@Loopyloututu2
Mother taking us up to the high street to use the public phone box and taking a Dettol soaked cloth to wipe it down before using it.
Your mother sounds dead posh! And ahead of her time 
What about family "do's" at the local legion/labour club and the mad scramble when the DJ announced the buffet was open? All the aunties would bring a dish to contribute and would usually consist of a variety of triangle sandwiches, cheese n pickle on sticks, pork pies, sausage rolls, crisps n nuts! The birthday/wedding cake would be the dessert and you'd be trying to balance it all on the flimsy paper plates. We had to wait for "the men" to get seconds before anyone else could 
Oh, and little boys sliding across across the dancefloor on their knees!
Good times!
This is still absolutely the case for every family get-together on my dad's side of the family. Always at the legion, or bowling club and always a buffet to which all the female family members have contributed. All the aunties will dash onto the dancefloor at some point in the evening to do The Slosh. In more recent years, a few younger family members have had weddings in hotels or stately homes and that has raised a lot of eyebrows. Needless to say, they all smuggle spirits in their handbags rather than pay the inflated bar prices. Bowling club drinks are as cheap as chips.
We were working class but not poor. For me, the most normal thing, which most of my friends (and DH) can't get their heads around is the presence of the "clubs" in my life. The bowling club was essentially an extension of our home at the weekends. Mum and dad would be playing bowls and/or drinking in the club and playing dominoes all day. Kids would be running around the clubhouse grounds - surviving on a packet of crisps and occasional lemonade, playing games with all the barrels, crates and empty bottles from the bar, which were all stacked around the back. We could build anything out of them. Inside, everyone would be smoking and I remember jumping up to "catch" the smoke "balloons". Even better if you found someone who could blow smoke rings. I also used to play with ashtrays - building "sandcastles" from the ash. When actual bowling tournaments were taking place, we knew we had to be deathly quiet. An unintended shriek from a child could make a bowler lose focus and would likely result in that child being dragged into the toilets for a telling off and/or a smack. I remember one extremely jovial guy in the club. He was always joking around and making good natured jokes at others expense. He was one of my favourites so one day when I saw him lining up his bowl which then went spinning off in the opposite direction, I burst out laughing, thinking he would too. He was furious and I got smacked by his wife for that. I was terrified of them both after that. Women were not allowed to bowl but could be social members of the club so my mum spent much of her time making sandwiches for the men coming off the green, or playing dominoes in the bar. Bowling was a religion and the club was our church. We were there every single weekend. Mum and dad would go alone on a Saturday night, leaving me either with grandparents or arranging a sleepover with a friend. We celebrated every birthday in the club and always went there on christmas eve and new year's eve for big parties. Dad did a shift in the bar every sunday, which meant that for every drink he served, he would be told to get "one for yourself too". Mum would go home in the early afternoon to make the sunday roast (always a roast) and he would roll in, blind drink around 5pm. Dad also went to a more mysterious "working man's club" on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Women and children were not allowed there.
One of the benefits of being a club member was that we know someone in every trade so if work needed done in the house, some bloke from the bowling club would turn up to do a homer, often being paid in alcohol rather than cash. In general tough, we didn't really do home improvements unless it was an emergency. Everything in the house seemed old-fashioned but buying new furniture, sofas, beds etc was frivolous. Our sofas and beds often sagged so we built them up again by packing newspaper under the cushions and mattresses. We had an immersion heater and the trick was to put it on long enough to get the hot water required for a bath or shower but not too long that it cost unnecessary money. I remember the absolute fear of realising that I'd forgotten to switch it off on occasion.
In the first few years of school (early-mid 80s), the school secretary would regularly come around the classrooms to check who was now "on the phone". i.e. had any families had a phoneline installed since the last check. I got a new school uniform as a christmas present from my grandparents every year - it was something I needed and as money was tight, it wasn't possible to get this and a more exciting present. I had to pretend to be gratefully excited every year.
When not at the club, all kids played out in the streets all day. If our parents were working, it would be ok as there would be at least one parent in the neighbourhood around for emergencies. Nobody really bothered about where we went or what we did though. Clothes were rarely bought new but were handed down not just through families but around the neighbourhood, so I'd see a child from the year below wearing clothes which had been "mine" the year before, but I'd got them from an older neighbour before that.