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?

I look back on our meals with real fondness and nostalgia but every time there's a 'crap dinners' thread on here it basically reads like my childhood menu.

It was all cheap, filling, simple meals like

• stuff on toast - cheese, beans, or tinned tomatoes on copious amounts of Kwiksave own white bread
• chicken drumsticks and baked potatoes
• hot dogs using the big bags of frozen sausages, heaped high with fried onions

Putting margarine on toast because we never ever bought butter (not envy)

People selling dodgy stuff in the pub or out the back of a van.

Having at least one room in the house undecorated at any given time (and for months/years because the money for it had run out, not just because we were always decorating).

Getting government vouchers to get school uniform with from C&A.

Every sofa we ever had being a hand me down from Grandparents.

Like the OP said, stray dogs. None where I live now, always a few knocking about when I was a kid.

"Finding things" down the bluebell woods with my uncle at weekends and then taking them to the pub to sell them - only realised not long ago that my uncle must have been a fence or something. He was an unemployed miner and would take me out with him to walk his dogs every Sunday afternoon - I must have been his alibi

Coal dust everywhere at my grandparents pit cottage - my grandad always had a warm front room and kitchen because of the coal fires and free coal

Keeping pigeons and racing them - again my grandad and uncle. I still look at pigeons' feet to see if they have rings on them

Getting government vouchers to get school uniform with from C&A.

God yes, forgot about that! And free school meals. I remember having to be given a token and feeling really embarrassed - horrible system.

We were quite well off despite living in a council estate. Our parents had bought their house, one of the first to do it and even ran their own business from home booking acts into clubs.

But every room was white or magnolia. Everything in the house was second hand and we had the worst scratchiest wooden armed cottage style suite ever. You are slipped through the rubber straps under the cushions and it was like fire ants crawling over your skin. Dad would brew his own beer and the airing cupboard was always full of bubbling buckets.

A summer treat was an ice pop from the freezer and once a week our nan would give us 12p for an ice cream from mr. Whippy. Summer entertainment was the local park with friends from it road (age4-16, much more friendly than now) or occasionally during a heat wave it would be a magic water fight. I can still smell the hot wet pavement and hear bare feet slapping and kids squealing. Proper goosebump inducing memories.

Despite not being totally poor and certainly not being on benefits, my dad was besties with the men that ran the local tip . Should the washing machine break down he would tell them the make and model and then he would collect another broken machine a few days later and harvest it's parts.

I also remember when I was very young he worked for a chain of shops that did white goods. One day he came home with a microwave . He hasn't bought it, it has been returns as damaged and it was free. After that pretty much every meal was done in it. Apart from chips. But a whole chicken? Yeah- grey and rubbery as hell but that sprinkle of Paprika will really hide that.

@Avondklok

Surely these things WERE normal and didn't just seem so?

Yep.

At Hogmanay, my parents always had a party. All the family and neighbours would be in. Thinking back they were absolutely steaming and all the kids would be up and we all got spam sandwiches and a shandy.
I bloody loved those parties.

TV Rentals
Corona pop man delivering on a Thursday
The immersion heater for hot water
Fried Spam and mash and always fish on a Friday
Never asking for seconds because there wasn’t any
Tea was bread and butter eaten before cake or biscuits.
Meat and two veg dinner time, never three veg.

We had no washing machine, no central heating, the rubber pipe shower thing for washing your hair.

Apple juice or orange juice from the milkman but it was expensive so only a small bit at a time (even now I can't bring myself to pour out a whole glass of juice).

Hiding from the TV licence people, the catalogue people, anyone who knocked at the door unless your parents knew who they were just in case they were asking for money. Selling things to pay bills.

This was the 1980s.

Wearing clothes as children bought from the back of a van and evidently stolen
People on the estate swapping Christmas voucher schemes for cash
Topping up gas and electric
Half the children at school being on free school meals
Being scared of dogs, always seemed to be dangerous dogs just wondering around and in peoples front gardens barking
Foreign no duty paid fags

I can relate to a lot of these posts so for that reason alone I don’t like “Retro” anything because it just reminds me of when we didn’t have anything or much money. I don’t really want to be reminded. The good old days, who is kidding who.

The dustbin men used to come to the side of the house to collect the metal dustbins, everything that didn't fit in the dustbins went on a massive garden bonfire on a weekly basis.

My brother and me used to smoke rolled up newspaper 'cigars' lit from the bonfires.

Messing about on the railway lines despite the public service announcements at school

Eating jellied Eels as a treat when we went to the beach.

Ooh I've got more!

People referring to 'designer label' clothes but actually meaning literally anything branded (so Adidas was 'designer'. God only knows what they'd have made of Gucci or McQueen).

Getting the bus or the train everywhere at all times because we didn't have a car.

Sneaking sweets into the cinema because pick & mix was apparently more expensive than diamonds.

Veg only ever being peas or carrots. I don't think I ever ate broccoli until I'd left home.

Salad cream.

Being a working class child who is now 50ish - buying cigarettes with a notes from my Mam, cashing cheques for my Mam at the local Coop, paying the rent for the TV, walking to infants school with friends, a very limited variety of vegetables, a twin tub washing machine, a degree of freedom you wouldn't believe, getting 2 buses to go for a day at the beach, no packet money, only one birthday party ever. Life was good.

Also all the kids at primary school hating Maggie Thatcher, although I don't think we really knew why just that our parents hated her. We used to sing playground chants with the line 'glory glory Maggie Thatcher's dead' 😳

Salmon of any sort is posh imo lol
Sky TV. When I had it as an adult I felt so rich!

We were working class but not poor and I had a lovely childhood.

Everyone smoked, all of the time and while pregnant/around kids, less so in the late 90s though.

Not having a car until I was in my teens but then not many people had a car.

Doing a catalogue to spread out the cost of clothes.

All the parents I knew did manual or skilled manual jobs and so wore overalls, the women weren’t allowed to wear jewellery or make up at work. When I got my first job at a bank and had to wear office clothes I had to do a twirl for the neighbours.

I always wanted a job where I could wear make up and my engagement ring all of the time, it seemed the epitome of glam.

Lunch being a cup-a-soup with a slice of white bread and marge.

Netto

Stealing dogends out of my Dads ashtray and smoking them to the filter when I was 12.

@ParkheadParadise everything you have said 👍

Our first communion dress started as a wedding dress for someone back in the 60s, then had various incarnations as communion dress in the 70s for all the cousins and ended up as a christening gown in 1980 😆

'Give me three rings when you get there'. No one's mum would impose the cost of a phone call on someone else, but if we'd walked a long way like across the allotments to see a friend they'd like to know we'd arrived ok. So letting the phone ring three times then hanging up was an I'm ok signal where I lived in the 80s.

@ClearMountain

I remember drinking wine out of mugs in the back garden and thinking it was posh because we had wine not just beer. Knee length skirts were posh because all the chavs wore micro mini skirts, even for school. Flowers came from the garden, you were posh if you could afford to buy them from the shop. If you went on a weeks holiday to Tenerife you were posh because most people went to Blackpool. Although to me it seemed posh if you went to Blackpool because we had no holiday at all!

To me having a garden with flowers would have been posh beyond words. We had a long narrow garden that was perpetually shaded by washing and trodden to mud by kids and dogs. My mum and dad tried but I cannot remember anything but dusty privet ever flowering.

We used to go on holidays to my gran's house in Ireland. It was literally a two up, two down cottage in the middle of nowhere with an outside drop toilet and only one cold tap in the kitchen but to me it was like a mansion because her front garden was full of beautiful roses, enough that we could pick them and bring them indoors. And out the back was a massive field where they grew veg bordered by apple trees. I could pick an apple whenever i wanted. That seemed extra posh because we only had fruit at Christmas.

iguanadonna
Not a single person had a phone on my neighbourhood when I was a child. Only posh peplehad phones.

Great excitement watching one of the neighbours do a 'midnight flit'

Walking miles to the swimming baths with a group of mates, the eldest was probably twelve. Then all walking back home with soaking wet hair. Our parents could just afford the 10p for swimming but not bus fares too.

Yes to the ring 3 times. Also having little money box next to the phone for someone to leave 10p case they needed to use it. It was only 10p but was considered v rude if you didn’t.

Not having many books. Read plenty from the library but books to keep were Xmas annuals or rare presents. Having text books that weren’t borrowed from school seemed very alien.

Has anyone mentioned travelling around in the boot of the car yet? It must have been like dumping a body.