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.

How long before people are saying the old style car reg plates on these threads? Then I'll feel very old.

Do you mean:- the silver letters & numbers on a black background? or that the first 3? letters indicated when the vehicle was from?

Answering the phone as: Pimlico 2345 or Folkestone 9567 etc

My friend couldn't get hold of me on the telephone, so he sent me a telegram.

Going on a trip as a whole family and there being so many more people than seats in the car. We had to sit in the boot (it was an estate car), the passenger footwells and on the laps of the adults.

Piles of coal in the streets after the delivery had arrived but before prope had shovelled them into their coal cellars and being told off for climbing up them.

Taking the empty pop bottles back to the shop and getting 10p (or some money off the next bottle).

3/4 pt glass bottles of warm milk with a foil lid and a little straw at school. Drinking the cream at the top but not much else.

The nit nurse at school.

A top loading video player that was massive. It was old and buggered and you had to bash it to get it to do anything.

England winning the World Cup.
Pre-decimal currency.
Friends at school still having outside loos (we were in top floor flat so our was inside!)
President Kennedy being shot (I was in my aunt's kitchen when I heard of it).

Oh, I also used to love my CB radio.

@TheRealJoseph I mean the single letter which told you the tea. I had a w reg which I think was one of the last few, from 2000 I think

Year, not tea

Watching Winston Churchill's funeral on my auntie's black and white TV.
Most stuff on this thread, except for a couple of posters older than me.

Fruit salads and black jacks were 4 for 1d when I was a child.

Fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.
Bin men going to the back garden to collect your bin, emptying it and putting it back.

Colour tv dial up internet pre area codes no central heating which caused ice on the inside of the window frozen washing up liquid and a paraffin heater in the bathroom (which was orange)

Lift attendants, on stools.

Going to the video shop to rent a film.

VHS video recorders and videos.

Spending Saturday afternoons in Town listening to the latest albums in Our Price.

Saving up to buy albums on vinyl and later cassette tapes.

Taping the top 40

Making and receiving mix tapes for/ from friends and boyfriends.

Just Seventeen, Jackie, My Guy, Smash Hits and Look In magazines.

Phone cards and pagers

Typing lessons at school.

One BBC computer for whole class on a trolley.

Shaders and toners

Sun in

Salon selectives

Body shop fuzzy peach and dewberrry ranges.

Impulse (dominique? Was my favourite fragrance)

Slogan bags from body shop

Head rucksacks worn with one strap.

Wallabee shoes and boat shoes stuffed with rolled up socks unlaced

The pop man delivering

Live aid

Mo jos, fruit salads and buying a lot of other unhealthy food from.the tuck.shop at school.

Saying to DH "can you tape it?" When I want something recorded on sky box.

Pale (ripped ) jeans/501s

Curtain hairstyles on boys

Kylie perms and scrunched hair

Huge tins of quality street at Xmas

Minnie mouse phone

Answering land line with Town followed by number

Sitting in hall trying to have conversations on phone without parents listening in

Shops shutting on.Sundays

Shops shutting for a few days over Christmas

Banda machines (the smell!!), pound notes, Humphreys from the milkman, The Brady Bunch, spacedust, pixie boots, face and hair glitter.....

Coal bunkers.

Four gallons of four star, £4.80

Being told I had a new little brother. It was 1956, and I was 3.

My first car was a T Reg Fiat 127. 1978! Then I had an E reg, an H reg, then I had a baby and grew up.

Bounty and Mars bars came in a little black cardboard tray with waxed paper round them. Also remember great excitement about the first cash point in a nearby town!

Prince Charles Investiture and Moon Landing
Party line
Manual typewriters
Slide rules
Propelling pencils
Phones with dials on a special telephone table in the hall
Wooden TV cabinets

We had an outside toilet at the house share I had in uni- in 1996! We still have an outside toilet. I love it, spiders and all.

I remember when Britain became part of Europe.

Doing "Bob a Job" for Brownies. (A bob was a shilling - equal to 5p). You knocked on doors and asked if you could do a domestic or garden task for them, and they paid you a shilling for Brownie funds. I remember going into the house of a middle-aged man I didn't know, and polishing his cutlery while he sat and watched silently. It didn't feel weird at the time, but I can see why it's been dropped from fundraising

Old lady neighbour washing by hand and mangling afterwards

Milk delivered on a horse drawn cart

Neighbours with no running water having to go out to a public tap

Our house with outside toilet and bath under the kitchen table

No double glazing, central heating, fridge, TV, or phone

The post office dial a disc service - you dialled 16 and there would be a current hit song playing on a loop.

Answering the phone as: Pimlico 2345 or Folkestone 9567 etc

My parents still do this and my dad projects his voice as if trying to be heard a mile away!

Being allowed to stay up for the opening credits of Blake's Seven but then having to go to bed.

Clashes between striking miners and the police, on TV

Pantries whose shelves were lined with psychedelic wallpaper

Coal fires, and hiding in the big concrete coal bunker while witches flew overhead. (This may have been a dream, but I did play in the coal bunker a lot.)

My Raleigh Bianca bike with stabilisers, and my Dad's Ford Capri. We travelled in style back then!

Oil of Ulay (not Olay) in glass bottles. Vick's came in glass jars as well, it was so pretty I didn't mind having it rubbed on my throat in a freezing bathroom.

I had an old inflatable plastic golliwog named Hooligan. Apparently when my aunt had got him new as a child there had been a moral panic about "black hooligans" and the phrase had been bandied about a lot in the media, hence the name. By the time I was given him this was definitely not OK but the name stuck. I don't know what happened to him but probably my parents quietly binned him once retro racism stopped being regarded as amusing. I suppose this is for the best.