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?

Yes to lots of smoking and drinking although we weren't absolutely dreadful for money because we went on holidays abroad and to Disneyland and Center Parcs. We also had a council house and my friends' parents were more well to do.

My dad had started life in a two up two down with no inside toilet and his parents worked hard manual jobs all their lives. Dad managed to get qualified for his job as an adult and he would still say he’s wc but I think others would say his life was mc.

When me and Dbro were kids we used to stay at nana’s council house for the school holidays in the early 80s and so much of this reminds me of those weeks.

Her savings jar and the coach trips to Blackpool
White bread
Things from the market stall
Toilet rolls with dolly on top

Always having burnt bits on my nylon socks. I only had 1 pair and my form teacher at grammar school insisted we wear clean socks every day, so I would wash them before bed and they were never dry, so I would finish them under the grill or in front of the fire. It mostly worked.

A blue launderette bag going round the street, you put in the clothes you had outgrown and picked out something that fitted.

That was my bedding too inappropriateraspberry! My mum worked in a factory that made them.

The cover on top of the blankets was called an eiderdown. (somebody asked)

Growing up, I thought anyone who didn't live in a terraced house or who owned a car was posh. That wasn't too many people in my town.

Playing out in the streets and wandering up into the hills in a gang was normal children's spare time activity until the Moors Murders happened.

We never had central heating, and no fridge, tv, or inside toilet until I was about 10.

When I went to university it took me a whole term to get used to living with central heating. I was so used to it being quite cold inside!

@inappropriateraspberry

Who had this bedding?

Everybody I know! I still have some pillowcases somewhere 😂

ReceptacleForTheRespectable

No I was the scholarship kid at the private school.
Believe me, I knew I was WC every day I was at that school.

inappropriateraspberry Its called candy stripe. we had it in flannelette, and when the middle wore out my Mum would cut the sheet in half and sew the edges together to make it last longer. I hated the seam.

A cover could be anything. A bed-cover is probably a bedspread.

A bedspread is used if you sleep under sheet & blankets. The bedspread is a decorative layer covering the blankets and hanging down on either side of the bed - probably not as far as the floor. It could be a single layer of fabric - probably quite heavy.

An eiderdown is a thicker cover and should, as the name suggests, be stuffed with feathers. It may cover the top of the bed only.

I remember them becoming the under pillowcases eventually (before mattress and pillow protectors were a thing).

@Frickssake

A cover could be anything. A bed-cover is probably a bedspread.

A bedspread is used if you sleep under sheet & blankets. The bedspread is a decorative layer covering the blankets and hanging down on either side of the bed - probably not as far as the floor. It could be a single layer of fabric - probably quite heavy.

An eiderdown is a thicker cover and should, as the name suggests, be stuffed with feathers. It may cover the top of the bed only.

There's also a quilt - not a duvet - another name for eiderdown?

@Akire

Never going in “posh shops” some unwritten rule that people like us weren’t allowed. Even to this day some shops I wouldn’t feel comfortable going in.

Not going to a proper hairdressers and getting a neighbour or an “auntie” to do it for you.

Yep, this one stuck with me. I'm scared of posh shops and have never been to a hairdressing salon, I wouldn't know how they work! Have twice been to a hairdresser who works out of her summer house in her garden, I can cope with that, but mostly my sister cuts my hair or I do it myself.

The paper was read and then put into the bathroom as we never had toilet paper.
Ice on the inside of the windows.
Black mould all over the kitchen.
A frying pan and chip pan permanently full of used lard.
Hiding behind the couch when the rent man, insurance man, milk man, etc came to the door.
Sitting in the car outside the pub for hours, sharing a wee bottle of coke and a bag of ready salted.
A new outfit for back to school after the summer. Maybe another outfit at Christmas.
One pair of shoes and wearing them till you outgrew them no matter the condition.
Going to bed wearing as many layers as you wore during the day.
No fridge, washing machine, central heating.
The dog lived off leftovers, dog food was never bought.
No birthday cake, parties, and presents were something you needed. And bloody bath salts.
Rented b&w telly. And my mum only watched STV so it only really needed one channel. I was desperate to see Top of the Pops, but even half an hour a week was too much to ask for.
We never ate out, got a takeaway or went on holiday.

There was always money for drink and fags though. My dad smoked 60 Players untipped a day and my mum was on 20 B&Hs. They were pissed every Friday and Saturday.

Playing in grit bins

Scraping the putty from round the windows

Swirling round washing poles

All neighbourhood children playing manhunt 6pm each night

Being sent to borrow a cup of sugar/ fag/ some coffee from a neighbour 😂

Ahhh those were the days ❤️

Thanks to pps for reminding me about bed spreads and quilts!

Did anyone else play Ackey 123 in the streets?

We went out to eat when my sister was little and she announced that she didn't like the 'Chinese peas' ..turns out that the only time she had ever eaten garden peas was in special fried rice- we were only ever given peas from a tin of farrows.

I can remember playing chappy and a neighbour catching us and slapping my backside. I ran home crying to my mum who also slapped my backside and dragged me to the neighbour's house to apologise.😂😂😂

Mine is playing with stray dogs. I was an adult before I realised that approaching strange dogs is meant to be dangerous

I grew up on council estates in the north of England and don't remember this at all.

Stray dogs were not common, because they would be reported immediately taken away to be put down. Any dog off a lead was rightly, considered potentially dangerous.

Infact there was less dogs back then kept as pets. Dogs were more associated with a working or having a use. Guarding business premises (heavily chained up and behind fences) or with the country side, or terriers kept for ratting and often dogs were not kept in houses. People didn't keep pets as much back then, partly probably because of the cost.

The law was much stricter, licensing etc, and any dog that bit someone was immediatly put down. It was better and safer then IMO

My dad worked as a mechanic and used to offer the customers in the garage a service of filling their cars up for them.

Obviously he didn’t make any money as they only paid for the petrol they got, however he was able to collect all the tokens given free at the petrol station!

He got loads so all our furniture, electronics and kitchen ware came from there.

At Christmas other kids would choose presents from the Argos catalogue, we were given the Esso one and told to chose something from there

Warm and loving family relationships .

Eating tea at 5.

I was the first in my family to go to university, and I vividly remember queuing for dinner at 5.45ish and being told by the girl in front of me that it was a 'ridiculous hour for supper - at school we didn't eat until 7'. I have never felt more like a hillbilly. I was starving!

@EdgeOfFortyNine

We used to play a game of Hide Behind The Couch (couch/ settee, definitely not sofa) if the doorbell rang on a Thursday night. It was because my mum didn't have enough money to pay the milkman or the Co-op insurance man, so we had to hide behind the settee in case they looked through the front window and saw that we were in.

It was only when I was asking DH if his family did this too, and he looked incredulous, that I realised it wasn't normal.

It was definitely totally normal to hide behind the couch for a lot of us 😂

@OverTheHill50

I don't think a lot of these are necessarily working class though - more just like what life was like generally in the 70s/80s?

I was thinking this.

I would say my upbringing was lower middle class rather than working class or poor but so many of these things resonate with me .

I think people generally had a lot less during the 1970s. I definitely had hand-me-downs or my mother would make clothes or alter things. Food was eked out, never wasted and we had whatever make was cheaper , eg, a couple of posters mentioned pop delivery . My neighbour worked delivering Corona but we always had Alpine as it was cheaper . And we did the Sunday night bath thing as well , one bath per week and reusing the water .

On the dogs point, it was common for people in our area to just let their dogs roam the streets. There was no dog warden in the 70s/80s. My poor mum was quite scared of dogs and hated walking the streets on her own.

We also had lots of horses on the fields locally that no one ever seemed to own. Some kids used to try and ride them (I was never allowed to do anything like that!)

Following on from something I posted on another thread - shopping prams. In the East End where my Nanna lived all the old ladies used old prams to push their shopping home in. I'd never seen a shopping trolley (the ones old ladies use, not supermarket ones!) til I moved to Essex.

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

This ^

The answers are just old days memories, which is nice anyway, but the working class was a huge percent of the population back in the day. I didn't even meet any middle class people, until I was in my 40s, at least or later when I came on mumsnet

@Sportsnight we still don't have an upstairs toilet !

We live in a post-war ex council house which DH's grandad had bought from the council not long before he died in the early 1990s. When DH moved in there was a pile of newspaper squares in the toilet which his grandad used as loo roll .