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?

Sticking Co-op stamps into books with my gran

Sara Lee double chocolate gateau and Vienetta for Christmas and special occasions

Tea at 5pm

We went to France on camping holidays in the 80s and used to take all of our own food with us - tinned stewing steak, tinned chicken supreme, tinned potatoes, cuppa soups. We’d go out for one restaurant meal while we were there as a treat.

This is a really interesting thread. I wonder how old you all are?

I am mid-50s and definitely middle class but some of these things were also my experience.

Loved sweet cigarettes.
The rubber shower thing that attached to the bath taps.
Angel Delight.
Sharing bath water.
Going to the shop to get ciggies for my mother.

And I remember staying with an aunt who had an electricity meter, and being told to answer the door & say she wasn't in when someone came round about money she owed them.

Wow, I can identify with so much of this and I was probably what was regarded as middle class, though my dad didn't leave my mum and me with much money as he wasted it on drink. Early 70s at aged 8 babysitting my baby sister while Mum did an evening job....waiting for my dad to come home and he was always drunk. Babysitting for neighbours children when I was 11 and nobody thought it was wrong. I thought everyone's parents drunk a lot, fought and screamed at each other but I found out later I was wrong. I never had fish fingers until I went to a friends house for tea...I didn't know what they were. Not being allowed to wash my hair more than once a week, or use a hairdryer, to 'save electric' even into the early 80s....
Being able to buy cigarettes for my mum daily at the corner shop.
Always wearing clothes from the jumble sale.
Mum buying in the hardware shop and using pink paraffin in an oil heater (dread to think of those fumes now) . Having half a grapefruit for breakfast on Christmas morning and thinking it was very decadent

We had beans on toast a lot too.

I liked the toast (white sliced obvs) much more than the beans but was made to eat the beans as well.

Only one coal fire, bath once a week, meat once a week and in and out of neighbours houses. Only had my own room when I went to uni and holidays were day trips (on a coach) organised by the working men’s club. Sounds grim but we had so much independence and I have some great memories from my childhood. On the flip side once stumbled across a man wanking in the bushes in a local park who started talking to us whilst wanking!! , spent a lot of time on a construction site playing on the scaffolding and making friends with the labourers, risky behaviour now but seemed normal then.

Net curtains frozen to the inside of the windows, being sent out around the neighbourhood asking for change 50p coins for the meter, regularly running out of loo roll and using newspaper

@starfishmummy

Bread and butter on the table at almost every meal to fill up on.

100% this...

Chocolate cigarettes! Imagine if they came up with those today 😂

Did anyone else do the fiddle with the electric meter? Take apart an electric lighter and stick the part that sparked into the key slot of the meter. When you pressed down it would add a few pounds credit to your meter.

My dad actually disconnected the entire electric meter, turned it upside down, then reconnected it so it ran backwards. We had free electric for years until they sent a man out to see what was going on.

I'd forgotten about our chip pan.Always sat on the side with solidified lard in it ready to be heated up for the next lot.Mine is never knowing if I was on free dinners or not at primary school as Dad was always in and out of work.Secondary school I didn't use my tokens...too humiliating.I'd rather go hungry and my dad was my sole parent by that time and too useless to sort them out anyway.

Frozen condensation on top of my blankets in the morning.Mice.

Babies drinking tea out of bottles.
Gravy mopped up with bread and butter.
Tinned peas, mashed potato and a pork chop
Sitting on the front steps
Ash trays on straps attached to chair arms

Sticking Green Shield stamps in their little booklet
Red salmon for Christmas tea, one tin between all of us, with a lettuce leaf, half a tomato and salad cream
Butterscotch Instant Whip
Mum using a single tub washing machine with a mangle that you used with wooden tongs or risked your fingers and hand going through the rollers. I remember a spin dryer than wobbled off across the kitchen floor as it spun, knocking over the bucket that the water went into.
Men always wearing ties, mum turning dad’s worn shirt collars and cuffs.
Sheets turned sides to middle.

Taking your own family value tub of ice cream and spoons to the cinema.

Looking down the sides of the settee for any loose change.

Throwing things behind the settee or ''under the stairs'' when doing a quick tidy-up.

Being sent to the chinese chip shop for the occasional fish and chips lateish on a Saturday night when Paul Daniels was on.

Being sent to Spar for shopping after collecting my mum's family allowance.

Dripping on toast as a treat.

Mum pretending she wasn't hungry if she didn't have enough to go round.

No car - walked, bussed or relied on lifts.

Roast dinner at grandma's was height of posh as she had mint sauce AND mint jelly, ribena and ritz crackers.

Corona bottles to shop for the deposit.

Nothing 'foreign' until I was 15 - then pasta. Did not have indian food until at uni.

Britvic 55 was posh. Appletise was posh. My father used to pour cherryade and put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in it.

Playing at the park in Summer til half nine.

Pub carpark squabbling with siblings in car with half a coke and a bag of crisps.

Latchkey kids left on our own (7, 9) between 4-6pm term-time and full days in holidays.

I was always a fish out of water growing up - too rough for the posh crowd but considered a snob by the council estate kids as my Mum wouldn't let us play with them.

We went to France on camping holidays in the 80s and used to take all of our own food with us - tinned stewing steak, tinned chicken supreme, tinned potatoes, cuppa soups. We’d go out for one restaurant meal while we were there as a treat.
Yes! Even if we went out for the day close to home we always took food with us. Such an extravagance to buy a cup of tea. I liked going out with my grandmother as she would always stop at a cafe for tea but you weren't allowed to order anything else and she would pass you biscuits under the table.

And Coronation milk on jelly.......🥴🤢

Being taught to keep the tiniest receipt as proof of purchase.

Weekly bath (shared) on Sunday night. Water heated with the Emerson heater for half an hour. If you forgot to turn it off getting a spanking.

Seeing your breath when you woke up (my single glazed window was cracked). Running downstairs fighting to sit in front of the gas fire. Warming clothes in front of the fire.

Blackberrying/nut collecting. Buying fags from the corner shop for my mum(put in brown paper bag.

Hand me downs or homemade clothes. Sacks of potatoes (eaten with every meal)

Vesta curry or chow mien (no take always)

Second hand Christmas presents.

Holidaying in flats above shops

Prawn cocktail at Christmas

Cutting the mould off bread and cheese.

Smelling of my mums fags.

Letting it ring 3mtimes when I arrived or left anywhere.

Having to share a bed with one of your siblings and in the same room as your parents. There was one other bedroom but it was extra small just enough room for one single bed, and you had to fight for your turn to sleep in it.The baby having to sleep in the pram all the time as the next child up was in the cot.
Yes to going to the corner shop for your mother's fags and the shopkeeper putting them in a paper bag and warning you not to tell a policeman where you got them from.

Cutting the mould off bread and cheese.
Still do that now! Why would you not?!

No food on Thursday except whatever was left as my Dad didn’t get his wage packet until Friday.

A stick in the outside toilet to break the ice

Fly paper on the windows and a plastic strip curtain up at the back door

Just a tiny coal fire to heat an entire house. Stone cold floors. Being so cold in the winter I was unable to get to sleep for hours. Having chapped hands in the winter die to the cold and damp. All meals at the table apart from Saturdays in the winter having baked potatoes and watching The Golden Shot. Inheriting everything from my sister including bikes and toys. Food could not have been more basic. Walking everwhere. Wearing wellies constantly. Home knitted jumpers. Coin slot that took old 5p pieces. The man from The Pru. look In magazine. The Singing Ringing Tree on the telly - gaarrk!

Collecting ginger bottles to cash in then walking 4 miles to the swimming baths at 10 years old. Day out summer holiday, catching baggie minnows on the river in the woods again at age 10, so wish children could have that freedom now.

Living on pigeon, pheasant and rabbit. I never had a steak until I left home. Boiling pigs heads to make brawn and having to pick the bones and teeth out of the pot.

Salmon paste sandwiches, angel delight for desert, Blackpool illuminations being the highlight of the year are a few 😁

I bet none of you on this thread is younger than 50!