Things that make me realise I'm actually ancient (lighthearted)

[lightlypoached]

I don't consider myself 'old' but a few things popped into my insomniac mind that made me think, 'blimey I've been around a while, and probably longer than I realise' (like saying 'blimey' for starters!). Others include :

• Saturday job at WH Smith where I sold red wax sticks for sealing documents, car in paper, and typewriters. We used one of those slidey machine things with 3-layer paper receipts for the very rare credit card transactions.
• I learned how to use a slide rule at school for my maths O level
• when I carried on working after getting married at 24, was called 'a career girl' (mind you that was old fashioned even then I think)
• taking delivery of a PC at work and saying 'yes, it's very nice , but what exactly is it for?'
• having paper rail and bus tickets, and travelling on bushes with a bus conductor (who had a fascinating ticket machine and a leather pouch for all the money.

(I'm 55 with teenaged kids).

What are yours?

My friend still is a coal delivery man.

@HyggaeHugger Are Kickers old-fashioned? They seem very popular with primary and secondary school pupils nowadays, or did you mean wearing them as casual wear? (I like them, I wear my Kickers boots with pride.)

I'm not old enough to remember this, but lifts with attendants? "This lift is constructed for eight persons."

@HyggaeHugger I think we must be similar ages.

[quote BonnesVacances]@HyggaeHugger I think we must be similar ages. [/quote]
Born early 80s

[quote letsgomaths]@HyggaeHugger Are Kickers old-fashioned? They seem very popular with primary and secondary school pupils nowadays, or did you mean wearing them as casual wear? (I like them, I wear my Kickers boots with pride.)

I'm not old enough to remember this, but lifts with attendants? "This lift is constructed for eight persons."[/quote]
No, in the mid and late 90s kickers were the height of fashion for teenagers and young women

I didn't know they'd come back in for young children

I'm 43. I remember half pence sweets, 10p mixes, Dr Whites sanitary belts 😳, the pop man and the video man coming down the street in their vans and power cuts that lasted for days when it snowed!

I read on Facebook recently something like :

1990 is now as close to us as 2050 will be.

Scary thought.

The Spot the ball man calling round.
Everyone smoking on the plane/ top of the bus.
Everyone getting a meal on the plane - not a clue what it was until you unwrapped it but it was in with the price of the ticket.
My grandma calling the house phone and having to go when 'the pips' went.
Rumbelows - renting a new telly.
School milk for all and the nit nurse.
Thinking a video recorder and MTV were thè hippest things ever.
One pound notes and half P' s.
Trying to work a fax machine.
Filofaxes.
Three wheel Robin reliant cars.
Those little blue disability cars that only held one person.

"London was dirty" - oh yes, I remember St Paul's was black, amazing when they cleaned it.

One of the jarring things in the post-war London Foyle's War; all so clean, no bomb sites, railings intact, etc.

Always travelling in the last carriage on the tube because that one was non-smoking.

@WellTidy

Coal being delivered by the coal man (Peter the Coal). I think there was a free allocation to miners. I am 45.

There was. We got it and luckily we had a cellar to store it in as it was more than we needed to heat the house and it lasted for years after my dad stopped working as a miner.

And of course it was all the coal fires and coal-fired power stations that partly made London's and other cities' building so dirty. Oh and petrol pollution of course. And affected the lungs of many who had to mine it or live with it. My Dad had emphysemea (sp?) when he was older and it probably hastened his death as I know it did so many others. That and the cigarrette smoking though he had given up in his '50s but places like rented flats and offices used to be yellow with the tar from the smoke. You were considered weird to show you did not like it or were concerned until the 1980s although the risks were known about earlier.

It is so weird to watch old films where it is taken as a god-given right to smoke anywhere and everywhere. I enjoy old runs of Colombo but he does now seem outrageously rude smoking his stinking cigars in peoples' homes or offices. He never even asks for permission! Also doctors smoking in hospitals and pilots on planes.

I just remembered another. Those 52 part magazines that all started in January.

Build your own boat week by week
Collect all 52 characters from something or other
Knit a weird bag with free knitting needles in the first issue

The first issues were always really cheap but if you did the whole thing it was hideously expensive !

Also all of the holiday adverts starting on telly between Xmas and hew year.
And people queuing for the new tear sales.

Also doctors smoking in hospitals and pilots on planes.

My father was a GP and smoked like a chimney. He had an ashtray on his desk in the surgery (and probably a bottle of whisky in one of the drawers!).

Button A and button B

Chips being 6d a portion

Give way markings appearing on all the cross roads due to harmonisation of road signs prior to joining the EU.

Bus fares for 1 1/2d

Getting my first pair of seamed stockings at 11 to wear for church

My mother having to join a special club to get cheap flights as charter flights didn't exist - 1964

1/4lb boxes of Milk Tray being 10p or 2 shillings and buying them for Christmas presents

Barker and Dobsons dragees being 1/9 a quarter when ordinary sweets were 6d and wrapped ones like chocolate eclairs were 1/-

STD - subscriber trunk dialling coming in when I was 15, before that you used to have to ask the operator for 'trunks' to make a long distance call

Tucking in the flap on Christmas cards so that they went by cheaper post 2 1/2d, instead of 3d.

Fruit salad and blackjacks being 4 for 1d as were aniseed balls.

Later, smoking under age at 15 being able to buy 20 sovereign for 19p, B&H were 34 p

House orderly badge in Brownies - having to lay and light a fire using less than 2 matches. I could do this at 7.

Massive porcelain fuses, and being shown how to replace the fuse wire in the 'ordinary" ones.

Having to put a special disc on an ICL mainframe to do a sort!

Punchcards and paper tape - the cards were either 40 columns or Burroughs had ones that were little square ones with 3 rows and 96 columns.

Cars that didn't have seatbelts in them

Cars with only 3 speeds and a starter button

Being given half a crown as a treat

10 shilling notes being given as substantial Christmas presents

Martin's Bank

Being able to use benzene in the open lab before polys became subject to the Health and Safety laws

Not that old, just a really good memory