause laughter amongst my friends is the tale of the Valentine's Day Fancy Dress Disco 1980. Everyone who was anyone was going to be there and my friend Sophie and I couldn't wait to plan our costumes . Sophie wisely went as a French maid and managed to pull. I on the other hand did not pull as I had decided after much deliberation and chucking out the idea of going as a character in The Singing Ringing Tree (too obscure) that I would go as . . . Davros! Whilst others were enjoying dancing to The Specials, Chic and the obligatory Led Zeppelin track A Whole Lotta Love, or jostling for position at the bar, I was trapped in a makeshift wheelchair with one hand held limply over my control panel.’