Things from your childhood that feel like ancient history now

[Echobelly]

• 3 TV channels
• Everything shut on Sunday (and local shops often shut Wednesday afternoons for some reason?)
• 1/2 pennies
• Only asking 'What does your dad do?'
• A lot of people having black and white tellies
• Holiday brochures

These are some of the things that I think will seem inexplicable to my kids!

Does anyone else remember Magic, magic E? With a pencil with a glowing tip?

Also - those reading comprehension cards. Colour coded according to level. The harder ones had more text so a smaller font.

@the80sweregreat

I remember the Hamble doll . It is a nice name but I have never heard of anyone called it ( might be more of a surname ?) The windows on playschool was my fav bit. Only in the 70s could you have a kids programme on after school with the word ' school ' in it!! There would be uproar these days I bet !! 😂 Also liked 'play away ' with Brian Cant.

Loved Brian Cant.

Also Tony Hart’s art programmes.

@bendmeoverbackwards did you see the Morph specials on TV earlier this year? Might have been sky, can't remember

1. Dogs let out to the roam the streets in packs (Glasgow, 1980s)
2. Playing a computer game from a tape that took hours to load
3. First ever McDonald's restaurant
4. First ever remote control TV
5. Findus Crispy Pancakes and Angel Delight

1. Saturday night tv (Gladiators, Blind Date, Beadles About, Stars in their eyes, Baywatch)
2. buying Mizz, Just 17, etc
3. being on the house phone all hours
4. rushing home from school to watch Home And Away, Neighbours, Fresh Prince and also being glued to music videos on The Box
5. writing letters no emails
6. using a phone box
7. going to HMV and Our Price to browse latest music
8. going to the video shop to rent a good horror and hoping you can get away with an over 18 horror movie
9. top of the pops!
10. playing Tetris on the original Game Boys!
11. Cabbage Patch stickers!

Frying things in lard
Having a chip pan full of lard
Streets were devoid of cars (travelling or parked) so there was plenty of room to play out
Letting our dog out in the morning (he came back each evening)
Only the living room had a fire (kitchen got warm via the cooker)
Ice inside the windows in winter
Coats on the bed in winter too

Green Cross Code man (Darth Vader) came to my school too. Myself and another girl sat on his arms (flexing his muscles pose) while two boys hung off his arms
He was lovely

Tufty club and books

Learning to read from red, blue and green pirate books. We could partly listen on headphones which was a treat

Having a chip pan full of lard

Actually having a chip pan - a saucepan full of boiling oil over a naked flame - rather than the much safer enclosed electric chip fryers plugged into the mains that we have now. Seems a lifetime ago - as do all of the TV safety adverts and campaigns now.

Oh and those primary kids books at school, Roger Reg Hat or something and Meg And Mog and also the Funny Bones books!

I also vaguely remember using a computer back in the late 80's at school
And a red character thing where you command him, think it's Pod but I could b wrong

One Grandma's house had an air raid shelter that we would play in, the other Grandma had an outside toilet and we would have to use the potty if we needed a wee in the night when we stayed there.
My auntie lived in Wales and if my mum wanted to call her she would go through the operator.
Children routinely hit in the classroom.

Also all the 'stranger danger' awareness campaigns that were predicated on the assumption that primary-aged children would routinely be out on their own, well away from the protection and supervision of adults.

I mentioned this on another thread some time ago and was chuffed pleasantly surprised that it hadn't just been our school that had been visited by the police and played a catchy little recorded song about it - I still have a vinyl 7" single of it somewhere how sad am I - a song with the following questionably-syntactical lyrics to the 'chorus':

Say No to strangers, say No, No, No, No, No!
Say No to strangers, don't ever with them go!
Short or tall, thin or fat, young or old with a big flat hat;
Say No to strangers, say No, No, No, No, No!

Wollys
VHS
only having 5 channels on the TV

Just to name a few, and I am only 21!

I also want to add not being able to watch YouTube/Online videos because it would eat up all of the Data on the internet dongle

Children routinely hit in the classroom.

We not only had that, but we had a teacher (otherwise very pleasant and quite kindly) who would call naughty boys (never girls) to the front, get them to bend over in front of the big blackboard, ostensibly to receive a hard thwack from the slipper - but then, bizarrely, occasionally hit them across the bottom with a rolled pair of football socks instead; so it was much less painful, but actually more humiliating and (with now-adult eyes) even more psychologically questionable.

We didn't really think much about it. In fact, we used to just accept it as 'something odd that an adult liked to do with children who misbehaved' - there was even a 'joke' amongst the whole class that he would 'give you a Chewit' if you 'let him' do it.

@bendmeoverbackwards

Also - those reading comprehension cards. Colour coded according to level. The harder ones had more text so a smaller font.

Were they called SRA cards? I went to middle school in Merton in the early 80s and loved these.

@TaraR2020 and @stonecat
Look and Read! Iconic.
'Dog detective is chasing a r'
Space Boy
Dark Towers
Geordie Racer

Hard, shiny, horrible non absorbent toilet paper in school toilets and public toilets 🙁
Spam fritters 🤮
Dissecting mice, frogs and pigs eyes in biology 🤢

Vision On and the gallery with the vibraphone theme tune
French Robinson Crusoe (with the dramatic theme tune)
Spangles, Glees and Chewits
Outside toilets (frozen solid in winter)
Manual mangle on top of the washing machine
Going to a Chinese restaurant for a “businessman’s lunch’

@Bigoldmachine 'Always a few at the end of the roll of the dog/cat/kids in front of the gas fire 😂.'

Jeez that made me LOL!. Why did everyone think the best place for a kid/pet photo was in front of the shitty old gas fire? 🤣🤣

Every household from back then have been guilty of those photos!

Having penpals.

Going out to play all day with friends. Taking our bikes with a carrier bag with some sandwiches and a can of Lilt (god just thinking of that now makes my teeth hurt) hanging from the handlebars.

Nylon carpets, nighties and sheets with lots of static shocks and sticking to things.

People with dogs buying 'dog's meat' from the butcher (mostly offal/rabbit/beef bones) then boiling it up and adding dog biscuits instead of buying tins or kibble. For a treat my mum used to mix a bit of gravy into it.

Regular power cuts.

Bath once a week and getting a top up of hot water from the kettle instead of putting the immersion heater back on.

No central heating. Getting dressed under bed covers. Running downstairs after a bath to get dried and dressed in front of the coal fire.

Boys and girls not always being allowed to choose the options for O Levels they wanted, some were restricted to one sex.

Being told off by the headmaster for doing typing as one of my subjects as it was for the 'non academic' girls and I'd never use it...there was no concept of computers being part of everyday life and work in the future. Touch typing is the most useful thing I learned at school.

National anthem when the TV shut down. The TV shutting down overnight.

[quote TaraR2020]@bendmeoverbackwards did you see the Morph specials on TV earlier this year? Might have been sky, can't remember[/quote]
Oh no I didn’t! Loved Morph.