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?

I dont actually remember it, but I was left outside the Co-Op in my Silver cross pram. Mum got back home laden with shopping bags, thinking on the way she'd forgotten something but couldnt put her finger on it ... I was still there, still fast asleep when she remembered what it was and raced back to collect me 😂

My youngest DC has teachers that are the same age as my eldest DC.

Being the first person in the office to have a dial up moden attached to my PC to enable me to place public procurement contract adverts in the EU Journal.

Remember the amazing trilling sound of a dial up connection?

@MillieEpple

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.

I often wonder this. Are things generally more staid now, or do I just not mix in those circles because I'm older?

We used to go to the pub after work every single Friday, or go for a boozy lunch. Work just seemed more fun and relaxed, without endless meetings and 100% efficiency demanded. This was in 2000, so only 5 years ago...

Talking about a certain singer I mentioned to my grandson that I used to have a record of his. Grandson 'What's a record?'.

@torquewench

I dont actually remember it, but I was left outside the Co-Op in my Silver cross pram. Mum got back home laden with shopping bags, thinking on the way she'd forgotten something but couldnt put her finger on it ... I was still there, still fast asleep when she remembered what it was and raced back to collect me 😂

My Mum did that! My brother was in the massive pram and I was sat on a seat the went across the top of it.

I saw my mum come out if the shop chatting to a neighbour and watched her walk away. I didn’t say anything because it was lovely having time away from her to be honest. It wasn’t worth it though - there was hell to pay when she came back for us.

I'm 63, so lots of the above.

Also-

The Betterware man ,with his brown cardboard suitcase, who gave me little round sample tins of furniture polish for my doorstep "shop"

Popping gas tar bubbles between the cobbles during long hot summers.

Being able to skip etc. in the middle of our street, because no one had a car.

Going down to the corner Co-op and having to remember my mother's divi number.

Trying to decide whether to spend my 4p on the bus fare or a cream egg.

Getting my first wage (£12) in a little brown envelope.

I can remember farthings. Also post war rationing. My granny used to run a black market shop for bacon from her cellar. All the neighbours used to come once a week for their extra bacon, even though her husband was the Mayor and a JP. Horse and cart for the greengrocer, milkman and rag and bone man.
My husband was brought up in Lancashire and can remember the 'knocker upper' banging on all the bedroom windows along the street.
I can also remember gas lighting in quite a few houses.

The Betterware man ,with his brown cardboard suitcase, who gave me little round sample tins of furniture polish for my doorstep "shop"

I remember those little tins of furniture polish
We used to get a French onion man come down our road on his bike, selling onions. We also used to get a miller round selling flour and a drinks man selling squash - I think they were called Dyers.

I used to get half a crown pocket money a week, and I remember when one of my teachers complained about the price of petrol going up to 7/6 a gallon (37.5p in today's money). We didn't have litres back then.

I'm 49 and remember using the credit card slidey machine with triple carbon copy paper slips at the Saturday job I had then.

I had fountain pen handwriting classes at school. No biros were permitted but we were allowed to choose between a cartridge refill as opposed to an ink well.

A hour or two a week purely to learn to write beautifully. This was a normal state middle school in the early 1970's.

This is one of the reasons my handwriting is terrible (also dyslexia and arthritis).

We were told to ask for a fountain pen for Xmas the last year of first school to be taught to write 'joined up'. Until then we had printed and used pencil.

But then we moved house and I was suddenly in a junior school where everyone had been using school biros for 2 years.

Oh yes! The snooker

" For those of you watching on black and white sets the pink is tucked behind the brown"

Yet we did somehow recognise the different colour balls, didn't even really notice the lack of colour. Quite happily watched Saturday morning telly that switched form black and white to colour all the time!

I can even remember that first telephone number we had. [Name of the village the exchange was in] 478.

Remembering there were ashtrays everywhere - ones on tall stands just before you entered an elevator, filled with sand, and individual ones with flippy lids in the armrests of the plane or even your car!

The fact that when I started work people were still using typewriters. And carbon paper.

@Sheleg

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

Yes that just blows my mind as well

I think I now feel old as many of the world leaders look very young to me!

People smoking in the day room on the hospital ward and being offered cigarettes by an old lady there at 15...

Learning to type on a typewriter

Being given 10p for a tooth from the tooth fairy, up to 20p when the new 20p was invented.

Being allowed 10 - 20p worth of sweets from the corner shop on a Friday. Considering some were halfpenny chews you could get quite a few sweets.

Foods such as sweets & desserts containing E number ingredients and tasting amazing). E numbers then starting to be banned.

Tasting pizza for the first time age 10.

A dial phone.

Only rich people having video players.

Having to make furniture out of cardboard for our Sindy dolls because we couldn't afford the real thing.

A rented tv with a door & 4 channels.

Having frozen fish squares & thinking that fish were square!! Doh.

I'm only mid 40s (and in my mind my teenage years were about 5 years ago, if that) but things my teenage DC are astonished by are:

• Like a few pps- having to use fountain pen for school
• Starting work (in finance) and having to do most of our work by hand then booking a slot to use one of the 3 shared computers for certain tasks
• No internet/e-mail when I was at University and keeping in touch with friends from home by posting letters
• Going to the local video shop to rent a film, having to go on a waiting list to hire popular films and having to remember to return it the following day
• School having a smoking room for teachers. And there being a genuine debate about whether sixth formers should be able to use it as well.
• As a child, buying lemonade etc in glass bottles from the local shop and taking the empties back to get the deposit back. Slightly older children used to knock on doors offering to take them back and keep the deposits for pocket money- and no one thought this was a problem.

I'm 64 and I remember when we moved from old money to decimals - a 10/- note was wonderful at xmas (50p). Old money seemed prettier - sixpence, half-a-crown and old pennies.

I also remember the equal pay act coming in and my father being very gloomy about it and my mum worrying that this would mean that employers would try to get rid of women.

I remember waiting 3 months to get a landline in my flat (in the early 80's)

Having to tune in a TV. By turning a dial around.

I remember travelling around for a year and keeping my return flight tickets very safe as I had the physical paper copies of them.

When I realise that 1980 wasn't 20 years ago

Our first TV was not only black and white, but it had a dual instead of buttons so you had to manually tune in to each channel.
Actually I'm not that old, my parents were cheapskates.
Everything TV was rented from Radio Rentals of course.
We had a rotary phone, then got all excited about a push button phone. The bank sent a special attachment you put over the microphone so my dad could do telephone banking as we didn't have the different tones on the buttons. I've forgotten what that was called.
Funnily, as the 90s drew to a close, my Dad became tech obsessed and had to have every new thing. Palm Pilot anyone? We had an early laptop on permanent loan from his work with a b&w led display. Ooooooooh.

At primary school I was forced to change from being left handed to being right, they wouldn't let me use my left hand to write.

We didn't have computers at my first job, I do accounts work and everything was done in triplicate and using a calculator.

Wages were weekly in cash in an envelope.

I'm only 52, sounds like I grew up in Victorian times 😁

What makes me feel really old is that I was born less than 15 years after WW2 ended

I think of 15 years ago as quite recent.