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Mashing your mother’s good pansies into jam jars of water, tipping in a healthy dose of her Lily of the Valley, and then attempting to sell it back to her.
Two bottles of Robinson’s diluted orange, 12 crackers and 3 Club Milks begged from your mother, wrapped in a tea towel and eaten in a field 1.5kms away. Back in the day when you could vanish for seven hours and nobody would worry.
Sunday 22 December, 2024
Sunday 22 December, 2024
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13 things Irish kids actually used to do for fun
1. Check the weekly TAM ratings in the RTÉ Guide
Would anything unseat Home and Away from its lofty perch?
2. Tape music videos off Dempsey’s Den
It took a quick hand to get ALL of T’Pau, Transvision Vamp or The Fine Young Cannibals committed to VHS. (DO NOT TAPE OVER!).
3. Make perfume
Mashing your mother’s good pansies into jam jars of water, tipping in a healthy dose of her Lily of the Valley, and then attempting to sell it back to her.
4. Rent the same three videos from Xtravision (or local alternative) in rotation
Beetlejuice, Turner and Hooch and Sister Act anyone?
Or maybe Hook, Mr Nanny and Short Circuit?
5. Read the jokes in the back of Ireland’s Own
And take a sneaky look at the Classifieds.
6. Circle things to watch in the Christmas RTÉ Guide
Red pens at the ready!
7. Look up the cinema listings on Aertel and waiting for your own local to come back around
“We’re on Clonmel. Just another 27 pages to go”
8. Look at flights arriving on Aertel
Extra exciting if you knew someone coming back from holidays.
9. See if you’d be let stay up late enough to witness ‘Closedown’ on the telly
10. Learn off the toy pages in a two-year-old Argos catalogue
Procured by your aunty on a visit to London. Maybe this would be the year you’d get the Sylvanian Families!
11. Tape the Toy Show, and watching it on repeat for the rest of the year
Don’t pretend you don’t know the Samantha Mumba Billie Barry routine inside out.
12. Get at least three penpals from Aertel/The Den/the RTÉ Guide
Writing to far flung places like Cavan and Ennis about how many pets you had and where you were going for your summer holidays (Curracloe).
13. Go for a ‘picnic’
Two bottles of Robinson’s diluted orange, 12 crackers and 3 Club Milks begged from your mother, wrapped in a tea towel and eaten in a field 1.5kms away. Back in the day when you could vanish for seven hours and nobody would worry.
Inspired by Aisling Marron and Oh My God What A Complete Aisling
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god bless aertel growing up irish Ireland irish kids RTÉ Guide