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?

Power cuts! Getting ready for school in front of the open door gas oven.
Intravenous tea, still drink it like its going out of fashion. Cardboard insoles off the cereal packet.

@GameSetMatch

Pop man, thought everybody had a pop man!

Oh my goodness I remember my sister telling her first boyfriend at university about having a pop man. He was howling with laughter and didn’t believe her! I’m from near to Birmingham originally so just assumed was a northern thing !

80's kid here, I would describe my childhood as lower middle class I am less than 50. I can relate to;
sunday night baths and hair wash with a jug
Hand me downs, very few clothes new to me.
Going with Mum to collect the family allowance
Walking to save the bus fare
Playing out and taking ourselves swimming from 8ish.
Babysitting from 12 or 13 often in much posher houses.
Sugar sandwiches
Saturday job from 14.

This was in London.

Oh and we rented our telly.

I’m in my 30s. Loads of this thread happened to me growing up, and many family and friends from were I grew up still live like this in certain ways.

My parents never had money or spent money. Ice inside, no heating at all bar gas fire in one room lit ‘occasionally’. Single pain windows with holes at side. Never warm enough house or clothing.

I paid for my parents to have all new windows, boiler, heating, arranged with my dad. My mother, 5 years on still goes on about it being a waste of money I should have saved for something else ( we could afford it fine). Even though their house is now semi fit to live in!

All of our cutlery and crockery came as giveaways when you bought petrol and was all mismatched.

Toy shops doing 'lay-by' schemes. Your mum would pay in 50p a week or whatever.
Up until very recently we had a local pram shop, they still did the lay-by.

Doorstep loans. There'd be a woman going round the houses with a carrier bag of cash, but no one ever mugged her.
Some of my friends could only buy clothes from certain shops, something similar to doorstep loans but instead of being given cash the mums were given shop vouchers.

All the women I knew seemed to be really assertive, I guess they couldn't afford to be ripped off in any way.

My earlier childhood wasn’t truly working class. Both my parents had well paid jobs and we had a car and a nicely furnished and decorated house in a lovely area.
Despite this we still played out with lots of other children for hours in the summer, build dens and fires, charged other neighbourhood kids 10 or 20p to watch a show we’d made up. Drew pictures of whatever was more relevant at the time (flowers, Christmas, beach etc) and sold them to neighbours for 5p each. Any money we made we’d run to the local shop and buy sweets to share between us.
We shared bedrooms (4 siblings so 2 in each room).
We’d holiday at butlins in wales twice a year but my dad worked in Egypt so he’d never come.
Whenever he came home he’d bring presents for half the street.
We had a shower but still only showered twice a week and washed at the sink on other days.
I remember walking to primary school with my siblings because mum started work at 8am and dad was in Egypt.
Sometimes dad would be home for extended periods after what we were told were “falls”. Turns out he was in a precarious job over there that got him beaten and kidnapped a few times.
I only found this out about ten years ago.
I remember telling friends at school he was home again after falling down steps drunk in Egypt - poor dad just went along with the whole school thinking he was an incompetent alcoholic!
I wish my children could have the amazing sense of community I had as a child. Playing kerby on the street, playing British bulldog with the big boys from round the corner etc. I have the best memories.

And yes, I would say a fair few people where I grew up still are skipping meals, cold homes, struggling to pay for many things

We called it the eiderdown. No idea if that is correct as my dad is from the north and my mum is mixed Scottish and Irish so there are a few things I say that no one else does!! Lol

@GameSetMatch

Pop man, thought everybody had a pop man!

Yep, the Corona van came round on a Friday and we got 1 bottle of cream soda to last the week.

The football man, he came every week and my mum would do this ticking on a sheet of paper.

I remember one year in the 80's my dad (unemployed bricklayer) came home with a key to open the 50p coin box on the electricity meter. We used the same 50p for months but mum kept a tally of each turn so she would have enough money to fill the box for when the meter man came. Well when mum came back from the bank with her bags of 50 pence pieces we had used so much that they wouldn't all fit into the meter. So mum sat the box on the floor by the meter with the extra bags next to it. The meter man didn't bat an eyelid and just counted the coins when mum said she had no idea what had happened!!!

Being allowed to play out til late not even coming back for food
Pop bottles
Massive skipping ropes which all the kids in the street would borrow/play together with
Findus pancakes and boil in the bag fish with parsley sauce
Speaking to all the neighbours (in and out of houses)
Everyone was a friend would often have neighbours in house

Saved up baked bean labels to get silver box chain, still have and wear it, with pride 🤣

Saving the ring pulls from Super Tennants cans to get a Joe Bloggs denim jacket. My Dad had about 20 of those jackets 😂

I would say whilst some of the things on here are just memories of life for the majority of people in the 70s, some are definitely about being poor, rather than working class.
My parents were working class, both worked in shops, and bought their own house (mid 1960s), we had cars, decent clothes, Clarks shoes, proper meals etc, and went on holiday most years. My friends families were similar, in that they owned their homes and their dads were postmen or had other WC jobs, and lived very similar lives to us.
None of us would have been 'well off', but nobody was wiping their arses on newspaper or buying stuff off the back of a lorry, and we were definitely working, not middle class families.

Hiding from the ‘provvy wifey’

DietrichandDiMaggio I made a similar point (less eloquently) up thread and got jumped on for it!

Green shield stamps

Hand me down clothes from cousins including bras. One pair of shoes only that you wore for everything.
Being so hungry that you ate every part of the apple including the core, the same with an orange.
Ice on the inside of the windows at home and drying hair in front of the gas fire.
Holidays in a flat above a hotel, saving 50p for the electric meter. The only eating out on holiday would be chips on the last night as a treat.
A bar of soap wrapped in a flannel fashioned in to the shape of a swan for Christmas, a blu loo block also in net as a swan as an air freshener and a knitted chick with a cheapo small chocolate egg for Easter. All made by a gran or great aunt with whatever they could lay their hands on cheap.
We had very little but as my gran would say you don’t miss what you haven’t had.

My family only had fresh orange juice (as opposed to squash/cordial) as a treat on Sunday's. Actually I say fresh juice , but it was actually the suff that came frozen in a tube and you had to re-constitute it with water. Once when we were staying with my Dad's friends in Croydon they asked me if I would like some Orange juice, and I said "Sunday orange? But it's Monday." This also leads me to the fact that until I was about 10 years old, all our summer holidays were spent with either my Dad's friends in Croydon, or my Mum's cousin in Bristol. I assumed only real rich people went abroad.

Sunday night bath all sharing the same bath water

Drinking tea from the age of three, because milk was too expensive.
Having one bath a week - and sharing it with my sisters.
Making "new" clothes out of old ones bought from jumble sales.
Buying shampoo in little sachets - and making them last for 3 or 4 weeks (one hair wash per week).

@Miasicarisatia this also happened to me at one school I went to - everyone could wear their own clothes, I wore uniform

@GoneCrazy boil in the bag fish! I had forgotten that. Hated the parsley one, loved the butter one - can imagine the parsley one now. It tasted so.....odd. . Also Bernard Matthew turkey burgers with frozen sweetcorn & boiled potatoes. Infact many things with boiled potatoes

@DietrichandDiMaggio I have also said this and agree. I actually have no idea how much money we had - given the 2nd hand / homemade clothes, caravan holidays, basic food, etc I assume we were not flush but normal working class in that the pay was low and you had to be careful with what you had, but could afford basic food, clothes and necessities like heating and toilet paper. I suppose what is true - same as now - is that being low paid makes it easier to fall into poverty/live beyond your means.