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

1. Over Christmas my friend's mum put on a few pounds so one evening in January my friend and me had to wedge her into a basque ready for work. She called us into her bedroom where she was buttering up her tits (as in actually rubbing a block of butter all over herself, toast crumbs and everything) and we had to squish her into this black leather basque. It was hilarious.

the image of this has just left me in tears. I've had a shit day, so thank you!

Remember there was no unlimited Netflix back then has made me feel so old ! Netflix is a very very recent invention, young wan. In fact, i think it was invented last Thursday, wasn't it?

I wonder whether any of the people who have weird rules or weird stuff in their houses know they’re weird.

A homebirth. I was in primary school.

My friends house had a fridge full of lovely food that anyone could help themselves too, apart from the full cooked roast chicken, that was reserved especially for the dog.

I came from a very poor very food restricted household so this absolutely floored me.

Not me, but DH: his schoolfriend lived in one of those post-war prefab that endured well beyond their intended lifespan. It had an earth floor. No boards, no concrete, packed down earth with rugs over the top. Winters must have been awful.

This happened to a DF, she told me that when she was a child she was at her pal's house and wanted to go to the loo. There was a downstairs loo but it was occupied and her friend told her DM the problem. 'No problem' says DM 'she can use the upstairs loo.' DF could see that her pal wasn't happy about this but up she did trot to find that the bath was full of coal.

My friend's mum was a prostitute. She worked in a brothel in town.

She was the loveliest, kindest, most generous person you could image.

There are loads of stories I could tell about her but two particular incidents stick in my mind:

1. Over Christmas my friend's mum put on a few pounds so one evening in January my friend and me had to wedge her into a basque ready for work. She called us into her bedroom where she was buttering up her tits (as in actually rubbing a block of butter all over herself, toast crumbs and everything) and we had to squish her into this black leather basque. It was hilarious.

1. I rocked up on her doorstep one night at 3am having nowhere else to go after a bust-up with my parents. She was so kind and said I could stay there. I said I'd go straight to bed and not keep her any longer but she wouldn't hear of it. She put her ABBA CD on top volume and made me dance with her in the kitchen for about an hour.

@bertiebotts was the house with the grapevine in SE London by any chance?

A friend of mine lived in a four storey townhouse.

Ground floor = totally normal
1st floor = totally normal
2nd floor = all dressed like an 18th century house with antiques and no modern things at all. All dusty and we were never allowed in there (I just peeked in the open doors as we went passed it). Spooky as anything.
3rd floor = totally normal and where her bedroom was

Love these. Had a friend who had 6 siblings and her mum had this giant brass gong and used to sound it for dinner to get them all to come to their dining room. Another friend, her mum and dad had separate bedrooms, I found that really strange. Same friend her mum used to halve all food meant for 1 person so if you went for tea you would each get half a slice of toast ,half a tin of small beans and half an orange as dessert!!

I had a friend whose parents fancied themselves as a bit middle class. Most of my friends' parents were bricklayers and care assistants whereas this girl's mum was a nurse and her dad wore a suit to work (no idea what he did but I didn't know another man who wore a suit to work).

One day I went round for tea (aged about 9) and was served beef bourguignon with creamy garlicy green beans and a glass of watered-down red wine. My friend told me that they ate shit like that every night.

On the way home, I vomited in the foot well of the dad's car. He was livid and when he dropped me off he actually suggested to my mum that I or her should clean it up

I was jealous that we were allowed to choose paint and actually decorate my 13 year old friends bedroom, ourselves. We thought we'd done a good job

I had another friend that we were never allowed into her house. I remember knocking for her and being told they were having their tea so would need to come back later. I had walked a long way to get there in pre mobile phone days, so hanging around for an hour in cold rain wasn't much fun. In our house in the same situation, the friend would be invited in to wait, albeit would be put in a different room with the tv on for company.

I went to school with the daughter of a famous 'hell-raising' musician of the 1970's. Her house was just fantastic. Full of memorabilia and art. Their living room was split down the middle with one half painted in her mum's choice and the other in her dad's. There was a cupboard with calendars from each year signed by all the Beatles. The garden had ornaments and sculptures that her Dad had done. It was amazing and so much more interesting than our boring magnolia home!

I just remembered that I had a friend whose house I went to.
House was massive and family clearly not short of money, but was a fucking tip, piles of stuff everywhere. Dirty washing dumped on the living room floor, shitty nappies on the kitchen counters etc.
Upstairs separate toilet was missing some floorboards, but her dad had laid down a plank of wood like a gymnastics balance beam to make a route across where there was a hole. (door was also missing). I just held onto my wee until I got home later. God knows how they bathed, as there were bags of stuff in the bath (and also no door) but friend never smelt and her parents both looked clean too.
Not so much weird as just dirty, but friend obviously found it normal, although her room was very tidy and clean with expensive furniture etc!

Back in the early 1960s when I was at my first school - a strange little private establishment - I had a very jolly friend who lived in the same town as me. She'd been to tea at my (at the time fairly conventional, rather suburban 3-bedroomed) house and eventually, I was invited to hers. Her family lived in a huge Gothic style Victorian house set in large gardens which mainly consisted of fairly oppressive and very dark green shrubbery. The outside didn't really prepare you for the complete and utter tip that was inside and I'd never, ever, seen dirt quite like it, let alone the general state of collapse of both structure and contents. My friend and her brother and sister had complete free run of it though and we could slide up and down the (almost certainly unsafe) bannisters, and do pretty much as we wanted. I never saw her mother who was 'unwell' and lived in her own part of the house but her father was very nice and clearly loved his family although as he was a local solicitor, was out at work most of the time. Apparently 'someone' came in to do basic cooking and housework. Not that there was any sign of this!

On my first visit, having run about the house like wild things for an hour or so, my friend suggested we got a snack to keep us going until teatime. So we went into the dirtiest kitchen imaginable - I'd never realised that you could turn a cooker literally black! - she grabbed two dirty glasses and filled them with cold water and then invited me to help myself to as many biscuits as I wanted. From a large and clearly marked sack of Spiller's Dog Biscuits.

I remember going to a friend’s house after school when I was about ten and her parents were scarily strict. We were watching Blue Peter in the sitting room when her dad came in and went mad that we were watching television. He turned it off, disappeared for about five minutes and came back with a piece of paper which said: “This fries children’s brains!” and he stuck it to the screen with sellotape. Absolutely batshit.

RIP Franco stinkycatbreath

Hmm...I'm afraid we were definitely the weird ones in my school friends' eyes. Saying grace (always painful when 'outsiders' were round, I can feel myself going hot in the face at the memory), exceedingly religious texts and calendars up on the walls, no TV, not able to play on Sundays...or indeed mix much at all with aforementioned outsiders; I was never allowed to go for sleepovers to friends who weren't in the same religious group as us. This was in the early 00's

I once went to a house where the girls had dozens of dolls and a beautiful dolls house but they weren't allowed to play with them which I thought was weird

Remember going round a friends house in the early 90s and her dad was obsessed with Sam Fox. Photos everywhere and I remember they had one of those mirrors with a photo of her printed on it. The mum seemed pretty embarrassed by the whole thing, even though I was too young to know she was a page 3 star. I just thought she was some naff singer.

My first boyfriend had parents who were divorced but lived in the same house. It was an awful atmosphere. His dad ran some sort of mens rights organisation but his mum was very sweet and kind. Both of them refused to move out and let the other one have the house, so they had apparently been in a stalemate for years. Boyfriend ended up being an abusive knobend too.

I went to a friends house and was only allowed to go in the “front room” as children wasn’t allowed in the living room . Even my friend 🤦‍♀️

A friend didn’t have a flushing toilet. Had to fill a bucket and pour the water into flush. They also put toilet paper into the bin next to the toilet.

No Hoover either, had to sweep the carpet with a broom.

She had to share a bed with her sisters.

She did have some toys but they were kept in boxes and packaging and all displayed around their bedroom.

The mum just sat in the living room all the time and watched telly, she just watched children’s programs.

I had a friend who wasn't allowed to even drink water with asking permission. No extra food, ever, even the apples were rationed per child and with a set time for eating.