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?

@ChelseeDagger

fucking narrowboat holidays.

My parents bought a narrowboat and expected me to be ecstatic at spending every summer in market towns and canal side pubs instead of a a Greek Island.

Thats not working class. We were lucky if we went on a day trip to the beach in the summer, let alone anything else.

@ImAlrightThanx

Well its not MC either. I know this because all of my friends were MC and they were in Skiathos, not the shropshire union bastard canal.

Eating tea in front of the telly (no dining room let alone a dining table).
Doing the ironing on a folded bath towel on the kitchen table.
Making toast under the grill in the oven. My parents never owned a toaster and I had no idea it was a normal piece of kitchen kit till I was an adult.
Our holiday when I was young was a week in the farmhouse that my mum cleaned when the farmer, his wife and family went on holiday. Best holiday memories ever. Less than 3 miles from home.
Wedding receptions in the village hall with mandatory gatecrashers and at least one of: a fight, someone throwing up before the meal, or someone caught shagging (not their partner) in the loo.

Nodding at so much here, esp from the 70s and 80s!

No central heating or shower, drying my hair while sitting in front of a three bar fire.

I thought it was normal to sit in the car of a pub car park while Dad drank various pints. Also, if we did go in a social club or the children's room of a pub, we were sent to get cigarettes from the machine.
Everyone smoked and like pp, I used to play with the ash in ash trays. My mother liked those tall ash trays.

We used to put washing up liquid in the bath instead of bubble bath. We shared bath water.

Dripping sandwiches, Bovril, corned beef, bread mopping gravy off the plate, soggy veg. White bread with every meal!
Tinned salmon was the ultimate treat.

I remember going round my posh friend's house and seeing wholemeal bread and semi skimmed milk for the first time! There was fruit too that wasn't just a banana, apple and orange.

Making toast under the grill in the oven. My parents never owned a toaster and I had no idea it was a normal piece of kitchen kit till I was an adult.

This. I remember scraping lard off the dirty grill pan.

And talking really fast before"the pips go" on a public phone,!

Holes and ladders in tights repaired with nail varnish, or sewn up -.never thrown away.

And we didn't have duvets we has blankets and the patterned cover on the top.( Can't remember what it was called?)

I grew up working class in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Miserable little two up two down house which backed onto a railway line
No inside loo - ours was at the end of the backyard and had spiders in it!
An open coal fire which everyone huddled around
The coal man delivering coal to our shed
The "rag and bone men" giving us pennies for jam jars we collected
No bathroom friday was bath night in a tin bath in front of the fire
My mother constantly whinging that "you cant keep a family on one man's wages"
Being taken to the second hand market for my school uniform
Putting shillings (old money) into the meter and the lights running out at the most inconvenient moments
Going to a call box to phone someone

Lots more

By the mid 1960s I had left home and that life behind me.

My parents thought it was "posh" because I had to open a bank account in my job and was paid by bank transfer and had a cheque book. Also when I got a phone put in to my first flat.

Who had this bedding?

@Allmyarseandpeggymartin

Women wearing every piece of gold jewellery they’ve ever owned all at the same time on a night out

Hahahaha 😂😂😂😂😂

Ripped up free-ads papers as loo roll.
Yes to thinking office jobs were for posh people (first person I ever knew who worked in an office was my BIL when I met DH, he's not posh at all).
Yes to being expected to get a job and leave home at 16 despite being top of my class/predicted 12 As. I actually got 4 GCSEs in the end as I was far too busy drinking/taking drugs with the rest of the family.
Being given fags, booze, speed, cocoaine by parents and their friends at 14/15.
Being really excited by a bag of donated clothes.
One present at birthday/Christmas that I could choose from the catalogue up to £20.
Hairdressers were for posh people.
Yes to one swimming costume, though we still all have one each actually, it's never occurred to me the DCs would need more than one, we don't swim 2 days in a row.
No glasses, just mugs. Parents used jam jars for wine or the odd pint glass that came home from the pub.
We had a 'shoe van' that came around every 6 months or so (rural Wales) with cheap shoes. That was odd...

@BlackForestCake

What on earth is working class about growing up on a farm or having a narrowboat?

Nothing. They are definitely not typical WC experiences.

I can relate to lots of these, particularly buying clothes of dubious origins from people selling door to door, and from the catalogue (because you could spread payments over a few mths).

@inappropriateraspberry

Who had this bedding?

My aunt. Ours wasn't that posh!

@inappropriateraspberry

Who had this bedding?

Yes!

Plaggy baggin - I always wanted a proper wooden sledge.

Playing out on the street with abandoned safeway/kwick save trolleys..

I loved my nanas loo roll dolly! I thought it was a old posh folk thing ... completely forgot they existed

My parents bought a narrowboat and expected me to be ecstatic at spending every summer in market towns and canal side pubs instead of a a Greek Island

😂😂

Yep...all my wc friends on our estate used to fume when their parents kept buying boats.

@Frickssake

And we didn't have duvets we has blankets and the patterned cover on the top.( Can't remember what it was called?)

Remembered! Was a bedspread!

@inappropriateraspberry
We did 😂😂😂
My mum cut those sheets into dusters when she replaced our bedding 😂😂

@speakout

Chicken- we only ate it once a year- at christmas. Far too expensive otherwise. But I grew up in a home with no central heating, no phone, no fridge, no washing machine- this was in the UK.

I'll raise you no electricity and no running water. In the 90s. We did have a small black and white TV that my step Dad ran off a car battery though. Was fine until it started running down and the picture would go dodgy (usually at the important part of a film, so many classic movies I don't know the ending of!).

If you grow up on a small hill farm in Yorkshire in the 80s you certainly wouldn’t be posh

Pall Mall cigarettes, My brother used to get them from the 'Yanks' - The American forces stationed near us.

King size ciggies for Woodbine price. Three shillings (3/-) for a packet of 20, I think

@Frickssake

And we didn't have duvets we has blankets and the patterned cover on the top.( Can't remember what it was called?)

Eiderdown? Sorry, not sure how to spell it, but my Nan always called it that.

[quote ChelseeDagger]@ImAlrightThanx

Well its not MC either. I know this because all of my friends were MC and they were in Skiathos, not the shropshire union bastard canal.[/quote]
If your friends were all MC, don't you think you might have been too? But with parents who did holidays differently.

WC people couldn't afford to buy a narrowboat IME.