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?

World War 2 started 30 years before I was born.

That is the equivalent of 1991.

Now 1991 doesn't seem 'too' long ago. Lots has happened to me since.

That thought makes me feel old

The most obvious way in which I feel ancient is that I grew up in the pre-internet, pre-mobile phone era. Computers existed, but they were either very expensive and used only by techies at work, or very basic and used by kids for playing games. To anyone born after the mid 1980s, the world in which I grew up must seem like the dark ages.

Massive cross post

Oh and going to festivals and having no way of contacting your mates if you lost them, youd find them when you went back to your tent at the end of the day.

I lost my mates at Glastonbury once, we'd only gone for the day but stayed 2 days and had no tents, I'm still amazed I found them again, especially as I had no idea where we'd parked the car.

[quote SisyphusDad]@CherryValanc

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

I'm guessing it was meant to be carbon paper. For those who don't know, it was a special sheet coated with blue pigment. You put it between two ordinary sheets of paper. Whatever you wrote (pencil or biro - fountain pens were no good) or typed on the top sheet would appear on the bottom sheet as the blue pigment was pressed on to it by the pressure. Hence the more general phrase 'carbon copy' for something being an identical copy.[/quote]
Hence the more general phrase 'carbon copy' for something being an identical copy
Which is now carried into emails, with CC and BCC (blind carbon copy, i.e. other recipients don't see your email address and may not know you've been copied into a message)

Before we moved to a house with electricity, we listened to the radio. Favourites were Listen With Mother - the story always started with "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin" - and the adventures of Larry The Laaaamb.

We also listened to Come Dancing - the announcer would describe the dresses the ballroom dancers were wearing as the music played!

Sending telexes.
The guillotine being a metal base with a large metal knife that you pulled down, no safety guards.
Loading games from a cassette tape.
Making a pack of sandwiches and going out all day with your parents having no idea how to contact you.
Digital watches with a light from the petrol station.
Using a sixpence for a 5p piece.
Queuing up at school for a lunch ticket, blue ones for people who paid for their lunches, pink for those who didn't.
People opening referring to 'half castes' and it being taboo for people from different ethnic groups to have relationships
My grandparents having no idea what contraception was.
Embarrassed teachers having to teach 14/515 year olds how to put a condom on using a banana sorry not sorry for being asking embarrassing questions on purpose
The science teacher bringing in a lung from a person who'd died from lung cancer. His wife was a pathologist and gave it to him, he cut it open and showed us all and handed it round. I've never smoked.
Being given mercury to hold and play with in chemistry lessons

So much of things written in this thread resonate with me.
The funny thing is how we barely notice the changes as they occur, but so much has changed in my lifetime.

@CouldBeOuting that's so sad.

I'm 36 and when I started working at 18 in an accountancy practice the partner used to dictate letters to his PA in his office with them both chain smoking as he talked and she typed.

Smoking in aeroplanes and cinemas

We had a smoking room in our sixth form common room.

Also my grandma's house didn't have an inside toilet until the 90s.

I love a nostalgia thread! Here are a few of the things I remember. I'm 63.

My sister and I used to wear a "liberty bodice" in the winter, to keep our chests warm.

My winter knickers were made from wool and were incredibly itchy! I cannot bear wool next to my skin, even now.

In the winter, we had thick ice on the inside of the windows. I used to get dressed under the bedclothes because it was too cold to get out of bed otherwise. We all suffered from terrible chilblains that used to ache, crack and bleed. We never complained, it was just the norm for us.

In the summer my sisters and I used to go out for adventures in the countryside on our own, from the age of about 6 or 7. We were often out all day. We used to scrump apples, make dens in the hay barns, throw stones into cowpats and generally have fun. Children had so much freedom in those days.

I remember the original Watch with Mother was as follows:- Monday - Picture Book, Tuesday - Andy Pandy, Wednesday - the Flowerpot Men, Thursday - Rag, Tag and Bobtail, Friday - the Woodentops.

At school, we were not allowed to write with anything apart from a pencil or a fountain pen - I loved the smell of Quink!

Discovering the 'facts of life' from dictionaries and my mother's Woman magazine problem pages - yes, that is true! My mother never told me anything.

Going to dances and waiting and hoping for the boy you fancied asking you to dance.

I did a secretarial course and we learnt to type using manual typewriters with no letters on the keys. I don't regret this as I can touch type without ever looking at the keyboard. I did shorthand too and really regret the fact that nobody uses it now.

I worked in a Building Society and we took it in turns to go to the Bank to get £2/3,000 out for the cash withdrawals we paid out. Nobody cared that we walked down the road and back carrying all that money in our bags!

@Aebj

Milk at school Seatbelts becoming law in front seats of cars and then later for back seat passengers One year passports Paper driving licences ( wonder how kids now get into pubs at 17!!) Wearing long dresses to birthday parties

Wearing frilly dresses to parties!

Some of the trains I used when travelling were slam door ones.

I remember the sliding things for the credit cards.

Going to the staff room for whatever reason when I was at high school and it being full of smoke.

Having milk out of the little 3/4pt bottles with the foil lids and a straw. They ought to go back to them because the cartons they use today aren't recyclable.

We had a land-line telephone with the analogue dial and the curly wire to the receiver.

4 channels on the TV and when they were going to open channel 5 a man had to come and fiddle with your aerial.

Doing my school and college essays on a typewriter.

@pumpkinsoups

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

Oh god when you get to parents evening and the teachers look like you could have recently given birth to them 😂😂

I’m 30 so hardly past it but a young colleague came to work (pre-covid) showing off his new Adidas track jacket and I told him I had the same one in 1998.

I’m finally old enough to say ‘I wore that the first time around’, like my mother used to

Half the town not being able to get Channel 4 when it first started.

I was a secretary (electric typewriter at this point) so typing my friends' and family's CVs because no one else could type and had nothing to type them on. Having to photocopy them. And then doing it again when they wanted to change jobs again. Barely got a thanks. Should have charged.

We used to get Welsh Channel 4 (S4C?) through the TV aerial on the roof.

Great thread.

I remember calling the Speaking Clock. Why?? Surely we had a watch/clock in the house. It must have been for the sheer heady thrill of it oh life in the 70s

Yes. That and dial-a-disc. Which you phoned up and they played a pop song down the phone to you. My mum went mental when she got the bill. 🤣🤣😮

Getting "crossed lines" when you tried to make a phone call. As a child, it was always a source of huge excitement to me, eavesdropping on somebody's conversation. I always hoped to hear something salacious, but the topics discussed were usually banal. But all was not lost: if the conversation bored me, I used to make occasional small noises, squeaks and snorts, until the conversants noticed. There would be a slight pause, they would question each other suspiciously on the source of these mysterious noises, and then one of them would announce indignantly that she thought there was somebody on the line, and they would terminate the call. I thought it was hilarious - my life must have been dull!

Playing on building sites and in derelict houses.

People leaving dogs at home all day while they were out at work.

"Bunny" brand incinerators for sanitary waste in the ladies' loos, along with waxed paper disposal bags featuring a coy-looking Edwardian lady.

Turning on the TV to find nothing on but the Test Card Girl.

In the mid 1990s, clicking onto a website to find the "site under construction" message, along with sort of "men at work" triangle.

Does anyone remember the Cambridge coffee pot webcam?

- 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.

My VI form had a students' smoking room, they then needed it as a classroom so they made the locker/cloak room the smoking room.

I already hated VI form, this didn't help me like it any better.

Does anyone remember TV with a money slot? Like pre pay electric meter but for the TV.

I worked on s Corona lorry at 12 jumping on and off the moving lorry to deliver fizzy drinks door to door. I got 12 shillings for 8 til 4 on a Saturday.