Things you thought were normal if you grew up working class

[Anycrispsleft]

Inspired by that "thought it was posh, turns out it wasn't" thread, I wondered if anyone else remembers stuff from a working class childhood that you thought everyone did and actually no it was just us?

Mine is playing with stray dogs. I was an adult before I realised that approaching strange dogs is meant to be dangerous. In my estate there were two strays (and one owned dog that would escape his garden) and they would chum along with us when we were out playing. We'd feed them crisps. (Luckily for the dogs I think we figured that crisps were more appropriate food for dogs than chocolate, as they were more salty and a bit like meat.) It would never have occurred to us not to befriend any other creature of the street. There was precious little else to do, why wouldn't we add a dog or two into the pack?

I also remember pit ponies.

@ChelseeDagger

fucking narrowboat holidays.

My parents bought a narrowboat and expected me to be ecstatic at spending every summer in market towns and canal side pubs instead of a a Greek Island.

I don't think this is a normal indicator of a working class or poor upbringing

Supergluing your glasses arm back on if it fell off or Supergluing your shoes it the sole was coming away. Buying fake gucci bags.

@Thursa

The paper was read and then put into the bathroom as we never had toilet paper. Ice on the inside of the windows. Black mould all over the kitchen. A frying pan and chip pan permanently full of used lard. Hiding behind the couch when the rent man, insurance man, milk man, etc came to the door. Sitting in the car outside the pub for hours, sharing a wee bottle of coke and a bag of ready salted. A new outfit for back to school after the summer. Maybe another outfit at Christmas. One pair of shoes and wearing them till you outgrew them no matter the condition. Going to bed wearing as many layers as you wore during the day. No fridge, washing machine, central heating. The dog lived off leftovers, dog food was never bought. No birthday cake, parties, and presents were something you needed. And bloody bath salts. Rented b&w telly. And my mum only watched STV so it only really needed one channel. I was desperate to see Top of the Pops, but even half an hour a week was too much to ask for. We never ate out, got a takeaway or went on holiday.

There was always money for drink and fags though. My dad smoked 60 Players untipped a day and my mum was on 20 B&Hs. They were pissed every Friday and Saturday.

Can relate to most of this, especially the money for fags and the pub but not for other things. I remember one Christmas unwrapping the same skirt and top I’d been given for my birthday while my parents were nursing their hangovers and chain smoking. It was the only present I got that year and I had to be grateful.

We became posh by the time my younger brother was born, he had his own cot. The rest of us slept in the dresser draws until we outgrew them. I also use to put cello tape around my windows to keep the heat in.

For treats we’d sometimes get a big bottle of tizer or iron brew and be so excited we could take the bottle back to the shop and get a 10p mix with the money we got for returning the bottle.

Op, I'm with you re the stray dogs. I used to do this too. Other things I thought were normal were:

1. knocking on doors in the lead up to Bonfire Night asking if people had spare wood or furniture. This would be stored in our yard, then we'd build a huge bonfire on the back field which the whole street would attend

2. swearing

3. playing out in the street from morning until dark

4. no fuss on Christmas or birthdays

5. getting a smack when naughty

6. very specific gender roles

7. not having many clothes

8. an absolute understanding that we were poor. The rich lived a totally unrelatable life

Also, my mum's OBSESSION with markets. When I think back to my childhood I'm always either at a market or in the queue for Argos. Or at a Pippa Dee party.

What is a scramble ?

OverTheHill50

I don't think a lot of these are necessarily working class though - more just like what life was like generally in the 70s/80s?

I think it also depends where you were brought up. I was brought up in one of the roughest deprived council estates in Glasgow. Everyone in my class at school lived in a council house don't remember anyone living in a bought house. No one went on holiday. We all played out for the 6 weeks in summer.
Both my parents worked bloody hard in manual heavy jobs all their lives but never really got on and had a better life. I feel quite sad when I think about their lives sometimes ( both passed away now) but my mum was adored and well looked after by her 6 children when we all grew up and moved out.

@inappropriateraspberry yes to that bedding! When we cleaned out my parents house last year they still had some of those sheets - cut in half and re-sewn where they had worn through down the middle .

2) swearing

8) an absolute understanding that we were poor.

Exact opposite here. Funny how we all remember things differently

Swearing or offensive language was frowned upon and we didnt know we were poor because we didn't know anyone who wasn't poor/or who wasn't working class. Maybe a doctor or head teacher would be middle class, but you didn't interact with them often

As a teenager in the 90s I always felt like things were out of my reach. Certainly aware others had far more access to things than I ever would. Slow seeping levels of inadequacy. Not among close friends who had similar life experiences but in the same
Class at school certainly.

Nobody went around telling working class kids they were “just as good”. Middle class kids had better education, resources and support and seemed much clever and talented in return. Teachers would put more effort into the top middle class forms than the working class kids who made up the majority of those lower down.

Hobbies were things that people had like ponies or foreign holidays. Hobbies cost money!

@greyinganddecaying

Tinned salmon 🙂

At £4 a tin, it is posh

My mum and dad couldn't afford a carpet so we had underlay for months that said blue on it while my parents saved up. No idea if blue was a brand or what but my mum told us it was so when the fitters came, they knew we wanted a blue carpet.

Like many on this thread, I also remember the big sack of spuds at the back door.

Every weekend we would be taken to a field somewhere to play. Mum would make a home made picnic and off we would go. We would go to castle's on the open days as well. I thought you must be so posh to be able to go to the cinema or soft play

If you had guests for tea (adult ones) and mum made a stew- knowing intrinsically they you spooned out more veg than meat, and 'saved' the meat in the stew for the guests to take!

I was born in 1977 so....

Ice on the inside of windows was a thing even until the 90’s. We may have had the largest house in the village but it was also the coldest and draftiest - my friends used to refer to it as the Adam’s family house.

Hand me down clothes were normal - and I think they should be today.

Disappearing for hours on end in the school holidays.

No foreign holidays until secondary school trips.

Getting cigarettes from the shop for mother

Definitely having the odd smack - but never admitting someone else had told you off because that would meant another!

All the girls wearing cut up bin bags at Halloween for the school disco. Everyone used to buy the same cardboard witch’s hats too so everyone looked mostly identical . Most of the boys would be Dracula and wear a bin bag cape with lipstick for blood. There was always the odd show off ghost though with their fancy pillowcases. We also used to carve turnips instead of pumpkins -everyone did!
I thought this was just a widespread 80’s thing until fairly recently. Nope. Clearly just a working class Northern thing!

My sister and I (31 and 27) have been talking about our childhood a lot since she became a parent and have realised a lot of things really weren’t normal at all!

Yes to £1s in the TV and hiding from debt collectors...

Our dad (absolute arsehole we haven’t seen for a decade) definitely signed on and worked cash in hand. Lots of jobs, never lasted long.
Our car was very mysterious stolen and burnt out once.
Very little help with homework. In fact, little interest in schooling altogether.
Meals were decidedly beige (nuggets, chips...) and it was a special occasion if we had a proper home cooked meal (spaghetti bolognese etc).

Even in the late 90’s we didn’t have double glazing or central heating or a shower.
We did, however, have carpet (bright blue!) in the bathroom and washed our hair with a measuring jug.
I didn’t have my own bedroom until I left for university.

It’s strange typing things like that out because now people would be appalled at some of them but we really quite lucky compared to some of our family and friends. We had a car and some holidays and my Mum adored us, always kept our house spotless, and she worked full time. I love her dearly and it’s crazy to remember how things used to be!

@ChelseeDagger

fucking narrowboat holidays.

My parents bought a narrowboat and expected me to be ecstatic at spending every summer in market towns and canal side pubs instead of a a Greek Island.

I think you've misunderstood the concept of working class....

[quote ChelseeDagger]@ImAlrightThanx

Well its not MC either. I know this because all of my friends were MC and they were in Skiathos, not the shropshire union bastard canal.[/quote]
Your parents having questionable tastes in holidays doesn't make you working class 🙄😂

Tinned pink salmon on some Sundays, and we had tinned red salmon at Christmas!

Also going to random houses to buy massive amounts of cigarettes because John and Sue had been to Tenerife and now had 10000 Lambert and Butler in their front room!

Sydney's eastern suburbs are posh now, but in the 1970s were mixed WC/MC. After a horrible reversal of fortune we were borderline, and I felt caught in the crossfire:

Being told by MC schoolfriends that their parents didn't want them to play with me

After school, being locked out of the flat until 6pm and having to wee in the gutter

Being told "It's a waste of money buying clothes for you, you'll only grow out of them" and having to line the skirt of my 2nd hand school uniform with sticky tape to stop it disintegrating, then pinning my underpants to it to stop them falling down

Stuffing my vadge with toilet paper because I couldn't afford sanpro!

At high school, telling my MC friends they couldn't come over because my parents were "very strict" and demanded I study all weekend. I really was studying -- so that I could get good marks and work my way out of poverty, which I did eventually.

Also, what is it about ORNAMENTS? We went without proper clothes and shoes while my mother saved up for knick-knacks and a silver tea service which was never used. Was this a WC way to show affluence?

I grew up on a coucil house estate where It was normal for people who had dogs to let them run around the streets or in the fields at the back of the houses maybe because cars were less common. Alsatians were very popular and terrified me. We never had dogs only cats. The town was heavily industrial but also close to the country so there were also many horses in the fields around which some neighbours sometimes tried to keep in back gardens. I don't remember any official involvement telling them not to. Strangely, I don't remember ever seeing a live fox but since I have lived in a big city, I have seen dozens dead and alive and had them living in the gardens.

All the kids played out in the streets or fields until late at night even into the winter months and it was not idyllic as there was a lot of bullying and abuse going on but I don't think anyone ever told parents. I know I didn't and always wanted to be part of the crowd even though I was scared of everybody and everything. On the other hand certain kids would disappear for months at a time as they had been taken into care so maybe more was known than I was aware of.

I think you've misunderstood the concept of working class....

Yes there is misunderstanding of what "working class" was.

Working class used to mean the industrial districts. Coal mining, textile mills, steel works, factories and all the industries connected to that. In the UK these were centuries old community's were used to managing, and budgeting, on low wages and in some ways we had a healthier lifestyle than the better off do now. Food for example was always simple with less choice but home cooked, healthy and nothing was wasted. Fresh air and exercise was encouraged. Many mines and factories had night schools for hobbies, musical groups or book clubs. Police, social workers, nurses, teachers all lived in the same working class areas as industrial workers did. Most people lived in some type of council housing and we respected the NHS.

It wasn't perfect but it wasn't the loutish, racist, sweary, scruffy, booze addled thing some make it out to be either