What can you remember that makes you seem ancient?

[CormoranStrike]

I remember us getting our very first colour TV.

I can remember a rag and bone man coming up my granny’s street - can’t remember if it was a horse drawn trailer or not.

Granny had an Anderson shelter.

I remember not having to wear seatbelts.

When everyone used to smoke at work and in pubs.

We still have a rag and bone man.

I remember frost on the inside of my bedroom window.

Mom tucking my blankets in so tight, that I'd wake up in the position she put me to bed in.

Saturday was clothes washing day and my mom stood over that twin tub for hours.

I was the remote control of the house, as the youngest, if 1 of the 3 channels needing changing, as I sat on the floor, I'd scoot over to change it.

The whole family sat in the living room at night, talking, watching the TV together - we are a scattered society now. Most rooms are warm, most rooms have tv's/devices/the internet and I think that'll be to our detriment.

The bakery van
Returning pop bottles
Computers six feet tall with cartridges
Telexes
Cassettes for computers
Banda machines
Gestetner machines
Dial phones
Tv with a channel dial
8 inch TVs
Switchboard with cables
Manual choke cars
Two channels on tv
Cardboard library tickets
Microwaves being invented but needed two people to carry them
Petrol stations where they filled your car for you
School inspectors that wore uniforms with black peaked caps
When it was unacceptable to be gay
When parents could smack their children
Strikes in the 70s and queuing for bread
Power cuts

First colour tv. 3 channels on tv (and even when channel 4 started, we had another decade to go before we got it as our rural area had very poor reception).

No duvets - sheets and blankets.

Twin tub washer.

No central heating.

I also remember sitting cross legged on my infant class's floor being told that if Margaret Thatcher won the election we'd have the first female Prime Minister.

Getting our 1st colour tv

Cassette players - and taping the top 40 in a Sunday night

My dad’s Cortina car - no seatbelts

The rag and bone man - horse and cart

The pop man

Glass pop bottles- returned for money

Chopper bikes

Multi- coloured swap shop

Teachers smoking in school

First video recorder

First microwave

First mobile phone 📱

I remember when recycling was a given. Milk man leaving bottles of milk that you gave him back empty. Pop bottles from the pop can you got 2p back in when you took them back to the shop. (I remember giving bottles in and he would store them round the back of the shop, so we used to go round the back and get more to take in to him!!!) You burned all the newspapers/letters etc to start your fire in the morning. Taking your tub to the fish man butcher to fill with fish/meat. The only bag you got at the veg shop was paper and you took your trolleys home with your shopping in unloaded, then mum sent me back to the Mace with it.

I remember my sister and I going up to London and queueing for ages to get a good position for the silver jubilee in 1977. We were teenagers at the time.

I remember my dad getting our first colour tv.
Floppy discs and our first computer Commodore 64
Party line telephones
No mobiles
Glass milk bottles delivered daily.
Rag and bone man

Our first TV was black and white with a dial to find the channel.
Everything from radio rentals as stuff was "expensive".
We had to have a special box fitted to get the internet, something to do with a rubbish phone line. My dad policed the modem like the crown jewels. I can remember to n layer years him witteing at me that I was costing "A penny a minute!" to do some homework research. I handed him a pound coin. He then changed the software so it would boot you off after half an hour, regardless.
Our first mobile phone was powered by six AA batteries.
Cassette tapes.
Vinyl.
Regularly paying by cheque and using those swipe machines that would mangle everything if you loaded it wrong!
Leaded petrol and the campaigns to get rid of it.
Did anyone elses parents have burglar paranoia? I can remember every holiday we took we put anything of value in the loft due to burglars. My mum went on about it so much I used to assume we'd be burgled every holiday, though we never were.
It's switched to hackers now. Ironically that might be more likely.

The Greenshields Stamp shop - my parents nearly smoked themselves silly so they could get enough stamps to get me some roller skates.

Saving the collectible cards that came out of the tea boxes.

Someone upthread asked who still uses floppy disks.
In 2016 the US military still did:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36385839
Not sure if their systems have been upgraded, but doubt it.

Cormoran strike - yes all the ones you said. I still cannot get over snooker being in black and white! Describing the ball colours! Mum and Dad 9oved to watch it. It must have been great when they finally got a colour tv!

I remember describing my favourite film to my Godson - Eraserhead. I said of course it was in black and white. He was shocked! Why would I watch a black and white film??!!

@Cornishclio - old sod here. We have now gone back to glass milk bottle deliveries by the milkman. The sound is so evocative of my childhood.

Mine are all technology based. My dad loved a bit of technology.

Having a black and white TV

Not being able to get Channel 5 because the French wouldn’t allow a transmitter, so we were in a black spot

Getting a CD player when they were new and no one else had one yet

Betamax!

Having the internet before anyone else, and having read literally all of it because it was so small!

Computers without a mouse (ZX spectrum anyone?)

Getting a microwave before anyone had one

My friend’s dad having a car phone (hello 1987!)

Tokens in the coop that you saved to get some glasses or a bath towel.

Someone mentioned fax machines earlier. We still use them in the NHS!

I'm 58. In no particular order, farthing chews, the moon landings, modems, fax machines, big hair, a sugar shortage linked to something going on Cyprus in the 70s, smoking everywhere, cars that wouldn't start (fuel injection has cured that), front number plates on motorbikes, milk in bottles with tge cream at the top, socialism not being a dirty word, Tories not being actual emissaries of Satan, Liberals not being a laughing stock, Jimmy Carter, open racism from authority figures etc etc etc.

Bus conductors called clippies
A paraffin lamp for the power cuts
Bread shortage
Derry boots and duffle coats in the winter
Bath cubes
Imperial Leather soap
@Graphista I remember Cremona foam and the Minister's sermon at the end of the night!

TV that would never be allowed now:

Love Thy Neighbour, Benny Hill, etc.

@ohtheroses - I remember my Nan calling a posh outfit a costume! As a kid I always expected her to appear dressed as Yogi bear or something. Was quite disappointed with the slacks and sparkly cardi reality.

At my sixth form college, students were allowed to smoke. The common room had a permanent blue fug under the ceiling. Seems astonishing now.

Also I remember my manager having a topless women calender and this was in 1988

Gosh ProYaffle that reminds me when I was a little girl and the GP had an ashtray on his desk with butts in. And there werent appointments. The lady at reception put you down for a dr and gave you a coloured disk with a number on. The last patient out hung their number on a hook and the person with the next number went in. It worked well.

Colour TV
The VHS / Beta debate
The first space shuttle
Charles and Diana's wedding
Iran/Contras scandal
Like a Virgin
Spectrum and BASIC
Proper floppy disks

As a child I was a pro at recording onto vhs tapes and recording cassettes so as not to cut off the any of the previous recordings and make sure no blank tape was wasted. Since vhs recorders have become obsolete I have no idea and never tried to record anything from the tv now. I can’t even imagine how it works or if my tv could do it.

Super 8 camera

Getting milk at dawn from a local seller straight from the cows. We took a metal cannister and then had to boil it.

No seat belts at the back.

Computer games loaded up by tape.

Recording songs on tape from the radio.

Where I live we still have some petrol stations where we ask the employee to fill the tank.

Also: my personal email account by itself makes me look ancient. At least to IT people.

The standpipe in 1976
TV only being on for a couple of hours during the day then the test card
Ceefax
The beginning of the Internet/WWW
email
VHS (and Betamax!)