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

we still have a scrap iron man in our area. He drives a pick up now and shouts anyOldIron as he drives up and down the streets
I saw a scrap iron man recently. He had a loudspeaker on top of the cab and played the song 'Any old iron' via an iPhone.

I used to get dressed in bed too (late 60s) because of the icy cold bedroom. If my Dad found out I'd get told off because I couldn't have washed properly, the bathroom was freezing, though, and obviously there was no shower. My parents got central heating put in when I was 17 although, inexplicably, they didn't get a radiator put in the bathroom so it was still freezing. I left home at 18 so didn't get long to appreciate the rest of the house being warmer.

My friend and her sisters were not allowed to watch anything on ITV - only BBC

My grandparents had the coal shed and chamber pots grandad used at night despite having an indoor toilet. I even remember grandma using a mangle for years. When not in use, it was a side table in the kitchen.

Their kitchen drawers contained old paper bags and old string they kept. This was used to tie round the puddings they streamed and for wrapping food. No cling film in those days. The steamed puddings were delicious.

They drank the green water from the cooked vegetables in a mug as their first course along with the Yorkshire pudding. Then they'd eat the
rest of their meat and veg. They were from oop north.

Grandma never wore a pair of trousers in her life. We bought her a pair circa 1990 but it "felt wrong".

Amazing what memories this thread has brought up.

Many moons ago a butcher would call on my grans street weekly in his small van. He would open up the back of the van and proudly show this weeks special offers, all uncovered, just piled up on plates or dishes; sausages, eggs cooked tongue, heart and all sorts of other delicacies. Whatever u fancied was chucked on the scales then wrapped in a piece of greaseproof paper. Wouldn't be allowed these days, environmental elf n all that.

Think the threads fulll big once I was at my cousins and I used the nail brush after we’d played in the garden.

She said “that’s my dads hair brush”

You look look sweet
Talk about a treat
You look dapper from your napper to your feet

That one? I imagine it in a London accent.

I used to sing a song about ‘any old iron’ as a kid, but I was born in the 90s? I think my Irish gran taught it me.

Round here we have a scrap man actually who shouts ‘scrap metaaaallll’ from his window as he drives slowly up and down.

I wonder if we will return to the Any-Old-Iron man, the horse drawn milkman with glass bottles, the rag and bone man, etc. When I think back to my 60s childhood it was so much more environmentally friendly.

Fabulous that you still have the "any old iron" man!

Steppemum

"I went to university in 1985" you had no heating at uni in 1985. Two of my DC arrived at university halls, Russell group, proper institutions, in 2001 and 2007 respectively, to find completely unheated halls. One was south west and the other in Yorkshire! We had to buy convector heaters for their rooms. Both halls have since been demolished. They were deliriously happy with their grotty accommodation of course!

MAFIL
"I used to lie my clothes out at the bottom of the bed at night, then in the morning pull them inside and get dressed under the blankets."

I used to do the same thing. I remember once sneaking into bed in my school uniform thinking I'd undress when I felt a bit warmer and then waking up fully clothed and going to school in the same garb! Eventually we got electric blankets with green shield stamps and they were life changing. Along with my transistor radio on which I would listen to the top 40 and Radio Luxembourg in my newly warm bed.

With coal chutes and rag-and-bone-men making an appearance on this thread, here is something about my own house that was "weird": the back alley, running behind all the houses in the very long Edwardian terrace. Most gardens had a gate leading into this alley, which was narrow, overgrown and rarely used by anybody, and probably enjoyed by the local cats and foxes. There were access passages to this alley between the houses at various points in the terrace, from my road and the adjacent road, but I never saw these being used, ever.

As a teenager I climbed over the gate from our garden (it was padlocked, but nobody knew where the keys were), and walked down this alley as far as I could, before the undergrowth became impassable. I did it regularly one summer, until some neighbours told me off for "invading" it, saying something about it being part of their garden which I didn't understand at the time.

It felt really odd that there was this passage that everyone had access to, but nobody used; rather like the attic tunnel described in The Magician's Nephew. I spent many hours wondering what the purpose of it was once upon a time.

few on here will be old enough to remember the horse and carts which did collections from houses but I do. Rag and Bone Men they were called and you knew they were coming as you'd hear their cry "any old rags, any old rags"

we still have a scrap iron man in our area. He drives a pick up now and shouts anyOldIron as he drives up and down the streets.

When I was 15, we had a house with no/poor heating and slept with duvet with loads of blankets on top. I would jump out and put a fan hetaer on in the mornings and then jump back into bed until it was warmThere was ice on the windows in the morning.
When I went off to university, the place I rented had no heating, so we had a gas heater with a bottle of gas and I did the same in the mornings. that was common in student rents.
I went to university in 1985

My grandparents had chamber pots under their beds in the 70s and maybe even 80s. They had indoor toilets by then but used the pot at night.

I was born in 1966 and remember the rag and bone man and having coal delivered also from a wagon pulled by a horse when I was very tiny. We didn't have central heating til I was in my late teens, just an open fire and later a gas fire downstairs. And a portable parrafin heater in the bathroom. My Dad would light it on a Saturday night in winter before we kids went up for baths. I was youngest so got to go first. If I smell parrafin now it takes me right back to my childhood.
Ice inside the windows in the winter wasn't uncommon and I used to lie my clothes out at the bottom of the bed at night, then in the morning pull them inside and get dressed under the blankets. No duvet then either - sheets, a couple of wool blankets and then an eiderdown in winter. Our boiler broke down recently and we were without heating for a few days. My kids wouldn't believe me when I explained that this was absolutely normal when I was growing up!

Oh yes, I remember the coalman coming (1960s Yorkshire dales). We had a coal shute (shoot?) in the front yard covered with a metal man hole cover. It was my job to count the bags as each one was emptied down the shute. 40 bags to last the winter. My dad was paranoid that he'd be sold short, hence the counting.

I was a teenager between 18-19 so not a child per se when I visited the home of my friends boyfriend. There was a big group of us, we had been to the pub and decided to play on an Xbox or something. It was well known that friends boyfriends dad had a very senior job on the NHS and was well paid, the house was huge. Friends boyfriend opened the front door and the entire group had to climb over actual piles of mail/clothes/broken furniture/toys/ski equipment to get through the front door. The living rooms were all the same and we had to pick a pile of stuff to sit on which was precarious as they weren’t stable and three of us fell down with mounds of stuff. The kitchen was huge but the frankly impressive amount of rubbish/dirty plates/mouldy containers etc made it impossible to find even the toaster. We were all invited to sleep on the floor but every square inch was covered and piled high with belongings and rubbish so I didn’t. I was thoroughly impressed.

To those who are shocked at the use of china potties... you only have to go back to the late 70s (or beyond) when I worked on an inner urban renewal project in city areas where a large percentage of people had only outmoded toilets. Needless to say they also had no heating except an open fire or gas fire. Remember this was about 1978.

Until fairly recently, most houses were unheated and had only one lavatory, often outside, or downstairs so it was the norm for there to be china pot under each bed which was emptied in the morning. In my home in the 50s & 60s we had this arrangement, there was one loo down the corridor but when there is ice on the inside of the windows it's a long way at night! In the mid 60s we moved to a new build with rudimentary heating and a bathroom near the bedrooms and - such a luxury - a downstairs loo!

I had a new friend at school when I was around 13. The rumour was she and her family ate roadkill. So I jumped at the chance when she invited me round because I always have been a nosey cow.

Everything was disappointingly normal. She was showing me round and we went into the back garden, where there was a MASSIVE snake laying in the grass. She rolled up here sleeves, seized the snake my the tail and lassoed it round her head like a bloody cowgirl before launching it into a field over the fence she said nothing and just carried on.

She then showed me the freezer in the shed which was full of various deceased woodland creatures needless to say I didn't go back and I think the snake got off lightly ...

Pobs even !

Bread and milk is 'pons'

Wanderings
Yes we had a coal door into a shed which had an internal door into the kitchen. The house had been destroyed by a bomb in the blitz and had been rebuilt with this modcon! There was always coal dust all over the floor in that corner!

Great uncle was not from Liverpool but Bristol (another west coast port city) but I suspect it was widespread.

BInteresred
Yes my great uncle also had his bread and milk in a pudding basin I can see it now.

"The bread and milk thing...that's not that weird. Just that it was served oddly. Bread and milk was a common dish years ago. Usually the bread would be broken up into chunks though."

You're so right. My great uncle used to live with us, he was born about 1870 and never married. My mother sort of inherited him from her mother. He used to have hot milk with cubes of bread floating in it every night before bed. He smoked a pipe and had a glass eye. He was only allowed to smoke in his back bedroom where the walls were almost brown. He lived to be 99 dying in 1969!

Quite a few of the things people on here think weird are just generational. It was the norm for families to all bath once a week, usually on a Sunday, and use the water one after the other. Hot water was not freely available in many houses. We had an immersion heater which was only allowed to be put on for an hour on a Sunday evening. As a teenager (about 1970) I would sneak it on but it had a bright light and mum would say "we shall have an electricity bill a mile long". The first time I saw a shower was probably late 1970s people just didn't have them.

My parents generation (born between the wars) all used to eat sugar sandwiches and also dripping sandwiches yuk!

My kids went on french exchanges with the same farming family in northern France in the late 1990s and they were still using one plate for everything then, wiping with bread between courses. The house was filthy but Madame cooked all day and the food was fabulous. The French children in the family had a sort of Swallows and Amazon childhood which mine really enjoyed visiting.