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?

Sometimes you phoned the wrong number and got that weird fax number sound.
Also phone related - you had to use your finger in the dial and wait for it to return to be able to dial the next number . No mobiles !

Going to a travel agent to buy plane or ferry tickets. Trains having compartments on them. Houses with coal fires and no central heating.

Cigarettes called No 6 for 12p for a packet of ten, or the even cheaper No 10 for 10p.

In the 60s and 70s it was considered fairly normal for women to stop working when they had kids and maybe start a part time job when the kids started school. Many didn't and just continued to be housewives, and there was no particular stigma. It was normal then.

Oh I'd forgotten log books at school. And what they were for

Re decimilsation - I do remember the little song that went at the start of the pre6 o clock news programme to explain all about it. Can still sing it now.

People used to polish shies too. My das had a set that had 2 brushes, a duster and an ole rag with black, blur a d Brian show polish in tins. As kids we all had Clark's shoes that in the summer had cream crepe soles. When he polished the shoes it would bleed into the soles, turning them a pale blue/red/grey colour.

shoes a d dad.

We did t have autocorrect then either - just a clogged up bottle of tippex .

Processing cheque's at work just seems strange as does when I worked at photo developing place. Was so busy!

Teletext

When you realise you're older than some of the cabinet members (Rishi Sunak, Matt Hancock, probably some others).

When I was in the sixth form (just calling it that identifies me as 'old' but at least I did GCSEs not O'levels OP ), I worked in Greggs and a sausage roll was 18 p and the pasties were 32-34 p.

I gasp when they're £1-2 now (the sausage rolls were smaller then though, same length as a pastie, but about half the width, obviously).

I was trying to explain to DS that before the dawn of debit cards, you would need to queue at the cash point on a weekend to withdraw your money. That queue could often snake up the road and round the corner if you were "in town" on a Saturday afternoon.

DS has never withdrawn cash from a machine and aside from money his DGM gives him, never has any physical cash on him.

@BarbaraofSeville I love it that you so precisely recall the dimensions of a sausage roll. Bet you can't remember anything else that happened last week though

I can honestly say I remember ration books. I'm 34 and British...

(They are actually still used on British Army bases abroad for some items. Including in Germany... Coffee!)

People used to polish shies too. My das had a set that had 2 brushes, a duster and an ole rag with black, blur a d Brian show polish in tins

Do people not still do that? I still do, when I can be arsed and I feel really lazy, because it's only once or twice a year and I use one of the liquid in a bottle with a sponge applicator things, and then give it a buff but I assumed that leather shoes still need polishing every once in a while and probably a lot more often than I do mine.

I never iron though, so I'm not totally invested in old fashioned clothing maintenance.

[quote lightlypoached]@BarbaraofSeville I love it that you so precisely recall the dimensions of a sausage roll. Bet you can't remember anything else that happened last week though [/quote]
I'll have you know I can remember everything at all....... now what was I going to say?

I never go into a room and forget why am there either .

Having to carry ink around at school. We were skint and bottles were cheaper than cartridges, until you broke your bottle by slamming your bag around...

No telly. For part of my childhood we lived in a country where there was no broadcast television at all. We finally got a TV when I was about 10.

Growing up with endless parental recollections of WWII. They had me fairly late in life so I heard all about the war even though I was a 60s baby.

Queuing up for a phone at uni and having about three mins on the phone home once a week. My parents and I wrote to each other faithfully, virtually every week.

The changing pattern of manufacturing. I lived in a small town with a couple of factories and a sawmill. The sawmill's hooter you could set your watch by. Most of these industries have gone now.

Unreliable cars that used huge amounts of fuel.

That very naff cheap 7p0s Christmas wrapping paper with stagecoaches and Georgian snow scenes all over it.

Quality Street in really classy wrappers.

Witney blankets and bedspreads.

I'll stop now...

My mum collecting Green Shield stamps with her shopping, and my brother and I sitting at the dining room table with a sponge and saucer of water carefully sticking them all into the books.

I wasn't allowed to make phone calls before 6pm and hardly anyone we knew did, so the phone was always ringing after 6. Or, people would just come round and call in without any prior agreement. (Which seems like it would be shocking to most people now, and the door would not be answered 😄)
I also remember the cost of a train ticket to a couple of stops down the line was 8 pence. I'm mid fifties.

I was explaining to some graddies at work how we didn't have word processors so has to hand write things, send to the typing pool in an 'internal
Envelope', wait a few days. Get it back,mark up corrections, send it back via internal envelope, wait a few days. Then get it back and put in an external envelope and send to post room for despatch. If you were lucky an urgent thing could be out the door in 2-3 days

And you'd get typists who'd correct your spelling /grammar to something wrong and you'd have to keep pinging if back (the old version of autocorrect I suppose!)

*70s wrapping paper

@Champagneforeveryone

I was trying to explain to DS that before the dawn of debit cards, you would need to queue at the cash point on a weekend to withdraw your money. That queue could often snake up the road and round the corner if you were "in town" on a Saturday afternoon.

DS has never withdrawn cash from a machine and aside from money his DGM gives him, never has any physical cash on him.

If you had run out of money a couple of days before payday, you could pay for your supermarket shopping with a cheque, knowing that the money wouldn't be taken from your account until after you'd got paid.

There was a time when most people paid by cash or cheque, and people got tutted at for wanting to pay by card, especially for small amounts, maybe because they had to haul out the slidey thing. Most small shops, takeaways etc were cash only and didn't accept cards anyway.

I was paid in cash every week in the aforementioned Greggs job and in my first fulltime job in a warehouse. The shop manager used to make the wage packets up on a Saturday afternoon using some of the takings.

I pay for almost everything now by card, but still feel like a bit of a twat for wanting to pay for things under about a fiver by card.

Has your DS ever seen a cheque or know what to do with one @Champagneforeveryone?

I'm 45 but I went to an all girls convent school where the lessons were very old fashioned: needlework , typewriting ( on big old manual typewriters) and can you believe it childcare !!! I think it's awful. The typing has actually come in handy as everything is keyboard orientated now . I cant see for toffee , and childcare didnt show me how to homeschool whilst working full time!

• I cant SEW for toffee .I can see ok, just

Learning to drive in a car with a manual choke. Using a clothes pet to hold it open.

I now make an "ooofff " sound when I sit down or stand up.

@Bunchup

Agree with pp: you got married in the late 1980s and people thought you'd stop work? Weird. I'm older than you and this was certainly not my experience.

I got married in 1999 and my office manager (then in her 60s) asked if I'd be giving up work once I was married.

Having said that she also advised me not to sell my flat and rent it out so I'd always have my own income/bolthole etc and could remain independent so she wasn't a complete dinosaur.

@Lovelydovey

My kids don’t believe that when I started work I used to commute on slam door trains. I’m only 38.

We had them locally less than 5 years ago. I’ve not been on a train regularly since then so don’t know if we still do.

Going to the library to research a subject or topic.

No Googling back in the 80's.

When I first started working in travel i remember selling Concorde tickets.
Remember hand writing plane tickets and keeping the 'plates' in the safe , and using a slidey thing.

I found some OHP sheets at work yesterday - in my resources.
Quite when I was planning on using them in a lesson again I have no idea!

I’m 57 and remember as a small child that the only TV programme for pre-schoolers during the day was ‘Watch With Mother’. Think it was on at lunchtime.
Andy Pandy, the Woodentops, ... can’t remember the others.