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?

Is sharing a room working class?! I honestly thought everyone did it - my kids still do!

Ice on the inside of our windows

Immersion heater
Sharing bathwater
Buy as you view tv, pound coins in the back
Hiding from provident/brighthouse
Mash and beans for tea
Grandma buying my school uniform
Awful cheap sanitary towells (29p)
Washing hair with washing up liquid

Making Dilly Carts out of old pram wheels!

Sharing a bed with more than one person. At one point I shared a double with my aunt and grandmother.

Outdoor loo.

Washing hands, hair, brushing teeth etc in the kitchen sink (because there wasn’t another).

Getting phone calls in an emergency to the neighbours across the road — they would come over and get us.

Knowing never to invite anyone over around a mealtime because there’s as nothing to spare.

Knowing what day of the week it was by what there was to eat — food got cheaper and skimpier as payday approached.

Just assuming that, despite the fact I always got excellent marks, I would leave school at 16 and work in a shop. University was ‘only for rich people’ (despite the availability of full grants).

That office jobs were posh.

This is a really interesting and evocative thread thank you OP and everyone.

I grew up in a pretty well off family but in the 70s so quite a few of the things (sharing baths, roaming the streets etc) are things we did but most not it's like a really interesting history program :)

I don’t understand the 50p for the electric meter or TV ones. How did that work? Does someone come and empty your TV of 50ps?

The electric for the house was pay as you go, cash in a meter.

Same as now but you have a key or something you put credits on.

Someone must have come and emptied it regularly yes (didn't have one).

Having bread and marg with every meal - it would fill you up so we didnt have to have so much food.

Looking across my nan's living room and the air being thick with swirling cigarette smoke.

Whorles of ice in the inside of my bedroom window on winter mornings.

Drinking squash out of mugs - we didn’t have glasses.
Sat outside the pub with a packet of crisps and a bottle of pop while my dad went for a drink on a Saturday afternoon.
Home made birthday cake - never bought. Only one present.
Making gift tags out of last years Christmas cards.
No carpet on the floor upstairs until I was about seven.

50p for the meter was the now top up pre paid gas meter card. Coin went in slot turned handle and set amount of electric could be used up.

You used to be able hire TV with big meter on the back that were mega expensive. So back in the 90s it would cost £1 a day to watch your own TV. Man would come and empty it to pay of the TV rental.

Tinned fruit and squirty cream for pudding on a Sunday

@Wildern, can I be really nosy and ask whether you did leave school at 16 or whether someone spotted your potential?

Outside loo with the purple paper that oranges came wrapped in as posh loo paper.

Ice inside the windows. Coats on top of the blankets for more warmth.

One bath a week with emersion to heat water. Flannel rest of the week.

Massive arrow root biscuit in car while mum and dad in pub

I was the kid who wore home made clothes. All the time.

Waiting on the door step of my friend's house waiting for her to come home from school to play. So I was a pre-schooler out by myself

Some of these are great!

I’d say everything we had was either cheap, hand me downs or nicked (probably by someone in my family)

I remember going with my dad to the working mans club at about age 10 - him sending me to the bar to buy drinks and me getting a Bacardi! My mum would have gone mad! Then I’d have to get him on the bus home absolutely hammered!

I remember every Sunday me and my brother would tape the charts so we had music 😂

Same as others I.e sharing bath water, putting the heater on to warm it up ages before, running out of electric so having to use candles and sitting in my coat! 😂 the good old days 😂

@starfishmummy

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

I still do this, old habits die hard!

My dad was also a big fan of bringing things home he found in a skip.

Dad coming home from work with things that “fell off the back of a lorry”
Same when returning from the pub on a Sunday after with half a pig/lamb and my mum going spare because she had no room in the freezer
Asking me if the bar was opening at 7pm on a Saturday night so I could serve him pints in the kitchen from his 4 pint tub he’d had filled on his way home
God, I miss that man and his funny ways so much

Blue Nun at Xmas - my mum still has a bottle every year.....,,,,no other non-sparkling white wine has ever been consumed.

Defo remember the 50p meter just to have a bath!! But then we moved to a house with a boiler!!! And a dish washer

God I thought we'd moved up in the world 😂

Wasn’t what I considered to be poor certainly lot more people worse off on benefits than working class jobs. But never having money to do anything “middle class” so you could only watch as some kids at school did things like swimming lessons, dance, theatre trips, foreign holidays, followed fashion.

For me was only having one swimming costume I was AMAZED kids at school would say they had bought 3/4 to take on holiday. We had one for a caravan break. You wore it, if it wasn’t dry before you needed you put it on wet. Seemed so exotic!

I remember at my grandparents house we had ripped up newspaper instead of toilet roll. And electric wires from appliances were just pushed into the sockets and held in with matchsticks - those were the days !

As the youngest of 6 (4 girls)(2 boys) I never got bought any new clothes all belonged to my older sisters first.
Our Holy Communion dress starting out long on my oldest sister by the time it got to me it was up my arse as my mum must have cut it shorter every time one of us wore it.

I didn't know we were poor because everyone in the street was the same as us.