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?

Another one - my mum used to 'take up' or 'let down' the hems on clothes so they could be handed-down.

A pre paid card telephone in school we used to queue for in secondary.
A knicker drier in the toilets.
Tracing paper for loo roll.
Buying a 'quart' of midget gems.
Selecting some penny sweets and then the guy tipping them out on the counter and recounting them back into the bag to check.
As a teen, having a pager.
A mobile phone as a teen the size of a brick that ONLY did calls and texts and not getting said phone until I was 15.
Tvs with £1 slots in the back.
A games console not appearing in the house until I was 13 and then it was set up in the parent's room and was to be shared between all 3 of us.
Competitive sports day - doesn't seem to be a thing here now until secondary - God forbid if any child that's sporty has their day of glory

I'm 37.

I dont know if it was because i was young and youngsters are still like this - but work seemed much more fun 25 years ago. There seemed more boozy lunches and going for a drink staight after work. stuff took time in the post so we were busy but the idea of replying to emails out of hours didnt exist. People seem very serious now.

In school I had a hymn book, sat at a wooden lift up desk which we had to sand down on the last day of term, we used ink pens and text books and the national curriculumn was in its infancy/didnt exist so different schools learned wildly different stuff.

Dial up is a great thing to explain to teens. It’s like a horror story to them.

I’m 42 and old enough to be the parent of one of my kids teachers this year 😫

Yy to paper everything. If you had a notice you wanted everyone to see, you had to get it typed up and put it in a circulation envelope. These were envelopes that had a grid of boxes on them. On each box there were either initials or the name of sections, and once it had been read by the person/department, they'd tick and pass it on to the next. If you didn't tick, you'd get the same memo delivered back to you.

Re slam door trains, I think that says more about the state of UK rolling stock than anything else. Virgin were certainly using them just a couple of years ago on the mainline - had to explain to befuddled European travellers (remember them?) how to use them on a few occasions as obviously on the continent it was all a bit more advanced.

I am 60 so all the above, and:
10 shilling notes (50p)
Half crowns (2s6d - 12.5p) they were huge
Three TV channels
The bed linen being laundered and delivered back in pink stripey paper
Babies in prams outside shops
Failure - children and young people were expected to deal with it: 11+, O'Levels, A'Levels.
Our elderly family Dr had an ashtray on his desk and I recall him putting out a cigarette as we went in.
Nurses in capes.
My school uniform coat was a woollen cape.
Going to London to buy things like: pasta, garlic, etc.
Olive oil from the chemist.
Dining cars on trains.

@Lovelydovey - slam door trains were still in service in East Anglia until about a year ago. I used to be quite entertained by people arriving from other parts of the country who literally couldn't open the doors from the inside! One woman and her daughter just stood there doing nothing and said "I'm sure someone will come along and open it from the platform" I had to push through and do it for them before the train left again.

Re women working after they got married - my cousin got married in the early 90s and his wife immediately gave up work. Everyone was really surprised as it was far from normal by that stage.

I'm 62 and can identify with all of the above.
We had to wait for our O and A level results to be posted to us. No going into school to collect them.
Fruit Salad and Black Jack sweets at 24 for 6d (2.5p)
My parents were older when they had me and my sister. My grandmother was born in 1874. My dad was in India during the war and my mum was with the Free French.. We had an underground air raid shelter in our garden that my mum kept dahlia bulbs in over winter.
We used to regulalrly see the Brighton Belle travelling over the railway bridge in our town.
Routemaster buses with open platforms at the back.
Waiting in all eveing for a phone call from a boy you met recently and who may or may not ring.

When I'm reminded that the '90s (my heyday) is THIRTY YEARS AGO, and not last week.

Getting a 10/- (10 shillings = 50p) postal order for a birthday present and 3d (a threepenny bit) for pocket money

Billboard posters that explained the benefits of credit cards - when these were new and hardly anyone had one ... because we were all still sticking green shield stamps into a booklet and saving them up until we had enough for something special

The introduction of trolleys in shops

When what is now the A19 through Teesside was still all fields

We got a colour TV, every kid in the street turned up for the delivery and set up (yes young people on here, you decided which TV you wanted in the shop, the shop ordered it, delivered it and tuned it in for you).

And the chances are it was rented.

My Mum collected Embassy vouchers, like Green Shield Stamps but they came with Embassy cigarettes.

When I was interviewed for my first job they were getting a word processor and asked if I'd be prepared to be trained on it. No one else was prepared to. Months after I left I was still getting calls "how do I...?".

In my next job, we took delivery of a computer so we could do (insurance) quotes rather than do them manually. I kid you not it literally took up a whole corner of the office. This was early 80s.

Also O'levels.

In my first job we had "runners" to take documents to other departments scattered around London. Then in my second job I often used to take ticker tape to King's Cross to be put on a train to Darlington to be processed on the computer. We then used to get a huge printout sent back.

I remember going to the bank to get the cash for the wages on a Friday. We had to phone the breakdown through on Thursday and then my boss would drive me to the bank and wait while I got the cash! Then I had to spend the day in a locked office .

We got a computer to do the payroll in the late 80s - two 5 1/4" floppy discs required to operate it and it was huge!! had a dot matrix printer on massive paper. Our first fax machine was also fascinating

I remember always having to take 2p for a phone call if I got lost out on my bike/pony. Mars bars were 5p then 10p and our Sunday afternoon treat was going to the village shop to get a quarter of sweets for 20p. We had long party dresses for birthday parties, usually home made, parties always held at home.

Child seats in the 70s cars were..............interesting! My youngest sister (born 1976) had a really 'advanced' one that would horrify today's parents. Rear seatbelts were not standard. We sat four across the back seat of the car then when we got too big, one or two of us would sit in the boot (estate car). Always had to face backwards for safety (no restraints!).

Appreciate it might be a typo @lightlypoached, but what's "car in paper" (in your OP)?

I had "banking time" on my clock at work when I started. (An extra half hour every pay period to take your wage cheque to the bank). Though it was fairly antiquated then in fairness - I had my wages paid into the bank, most did, with only a handful getting cheques.

Oh yes, cars - children stuffed in any space (the boot, footwells, on laps) not a restraint in sight.

I remember going and coming back from playing in a match and there were seven of us in our teacher's Mini.

Well I am ancient, but can remember being overjoyed because I was given 3d in order to be able to go to Saturday morning cinema. The posh seats were 9d, far beyond my family''s budget.

Writing essays out by hand at university and posting into a wooden postbox outside the admin office to hand them in. I'm 38!

I can remember having 12p pocket money in my teens and buying a chocolate bar and comic with it.

When I was very very young, the milkman came with a horse!😂
Who can beat that?

Ditto to inkwells and blotting paper at school.
I once spent £25 - a fortune then - on a portable Olivetti typewriter.

My first passport - for a French exchange visit - cost 7/6d (35p ) - a British Visitor’s Passport, valid for just a year, and you got it at the Post Office.,

My school desk had a little ink well in the right hand corner and I used stylus pens with replaceable nibs and blotting paper.

1950s/60s. Inkwells here too and many of our text books were (slightly) revised versions of pre-war texts. Clothes were washed far less frequently, even in nice middle-class homes such as mine. My wool school skirt was dry cleaned once a term if that; it was generally hung up and brushed. Hence terrible trouble if it was dirtied. Tweed school coat was sent to dry cleaner’s annually.
Small rural roads were unpaved, hence dry, white and dusty in the Summer and nearly impassable by bike in Winter. The countryside looked very much as it had done in the earlier years of the 20th century.

A particular feature where I lived, long vanished now, was the towering, cloud shaped elm trees that dominated the field boundaries. My memories from my childhood and teens are bright, sharp and suffused with heightened colours, so when I look at old black and white photographs, I experience a cognitive dissonance. Here are some colour pictures of London though. designyoutrust.com/2019/01/stunning-color-photos-of-swinging-london-in-the-60s/

Passports. Kids were just listed on their parents.and a school trip where we had a group one for all 150 of us.

(Compare that to the ridiculousness of trying to photograph my 4week old baby for her passport!)

I am 60 so all the above,

Yep I am 61 so all of the above. Loved that you could get black jacks or fruit salad sweets for very little - a whole bagful!!!

Remember typewriters? In my first hospital job we had Imperial 66 ones. Plus had to do carbon copies.

People could smoke in offices. The Gender Identity office was blue with smoke!!

Later on I remember the 'fear' of using a computer. I wasn't going to use one of those!

I remember floppy disks!

Green shield stamps! I told someone about them recently. I believe it was one of the porters. Not English. His face was a picture when I told him if you had enough stamps you could buy a car!!

I remember telling My Godson about one of my favourite films. I said it was in black and white. His face was a picture. "Why???"

I’m 25 and I’ve commuted on a slam door train, Great Western still had some until about a year ago!

The Gender Identity office
Goodness, what was that?

But our smoking staffroom was full of choking clouds of smoke right up to the mid 1990s, as I recall.

I’ve no longer for any idea how to use the TV remote and have to call for DH. More importantly I’ve got no interest in learning how. I said the words ‘it’s a tough old world out there’ the other day and DD (14) laughed at me 😢😢 I used to shop in Woolworths. I’m 39.