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.

I used a telex to update colleagues abroad about a coup taking place in a country where they were working. They couldn't get any info locally.

Getting an Continental Quilt ( Duvet )
Only seeing seagulls at the seaside.
Laying in bed at night and hearing the sonic boom ( 8pm ish )
Spending hours playing on a typewriter until the ribbon had no ink left.
Pestering the phone operator, asking for Busby.
Eating out once or twice a year.

Loving the thread. I still go to people's houses who keep candles under the sink with one already in situ on a saucer.
I remember channel 4 coming out and it getting a mention on Adrian Mole. Toilet roll that did nothing for number 2's.
Vhs videos being sold years after cinema release and being really expensive ET costing £40+ to buy.
Video nasties at your local independent video store.
Porn mags in bushes.
My mum using loads of expensive vhs tapes to record the thorn birds.
Keep em going I love this x

Billy Bluehat
Roger Redhat
Jennifer Yellowhat books instead of the Magic Key Kipper books every DC seem to read now.

Also loved the Richard Scary books with Miss Honey and Lowly worm.

£1 notes and half pennies.

Twin tubs and spinners with that funny rubber flat round thing you put on top of the wet washing - our job to place on top when helping DM.

Listening Corner on the radio which came after Listen with Mother stopped I think.

Really thin mattresses on our metal bunk beds that my Dsis would push up from underneath to try and toss me out. Flannelette sheets in winter - so cosy.

Libraries where you had to quiet as a mouse not now where the kids scream and whizz around and disturb while mothers look on indulgently.

Nativity plays every Christmas without fail not just a Winter Show. Religious hymns and prayers at school with no one batting an eyelid in a totally non religious school.

Fablon stuck up behind the sink to act as a splash back instead of tiles.

Covering text books at school with wrapping paper.

Having to put money in Mum's 'telephone piggy bank' before making a call.

Porn mags in bushes .... I remember that too. What was that all about? Why did it become a thing?

Having the most glorious summer in 76 rounding up friends and going in and out of each others paddling pools to keep cool.

Nylon sheets and duvet covers that slid off the bed.

Sheer excitement of getting a colour tv and waving bye to the B&W one.

The introduction of new money.

Being able to sit on the stones at Stonehenge.

The coalman delivering in to the coal bunker.

Gypsies selling homemade pegs door to door.

Every Sainsbury's being a delicatessen, with marble floors and marble counters, where you were served by women wearing starched uniforms and white hats.

Filling in the sticky labels for the side of the video cassette so you knew what was on it.
Stamp collecting

Also the twice yearly chimney sweep

Outdoor toilet, frost on the inside of the bedroom windows and not being to warm up for ages until the coal fire was coaxed back into life!

Watching the moon landings at school. School milk. No seatbelts in cars. Trolley buses.

Lol I'm not as old as some of you but....

BT phone card? Where you had to dial a really long number followed by a pin to use a call box and it would charge to your home phone bill?

Top of the milk? Why doesn't milk do that now?

I remember south London going from 081 to 0181 and then 0208. On the phone front, remember people answering the phone with a five or six digit number? My Granny used to answer 'Basingstoke 65423' or similar.

Floppy discs, I remember the first type we had were huge, then we moved ont

Arguing with Tory adults who thought that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist and there was nothing really wrong with apartheid. Being told I would understand when I was their age.

In my first job, I worked in a room of electric typewriters on big heavy dark brown wooden desks. Every secretary had a favourite mug and an ash tray. I was the office junior and I was responsible for "doing the post" (finding each file that related to the enormous pile of letters that came in on paper every morning); filing; and running errands. It was a hugely physical job - the filing cabinets were stuffed full and often jammed and the piles of heavy files loomed in great heaps everywhere. Being sent with a message to another office was a little break from the smoke and the files, you could skip along outdoors between the Georgian buildings. When you got back someone would ask you to make the tea and you would have to wash all the cups up in the tiny galley kitchen; if you filled the sink with soapy water before you got all the cups together, you would have to tip someone's milky tea-leafy dregs out of the window and someone in the office over the street by their window would glare at you.

Downstairs there was a special room which contained a new machine: the fax. It was hardly ever used, as no one else had one.

Labour actually being a party of socialists (although admittedly Corbyn is a step back in the right direction).

Oh, and as a PP mentioned: people being allowed to smoke at their desks at work.

I also remember that argument, YearCorvid, or rather being fed that line by a family friend. I also remember watching live news coverage waiting to see Mandela walk out of prison. Quite a moment.

porn mags in bushes I think it was boys nicking their dads Razzle or Jugs and having a five knuckle in the bushes before anyone saw.

I remember the rag and bone man, half penny sweets and school dinners being 8 pence.

Using cassette tapes to run computer programs.

Teachers smoking in the staffroom.

Going in the NAAFI for a 10p mix and it lasting all week.

Saturday night telly being actually good.

Flash cubes on cameras.

Amstrad computers, BBC microcomputers, telex machines, computer punch cards

@AndItStillSaidFourOfTwo
Yep, our LL wants to sell up, but his asking prize is crazy even for this area (3 viewings in 2 years). We try to stay till both kids are grown.
And we've been here when it was called a slum on TV.

Oh and I've got my own piece of the wall - I'remember the night when everybody who ever got permission to drive a bus or an underground train was asked to report to work immedeately as lines had to be reopened.

Oh I have a piece of the Wall too.

Not acquired by my own fair hands or a friend's (though a friend did go and bring back a chunk).

Mine came in the corner of a CD of the Bernstein concert at the Wall in Dec 1989, when they changed the words of Beethoven's Ninth to "Friede, schöner Götterfunken..." I listened to the concert live on the radio.

And just a few months later, South Africa announced that Nelson Mandela would be released. I can remember exactly where I was when I heard that on the radio.

"Having to put money in Mum's 'telephone piggy bank' before making a call."

I knew a family had a Payphone in the house! Mind you 4 chatterbox teens I'm not sure I blame them. Phone bills were more expensive (relatively speaking) then. Now local calls are usually included in package so you're not worrying what the bills going to be with it being difficult to estimate.

"Having the most glorious summer in 76" not glorious for everyone I got very badly sunburnt in that!

"Filling in the sticky labels for the side of the video cassette so you knew what was on it." Not only that we each had our own cassettes (used to get them as stocking fillers) woe betide you taped over mum or dads favourite show or footie match!

"I remember south London going from 081 to 0181" you are but a whippersnapper! I'd left school before it even became 071/081.

"Going in the NAAFI for a 10p mix and it lasting all week." NAAFI being "civilianised" was a huge mistake in my opinion. Civilians can't possibly understand the needs of the military and how important the NAAFI was.