To ask what the weirdest thing you experienced or saw at someone else's house when you were a child?

@captainmycaptain but there's no need for the plates outside, so why at home?

Also, I'm pretty sure many people in India eat with their hands? Why would it be an issue?

I suspect we might have been the weird house. My dad used to take in alarm clocks for mending - the old style wind-up ones with a bell on top. He mended them by boiling them in a big pan. You'd come in from school and see something cooking and ask mum what's for tea and she'd say 'oh nowt much, that's just yer dad, boiling clocks again'.

As I said above - the wooden fork.

@SchadenfreudePersonified I'm common as muck too, apparently, lol! I just always found it easier to eat the fish and chips out of the poke, saves washing up Also now wondering what people do if they have fish and chips at the seaside

I remember being utterly flabberghasted while on a school trip once as one of the other girls was in tears on the phone sobbing that she missed her Daddy.

My house was the one where people only visited once because the atmosphere changed the second my father walked through the door and he wasn't worried about beating me in front of visitors. I had a friend get in touch after 30 years via faceache and admit that after seeing me being hit she'd been too scared to come back.

I do remember being at a friend's house and her being sick for some reason then being really confused when her Mum ran to the kitchen to make her tonnes of food to feed her back up again.

What was even more bizarre was that this was all being said at a family mealtime, with Christa there too.

I remember being at a good friend’s house and the parents were discussing some arrangements for a forthcoming holiday and the sleeping arrangements the night beforehand.

I was about 10-11 but even I thought it a bit odd that the Mum said that she would be going on ahead with one of the DC while Daddy slept in the big bed with Christa.

Not a child, oh no. Christa was the au-pair!

Even eaten outdoors at the seaside I use the wooden fork from the chippy.

We always eat fish and chips on a plate. They don’t come in a tray where I live, they’re just wrapped up in paper and I’m not a total savage. I also can’t fathom eating fish with my hands.

in primary school i used to go to a girls house for playdates regularly, her family were quite well off but for some reason we only ever ate plain pasta with salt and pepper while we watched blue peter and then she got in to pyjamas straight after and went to bed before my mum picked me up! we were about 9/10 and it was only 6:30pm!

I was about 12 years old and went to stay with a friend who lived with her nan and grandad, I didnt understand why but she hatched this adventure for us to camp out in the garden shed for the night, so we took sleeping bags etc and did. Later on that night, her nan came into the garden, steaming drunk, banging on the shed windows screeching and swearing, we were terrified. Now I realise she was trying to avoid me witnessing what I think were her Nan's regular booze binges, by 'camping out'. poor kid :( I never breathed a word to my mum as she'd have gone ballistic.

I've got two.

From primary school to secondary school age, I had this friend and were always invited round. We'd go up to her bedroom and she had two double bed pushed together as her bed. Only to find out she slept in one and her mum slept in the other.
No reasoning why as her parents had a good relationship, but she had no privacy whatsoever and just acted like it was normal.
No issue with this but all the way up until her mum died, they shared a bed.

I also knew a boy who had artwork of pregnant women that his dad had photographed and made him have in his room all his life. Was super creepy nude ones.

I'm another one who eats fish and chips on a plate. Our local chippy does huge portions so we have a fish each and share 2 portions of chips between 4.
My mum used to give me sugar sandwiches for my lunch and also dripping this was in the 1980s. I spent loads of weekends staying with my friend as a teenager, they weren't weird they were lovely people, this thread has just reminded me how much I miss her, she died far too young.

When I was young we would often play at a friend's house, and the portion sizes there were noticeably smaller than the ones at home. I never really thought about it until Mum mentioned it recently, and thought it was because they were a bit mean or because they hadn't planned for extra mouths at the dinner table. Apparently they always ate smaller portions than we did.

My friend and her siblings have always been very slim (not skinny) and I come from a family of fatties.

Portion sizes have got much bigger over the years. The portions at the friend's house were a small dinner plate not piled up. At my home, they would be about a third bigger. Nowadays, suspect portions would be on a much bigger dinner plate.

This was in the 70s when we didn’t know any better! I still love hedgehogs and hope the had the sense not to eat it! I think they actually ate the cat food.

We used to put it out for the hedgehogs on a saucer or feed the (many many) kittens with it.

If we're still talking about pobs (milk and bread), please don't give this to hedgehogs. They are actually lactose intolerant and it can give them diarrhea.

Now there's posh for you.
Mmm. Chip butty.

Common or not, a chip butty is food of the gods

it very much is.

But it does remind me of a 'weird ' experience at a friends house.
In my house we made our own. Mum plonked the bread in the middle of the table and we all constructed our chip butties to our own tastes. (Mine was always dripping in ketchup, still is)
Yet in my friends house, the parents made the chip butties for us. They slightly toasted the bread, carefully selected the right length of chips, drizzled a small amount if ketchup and folded it.

me and another friend were at my friends house (who i'm still close with now). We were about 14/15 and she took us upstairs to her parents room - i don't think they were in. She went to the top of her parents wardrobe and pulled out a plaster cast of her Dad's penis.... at the time we found it equally funny and bizarre.

Fascinating (and in places harrowing) thread. The weirdest thing I can think of isn't even weird. At a friend's after school, dinner time comes around and we had curry and rice, all good and fairly familiar. It was dished up 'normally' with a ring of rice surrounding a dollop of curry....with slices of fried potatoes placed on top of the rice. I'd never seen it before but apparently it was how the dad liked it. But even though it was 'weird' I ate it all because it tasted good and I'm a greedy sod

Oh and we had a routine for when we had fish and chips. Dad would go get it, mum would make a pot of tea and set the table and I insisted that buttering a plateful of bread was my job. The plate would go in the middle of the table for all of us to construct the obligatory chip butties. Common or not, a chip butty is food of the gods!

I think that what they mean - or that the parents were very frugal (so maybe brought up during the war?). And remember people are telling these stories through the eyes of a child (who dont always consider things clearly).

My mum lived in fear of someone going hungry so would stuff anyone who came and usually sent them away with a bag of food - again a war child so I suppose she knew what it was like to not have as much as you would need.

People commenting that they went to someone else's house and were given a really small portion, do you not think with all the other posters mentioning poverty that it could have been because the parents couldn't afford to give more food?

Always off a plate unless al fresco at the seaside. We normally buy a couple of large portions to share, plus the sausages / fish, so need plates to dole out. Kids wouldn't cope with anything "wet" eg mushy peas, gravy on paper either. Up the table with knives and forks for us

Always off a plate here

Surely the whole point of getting fish and chips is not having to cook or wash up? We eat it out the paper with our fingers so I can have a night off washing plates 🤣, I have eaten it off a plate in the past though (at other peoples houses and as a child).