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?

@inappropriateraspberry

Who had this bedding?

I’ve sill got that bedding! We used it in the 1970s and 80s and then my gran gave it to me a few years ago, just before she died. All the sheets have a seam down the middle from where they had holes and got cut in half and resewn ‘sides to the middle’.

My family was incredibly poor, we had a black and white TV and no phone probably until the early 90s. We went on holiday about every 5 years and then that would be to Wales which is about 45 mins up the road which we would get the train to as we didn't have a car. We had to walk every were. Mum would make our clothes, or they would have to come off the reduced rail. We lived on a council estate but lots of people had cars and went on foreign holidays, but because we spoke well and my parents weren't getting drunk down the local pub and were generally decent ,not getting into screaming matches with the neighbors we were considered to be real snobs!?
we would eat the same meals every week and on a Saturday "a choc ice " from Iceland was a treat but I was happy, its all I knew ,we thought we were real Bobby dazzlers if we got the popman!!!!

@GameSetMatch

Pop man, thought everybody had a pop man!

And some weeks hiding from the pop man so he thought we were out - apparently too shameful to say "not this week thanks" because we didn't have the money for 2 bottles of pop. In fact, hiding from lots of people - including the tv licence van.

And yes, the neighbourhood dogs!

@curtainsforyou2

Vegetables = carrots, peas, swede or baked beans

This reminded me about Halloween - I was an adult before I carved a pumpkin. It was always a swede for my entire childhood. I remember telling someone about this and them asking "wasn't it really difficult to carve a swede?". Yes. It was. I was amazed how easy it was to carve a pumpkin. Didn't need to dig at it for 6 hours with a spoon.

Going on a day trip all squashed in my grandads car - stopping for lunch at the side of the road to eat our fish paste sandwiches we'd brought for the trip.

Parents going in the pub and all the kids being left outside with a bottle of pop and no supervision.

Walking miles to the PO every fortnight to collect the child benefit, couldn't afford the bus. This was the only time I could have a comic and some sweets so I loved child benefit day!

Watching the news and my dad shouting about thatcher.

The excitement when my dad bought something home that had "fallen off the back of a lorry", and a neighbourhood round of sharing stuff that they'd got from work - we'd get some bread from the guy over the road who worked at mother's pride driving the lorries for example. No idea if this was legit.

Drinking tea from a very young age. Cup of tea and bread and butter with evening meal (which was called tea).

Having all the mums and their kids from the street in our back garden on hot summer days because mum would put the garden sprinkler on top of dad's decorating steps/ladder. The mums would drink tea and natter, while us kids had a great time getting wet and cooling off.

Getting bathed in front of the fire in a tin bath and having an outside loo until I was 7 because we had no bathroom, then moving to a new council house with a bathroom...luxury!

Jam on batter pudding (Yorkshire pud) or Angel Delight for afters.

Rabbit stew with dumplings, liver and bacon, faggots and pease pudding. Bubble and squeak on Monday using left over veg from Sunday.

Grandad bringing a bottle of Blue Nun at Christmas. Foil chain Christmas decorations and multi coloured fairy lights on the artificial tree.

Spending whole days at our local open air swimming pool when I was old enough to go with my friends, and playing out until it got dark.

Getting our first colour TV when I was 11, which was rented, and our first phone (which had a lock) when I was 14.

@AmberItsACertainty

I always remember an Adrian Mole book of his later years speaking about his childhood and saying he never asked ‘what are we doing today’ at the weekend....there was no point because the answer would have been ‘nothing’. Children spent their feee time hanging around and playing out or playing inside whilst parents got on with jobs. Dad was always maintaining the car or mending something or gardening. Mum was always in the kitchen or perhaps sewing. They always seemed to have plenty of jobs to do and entertaining us or ‘enriching us’ wasn’t on the list.

I was first aware of being different from other families around age 10 when invited on playdates to friends homes and they'd get changed into fashionable clothes on arrival, I didn't have any fashionable clothes I had awful ugly home made clothes or hand me downs. Having to copy their behaviour because the first few times I made mistakes where my manners weren't upto scratch.

Also around the same time at school we'd been asked on Mondays to write a diary of our weekend. Some sort of writing exercise I think. Halfway through the school year the teacher got cross with me, called me lazy for always writing the same thing. I told her that's because every weekend was the same. My dad fixing the car or doing the gardening and my mum taking us on an hour's journey to see my grandparents, where we'd spend a few hours playing whilst she helped look after my grandad who wasn't well, cooked them dinner, cleaned their flat a bit and popped to the shops for them. The teacher said it was boring to read and why can't I just make something up. She made me feel ashamed, like my life wasn't good enough.

I got into trouble for writing about something that had happened not on the weekend just finished but the one before. The teacher was like "why wouldn't you have written about it last week?" But that week something else had happened, and there was no way I was wasting that extra event! They were few enough. Typical they would have to happen on the same weekend!

My mother, who was a dinner lady in the local primary school, told me they stopped with that piece of schoolwork because the kids were disclosing too much personal and distressing detail about their home lives ("we had chips for tea because mum's ex boyfriend broke in and trashed the kitchen again" type stuff). Which is kind of awful on a lot of levels. Did nobody ever think to intervene?

The excitement when my dad bought something home that had "fallen off the back of a lorry"
Reminded me my auntie worked at one point in a pork scratchings factory and got to bring extras home. I still love them to this day

Haha the phone lock, we used to tap the receiver to the number we wanted to get round it. Naughty eh

Also around the same time at school we'd been asked on Mondays to write a diary of our weekend. Some sort of writing exercise I think. Halfway through the school year the teacher got cross with me, called me lazy for always writing the same thing. I told her that's because every weekend was the same. My dad fixing the car or doing the gardening and my mum taking us on an hour's journey to see my grandparents, where we'd spend a few hours playing whilst she helped look after my grandad who wasn't well, cooked them dinner, cleaned their flat a bit and popped to the shops for them. The teacher said it was boring to read and why can't I just make something up. She made me feel ashamed, like my life wasn't good enough

I remember having to write about what we had done over the holidays. I always felt shit because my friends and classmates wrote about holidays in Florida, Greece etc, and I might, if lucky be able to write about a trip to the nearest big city to go to a museum as a treat!
The shittest one by a million miles was the year 7 teacher who made us go around the room and list what we had got for Christmas aloud. I had follow the girl who had got a TV, a mobile phone (super rare at the time for 11 year olds) and a host of other high cost items.
I still feel bad for making up a load of cash and brand name clothing.

This crap still happens @ImAlrightThanx

I was on a postgrad clinicians course at Newcastle Uni a couple of years ago. I was (ahem) 52, they were all around 22.
As an 'introduce yourself / memory game' we had to list 'the last 3 places we'd been on holiday'. All the youngsters came up with: 'Bali, Mexico, Dubai' etc. I said: London, York and Malta (many years ago).
There was a bit of open mouthed ness. And sniggering from the Course Tutor (my age, and should have known better).
It was a course where the clinicians, once qualified, were to work with a high degree of empathy. Not really a 'class' thing but it struck a chord with your post.

@IntermittentParps

The excitement when my dad bought something home that had "fallen off the back of a lorry" Reminded me my auntie worked at one point in a pork scratchings factory and got to bring extras home. I still love them to this day

My dad worked in an engineering works and you could get anything made/done for the price of a pint. Every washing machine in our street was plumbed in with hose clips rated for about 200 psi pressure because they'd been half inched out of the work. There was a guy who made his own kitchen knives during his lunch hour (they looked a bit like prison shivs but fair play, my mum's one lasted years!). I even had a majorette stick, made my a friend of my dad's based on an oral description passed on from me - it was a little odd looking but did the job fine

I even had a majorette stick, made my a friend of my dad's based on an oral description passed on from me - it was a little odd looking but did the job fine

I LOVE that

It was brilliant! The rubber knobbly bits were different colours as well (blue and green) - it was better than a real one!

My Dad often made me ‘versions’ if the latest toy because he didn’t want to buy it or couldn’t afford it. They were always ‘interesting’ because somehow they weren’t quite right.

Same went for clothes my Mum made. My Mum made me a rara skirt and a silver lame elastic area boob tube. I was about 9 and the elastic was very much needed or there was no way it way staying up. Friends all seemed to have the shop version which was somehow better. I probably imagined they all had the shop version thiugh.

I remember my Mum saying the same thing happened when she was at school and her Mum knitted her some brown gym knickers for PE. Imagine having KNITTED BROWN gym knickers!

I longed for a C and A Clockhouse or a Tammy girl carrier bag to keep my PE kit in for school. Middle class kids all had a kit bag or a freebie from the Midland Bank, but we had carrier bags, usually from the supermarket.

My Dad nailed Blakey’s into the heels of our shoes to stop them wearing down. They made us sound like we were wearing tap shoes. He also has this rubber stuff he cut out for re-soling which wa S glued on with evil smelling glue in a tin can (can anyone remember the name of it) ...we were under strict instructions not to get near that glue or the creosote used for the fence. Making things list longer was a big activity for my Dad and actually he’s still into it today....make do and mend or environmentalism or whatever you want to call it, but making things last isn’t a bad thing is it. He gets upset at all the stuff at the tip that has been binned and is perfectly good stuff.

Not me but DH and him being surprised it wasn’t the same for everyone. Everyone smoking and drinking, everyone leaving school at 15/16 (he was the first in a massive extended family to not do so), the police coming to every family wedding. Massive family parties where the kids were all locked in one bedroom until 3-4am whilst their parents got paralytic. Everyone all going on holiday to a holiday park the same weekend so they would almost know everyone. Never going anywhere interesting. Even though he was from a big city, as were his parents, they hardly saw any of it (they weren’t badly off, they had a car etc) and they had never been to some of the most famous places to visit. Not reading ‘posh’ newspapers and massive suspicion of ‘posh’ people (anyone educated).

My parents were from very different backgrounds, so it was a kind of hybrid upbringing.
We had quite a limited diet, lots of tinned stuff , not much fresh. Angel delight, loads of sweets and biscuits.
I didn’t know what pasta or spaghetti were when we had it at school meals.
No interest in education , expected to leave school and start work.
Piano in the house though, and my father was always at the library, my mum never.

I can vividly recall the phone ringing in the middle of the night, it was my dad giving ma the heads up as customs were on the way and we had alcohol off the ships stashed in the shed. Ma was frantically throwing it down the sink until she realised she just had empty bottles instead of full ones. We bagged it up and hid it in the woods till the coast was clear

Sloth66, that was a bit like mine too. My parents are both from poor working-class families but with different outlooks. My mother's outlook was education wasn't 'for the likes of us' and she was angry that I didn't want to leave school and go to work at 16.
My dad OTOH went to grammar school and then to Oxbridge (in the days of generous grants) and stood up for me doing A Levels and uni.

My mum dominated the house and we had ITV on all the time, and commercial radio. No books or classical music or anything. Our diet was like yours, lots of frozen and tinned and LOTS of sweets/biscuits! It was a great event if Mum made her spag bol (slimy spaghetti with a blob of mince and sauce plonked on top).

My father told me I was only wasting my money learning to drive as I'd never pass the test. HE COULDNT DRIVE. I can 😁 really stuck in his craw. Girls should just marry and have children, end of conversation.

Wow my grammer is bad SORRY!

Your grammar looks fine to me!

My dad didn't drive either (he took lessons, but didn't take the test) and then the first time my dad was with me in my car, I was trying to park, he said "I'll direct you in!", jumped out of the car while it was still moving, I touched my wing mirror off a lamppost as I was distracted watching him dive from my moving car (it wasn't damaged) and afterwards he said I wasn't safe to be driving and he wasn't going to speak to me until I sold the car and promised not to drive again. I was about to start my first professional job after finishing my PhD and the commute was 2h by public transport, 35mins by car. After a couple of weeks of silence from both sides he decided he could live with it but it was just mental! I think sometimes my parents thought that to do anything new you had to be a complete expert in it - they were really uncomfortable with trying new stuff and making mistakes.

We have a very artistic family (not all) but none have taken it further than school. It's a shame really, my niece is talented but forced to go into nursing which didn't work out as she hates blood. Art is not a career choice! BOLLOCKS

Girls should just marry and have children, end of conversation

I went to the GP in the 80's to try and get some help with my period pains which were horrendous. I was told "It will get better once you have kids". Never occurred to him that maybe that was not in my immediate future