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

No water with meals. Must've been our house! Dad had ideas that it was not good for digestion to drink and eat almost at the same time. Decades later it's rare for me to have a drink at meal times - wine's an exception of course!

He explained that his dad worked late every night hence he was not home. I thought his dad was having an affair with his secretary, just like the characters on Dallas the soap opera. I had a friend whose dad was always in the office very late for years 'writing a book' that never seemed to materialise. My mum and I speculated that there was no book.

bathtub in the servants' quarters in my schoolfriend's apartment was full of tropical fish.

The servants had a bathtub?

Oh and he wouldn’t let his daughter use deodorant. She pointed out to him that I had deodorant in my wash bag, and he said he was against it as some people put it between their legs ( again) .
I was very embarrassed.

One of my primary school friends parents used to padlock the tv away in a cupboard and it was only unpadlocked for an hour a day. At first I thought it was really weird and had never know anyone else do it but actually, they just encouraged us to go outside and play on the farm instead which in hindsight was much more fun that being sat around and watching tv all day.

I went to my friends house for a sleepover ( or staying the night as it used to be in the 70s) .
The house was big but not very homely. In the kitchen window there were some of her mums pants hung up on a tiny line.
The next time I went there was a different selection of pants. I mentioned it, because I realised there was no other washing , just these pants like bunting at the window.
My friend said her dad hung them up when he was annoyed with her mum to shame her.
He was the head master of a big local comprehensive.

My friend from primary school’s dad was a poacher. Always had dead things hanging up in their garden/shed. He once gifted me the skin of a deer he’d shot. I hung it up on the wall of my play house 😬

I’ve just remembered another one. Not so much weird, but funny.

One day I was round at my sister’s ex bf’s house early in the morning. The dad, who was not a very nice man, kind of waddled down the stairs doing a strange walk. I asked sister’s bf what was up with his dad, who could normally walk fine. ‘Oh, he’s just chewing his tablets’ he said. I was like wtf? BF then took me into the upstairs bathroom and showed me these enormous suppositories.

The bathtub in the servants' quarters in my schoolfriend's apartment was full of tropical fish.

Lidded tins - sorry

My dad took me to a big house where he had some business with the owner, a man living alone with staff.

We were shown into the drawing room where there were about 20 big lifdded time of all shapes and sizes on the floor. A fat elderly Labrador sat beside them.

The housekeeper made tea and the owner of the house came in. ‘Are you behaving, Sir!’ he snapped at the dog who sat to attention.

After greeting us, he opened all the tins and in each was a different delicacy - a loaded fruit cake or some delicate madeleines. I remember cherry bakewells and a fat chocolate cake. Everything was home made. He served us slices of our choices, all the time eyeballing the dog who was literally salivating but not moving a muscle. When he had finished showing up what was on offer and serving us our cake, he put the lids back on the time and commanded (to the dog) ‘At ease, Sir!’

The dog relaxed and fell asleep, looking understandably resentful.

For some reason, I’ve never forgotten that!

a bidet - I had never seen one before. Same family had a pot of caviar proudly displayed on the mantelpiece.

A friend wasn’t allowed to watch “The Thorn-birds” or “The Borgias” on the telly as it was “Catholic rubbish”

Lying on the lawn were some remains of a groundhog.
Guess what was for dinner!

I had a friend when we were in late Primary/early secondary who’s parents owned a B&B. I used to stay over regularly and would spend the evenings and weekend days cleaning guests rooms. Changing beds, cleaning toilets, everything. It was gross. She had to clean before she was allowed to go out.

I’m all for a strong work ethic and didn’t question it at the time but now it strikes me as a bit odd tbh.

@Mrshue 😮😮😮😮😮

Being given the option of cold or hot baked beans.What sort of monster eats them cold?!

My Grandad lifting me up to see the sheep's head ( and brain) "put to steep" overnight in the sink in a relative's kitchen. Being about 4, I was very impressed ( and disgusted) at it being told it was for their meal.

Going to a friend's house for Sunday tea, aged 10, and being given a lovely salad with boiled ham to eat. Rendered inedible by them pouring sugar over the lettuce. Apparently, they always ate it that way and could not believe I had never tried it.

Not weird but unusual. When I was about 6 or 7 I went to a friends very posh house in St Johns Wood. I had never seen anything like it before, I was most taken with the spiral staircase and cuckoo clock. The most unusual was the basement bedroom, It was fully carpeted, walls, ceiling and floor, it could have been a set for Austin Powers and they had a sunken bath. Mind blown

Not me but DS who was invited home by a school friend who, it turned out, lived above a massage parlour.

DS was none the wiser. He thought it was a hairdressers because there were wigs hanging everywhere

When I was about 10 my friend's father took us to get pick up a mcdonalds. We went back to their house after to eat it.

I still remember walking up the drive and into the porch to be met by friend's mother stood blocking the door with the father's mobile in her hand. She read a text to the DF (stood behind me) which said "just drove by your road. Decided not to venture down. Can't wait to see you Xxx". They had this long and very tense back and forth about who this text was from. I was stood awkwardly in between them drinking a mcdonalds chocolate milkshake. I STILL remember the excruciating embarrassment and not knowing where to look as the mum got teary and that dad looked guilty! So cringe.

I knew someone who when it was her birthday, her family had a funny ritual for her presents: she had to find them in the room, on her hands and knees, while she was blindfolded. Some of them would not be wrapped, so she could feel them and guess what they were. She would only be allowed to see when she had found them all.

At first, I thought this was weird, but I learned it was the girl's own idea, because a couple of years before, her parents had gone all out to surprise her with her "big" birthday present, which was a playhouse in the garden, a "Wendy house" in those days. For that, her parents blindfolded her, took her on a short car journey (back to their house), led her inside the Wendy house, and closed the door and the shutters over the windows, before telling her to look, so that she would make the gradual discovery that the house was for her, and it was in her garden! For a few years after that, simply unwrapping presents wasn't exciting enough for her, and she loved blindfolded surprises! She also liked the Easter bunny to visit and leave the eggs while she was out in the garden, with her eyes covered.

I remember my older sister baby sitting for someone in my class and being totally freaked out that all their tinned goods were alphabetised and only the father was allowed to remove or add a tin in case someone got it wrong. He also had a large array of riding crops and no horse...

A new girl joined our class when I was about 10. I got friendly with her and one evening after school, I went round to her house to play. I had the distinct feeling that her mother didn’t want me there, and the girl took me out of the house and in to the shed. She gave me a sort of guided tour and opened a wooden box filled with all sorts of junk and told me to help myself to whatever took my fancy. Now I’m a bit of a magpie, so I took a piece of broken costume jewellery. A couple of weeks later, the family disappeared and (eventually) my mum told me that they had broken into the house while the owners were away and were squatters! I felt guilty about that jewellery for years!

Stabilos

The thing is, when I did get to see at other people's houses, I found it all very confusing, there didn't seem to be a consistent format so I had to pretend to understand it. At least with Noel there was order and continuity. I think my problem was that it was the programme the cool kids watched, and I massively resented being corralled into non-coolness.