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?

@EdgeOfFortyNine we used to hide behind the sofa too for the milk man! I also remember dad having to put a pound in the TV. Sometimes he didn't have a pound so he broke into the money box on the side of the TV and used it to buy benson and hedges and skol. Ironically I used to have to wear T shirts that condemned smoking, that were 'purchased' using tokens inside cigarette packets! Oh the joy of the 80's

Having buttered white bread for every single dinner whatever it was; curry, spag bol, Shepherds pie, all between two slices of bread!

Smoking all the time and every surface have a film of ash! I remember my parents smoking in the car!

Never wearing seatbelts and adults having no idea where I was most of the day. My kids have a far more restricted life!

Dogs given scraps from the table rather than a tin of dog food.

Those fairy cakes with the paper transfer picture at every kids birthday party.

Jam sandwiches for school lunch.

Artic Roll was very classy!

Iceberg lettuce was the only lettuce and all salad was covered in salad cream!

Frost on the inside of windows. Sharing the once a week bath, sharing room with siblings, being put out the door after breakfast snd not expected back until dinner time, being wary of authority figures e.g social workers etc.

@Gerla

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

🤮 because the start of the decay that leads to mould is invisible. If you can see mould it's all through the food, even in the bits that looks fine.

Nah...it's fine.

@UntamedWisteria

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

I’m younger than 50. Teen in mid 90s granted working class is different today but doesn’t make our experience any less valid does it? Feel free talk about your own middle class up bringing on another thread.

Lots of things on here, also Paraffin fires, stunk to high heaven, dangerous and not a lot of heat!!

We had a caravan . 10 people in an 8 birth caravan for the whole of f the 6 weeks holiday . Electric came on at 6pm . No running water or inside toilet . Had a 10 minute walk for both No bath had to queue outside the bathrooms until it was your turn .crabbing all day and Eating fish and chips every night . BLISS ! We thought every caravan site was like this. Found out years later the site next door had running water and a club house for entertainment 😳

I didn't say it was less valid, did I Akire ?

But I think some of this stuff does not happen today, that's all. And that is also interesting.

@UntamedWisteria

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

I suspect you are right, but there are still families living in appalling poverty, still women going hungry to feed men and their children, still unheated houses. Scrumping is now called foraging and very acceptable. We might yet move back to glass bottles with deposits. Winkles might yet make a comeback in smart restaurants. Mussels have, after all.

Playing on building sites and being sore after from all of the fibreglass (I know!)
TV dinners on my folding TV dinner tray/stand.
Bath once a week. (Sunday eve)
Multi coloured foil garlands that we hung on the ceiling at Christmas.
My friends struggling because their dads were miners and times were hard.
I’m definitely younger than 50!! I’m 43 UntamedWisteria

Vienetta!

Perhaps I'm older than most people here and probably would classify as educated-parents-middle-class, but:

• bedcover - the word surely was 'counterpane'. Candlewick was fluffy, and came in rows. Blankets (scratchy, hairy) were the thing - duvets were not around until the 1970s/190s. Counterpanes went over the top of them: unfitted sheets and an eiderdown (feather-filled alternative for duvet).
• ice 'flowers' on the inside of windows were standard until the 1970s/1980s,even in quite big/grand houses.

Completely agree LemonRoses.

Not trying to minimise it, far from it.

florascotia2 we had eiderdowns which slipped off the bed in the middle of the night & you woke up freezing. And with a freezing 'hot' water bottle next to you.

@florascotia2 my family called it a bedspread now I come to think of it.

I'm under 50
Today, In the town I grew up in families are still struggling to get by and feed their children with houses full of damp.
It's Fucking disgraceful that people live like that in 2021.

I didn’t think for a minute you were, UntamedWisteria. I think it’s quite funny what is now seen as essential and quite sad how low expectations of children’s abilities are.

I remember the introduction of the continental quilt! Which within a few years was called a duvet.
We would talk of a bedquilt too but to me that's the same as a bedspread. I knew the word eiderdown but don't remember us having one.

@Allmyarseandpeggymartin

Being brought up to believe that “you’ll Labour all your life so vote Labour” I genuinely thought that anyone who voted conservative was evil

To be fair my parents still think this, it was only when I met perfectly nice normal people through my job in a bank when I was in my 20s that I realised that conservative voters weren’t automatically bad people

No Troy's are bad people. They might seem nice but you can't be nice and vote tory.

My grandparents used to eat bread and dripping and we ate loads of liver and faggots, although liver is kind of posh now!

Plenty of working class people vote Tory. They would never have been elected otherwise.

I'm a MC person who is proud that I have never voted Tory. Although I may be about to in the local elections, but that's another story ...

Tryingagain16
I absolutely loved The Singing Ringing Tree. You made a magical memory come back to me! And Top Cat and Secret Squirrel! Happy days!

TBF the OP was about being working class, not living in poverty. Not the same thing at all.

Having buttered bread with every meal. Always sliced white. Pre-buttered, cut in triangles, piled on a plate for us to help ourselves.