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!

Love this thread!
Here's a few: Songs of Praise and the Antiques Roadshow on TV every Sunday - can you imagine kids today tolerating them??

Daily school run with six kids in the back of the car -3 seven year olds with 3 four year old siblings sat on our laps. And our mums thought they were being super safe by putting a lap belt round each pair!

Spending a week "on holiday" with my brother at my granny's doing puzzles, painting, reading and playing cards. Happy as Larry while my parents buggered off to Spain for a week.

Chris Tarrant on Capital radio "Tarrant in the rush hour" I still get that in my head when I hear that song.

Our Encyclopedia Britannica had a section on computers which said "some computers are now small enough to fit in a single room".

BBC Computers, then a commodore 64 with cassette games. If you wanted to change game you had to switch the whole thing off and wait two minutes before switching on again. Then wait 5 mins for the game to load. Also having big floppy disks and decorating my disk box.

The excitement of watching Top of the Pops to find out who was number 1. And recording songs from the radio onto a cassette tape.

Those velvet colouring posters with four crappy felt tips

The meat van man at the market

Booty Bag and Shandy Bass from KwikSave

Those plaster of paris kits with the latex character moulds

Afternoon 'real movies' like The Cry

Having a bath at my granny's which was about two inches deep otherwise the hot water tank would run out.

Getting in free EVERYWHERE with a Blue Peter badge and no requirement for a paying adult. My school choir sang on the show several years in a row so the school had a load of badges and then took us all the Chessington for free with them (about 60 of us!)

Also not even that long ago, in 1997 I started at uni and had never had an email address before. Also I had a mobile phone but never used it as so expensive to call from (strictly for emergencies). Instead queued up for the payphone in halls and used my BT phone card (with the really long number you had to type in) which charged the calls back to my parents home phone bill!

Saving up pocket money for one of the money belts for school

Watching Fraggle Rock

Oh and spirographs

Something I thought of the other day....I'm awaiting our mortgage offer any day in the post and it didn't arrive on Monday.... I saw the post lady walk past my house and remember thinking 'perhaps it'll be in the second post....' then I realised that we don't have a second post anymore, even though I'd actually completely forgotten that we used to have two posts a day!

@Aroundtheworldin80moves The Music Man! Now that takes me right back to all the discos as a child!

Dial a Disc
Drinking small bottles of milk with a straw at school which were partly frozen in winter.
Getting sun burnt on holidays as you didn’t wear sun cream.

Watching Bullseye on a Sunday evening. Bully prizes were a little off a times like a small speed boat for the family that lives in Birmingham

3-2-1 could anyone work out Dusty Bins riddles

I loved Generation Game with Larry Shut That Door Grayson

Encarta

Half day closing
Going to the Midland bank bus that came to the village once a week and the fishmonger who visited us in his van
Nat West Piggy Banks
Sharing a phone line with another house

@Gladimnotcampinginthisweather

Having my school uniform for Infant school made by the local drapers, because it was cheaper than ready made. Walking to school on my own in the top Infants, and going home for lunch. Primary school featured lots of singing and percussion bands and there were town wide competitions that our school used to enter. Round pin plugs and sockets with black toggle switches. Outside loos and no bathroom. Department stores - I grew up in Watford and there were three, Clements, Cawdells and Trewins (which was taken over by John Lewis) and Gade House, the Co-op department store which gave you Co-op stamps if you bought furniture there. First question after breakfast on a non school day was always 'Can I go out to play now?'

I worked in that Co op!

The cold no central heating. One fire
Let your brother sit down. More clothes on on bed than.outside . Chilblains all weather. Greasy stews.
Sent out in all kinds of weather.

Proper assembly every day with lots of singing and if you were good at playing the recorder you got to stand up at the front and play along to the songs.

Our school had just enough (very old) hymn books for one each if every single copy was used, but their 'stock' comprised mostly normal ones with just the lyrics in and about 5% of the music versions. It was decided that everybody in the choir must have a music version, and nobody who was not in the choir could have a music version. None of us in the choir could read music at all at that stage - we just looked at the lyrics page - but it was apparently Just The Right Thing To Do!

Hair washed once a week

Casette tapes. Making mix tapes of top 40 for friends

Walkmans

Ceefax

That indigo carbon paper stuff that copied things

4 tv channels

Having to get up and change the channel on tv

The tv test card girl with the clown

Milk floats and deliveries. Blue tits pecking the foil
tops to get at the cream

School milk

Carol singing in the streets in December (does anyone do that these days?)

Collecting stamps or milk bottle tops for RNIB

Corporal punishment in school and home

Pink custard

Video cassette tapes

Mars bars costing less than 30p

The puffin book club at school. They sent us catalogues and we got to choose books! Pure bliss!

Tv not being 24/7

@Tisforptarmigan

God the chilblains. Every single year 🥶

Making toast by holding bread in front of the gas fire. We did this to save money by not using the oven grill.

Eating mucky fat sandwiches.

Constant use of a frying pan. Most meals has at least one deep fried item.

Sharing bath water. Also using Fairy Liquid instead of bubble bath; matey bubble bath was a Christmas gift and a luxury.

Brentford nylons bedding AND nightie. The static held you in place in the bed and caused little blue flashes and crackles if you managed to pull yourself free. I thought it was amazing.

It's a wonder I'm still alive.

This made me laugh out loud, thank you!

@TaraR2020

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

Yes, I remember that glowing pencil. And Look and Read with Wordy the freaky orange floating "thing".

@PopsicleHustler

Tellytext/ceefax

Nokia brick phones but thought I was so cool with one.

Petticoat under my school dress

Pogs (those collective disc things)

Glass milk bottles for break at infant school.

Inflatable chairs
Inflatable backpacks

Mk one.

Dream phone

Mr Pop

Sega mega drive with the 6 games on one cartridge. (Sonic, columns and mortal combat etc)

Really corny and cheesy boybands

Mix ups (that's what we called the pic n mixes in northern Ireland)

Snickers for 20p.

Freddie bars for 10p.

Panda pops. The blue flavour.

Sugar magazine with a lipgloss inside and crummy advice pages.

Girl talk and mizz magazine too.

Buses that were high up and has.to walk up like 6 steps to pay the driver and get a long ticket.

£2 ticket for the pictures. Haven't been to cinema since 2012, and then it was like 15 quid to see the bloody Lorax. I dread to think how much it is now.

Trisha Goddard talk show

Blind date and Gladiators on a Saturday

Eldorado, some weird soap opera

Where the heart is from early 2000s

Wizadora on ITV

Tiny tots

Rosie and Jim

Sooty and sweep

Rainbow

Plastic wallet bus passes to go to school

Friendship bracelets made of multicolored thread

School mufti days, where you would plan your outfit in advance.

Going to the corner shop with one pound and getting loads.

Index, a version of Argos that didn't last long.

Jacqueline Wilson's first books

Everything closed on a Sunday.

Walkmans with the really ridiculous headsets that looked like they were.made for robots.

Being scared of wizard of Oz 2. Return to Oz with Fairuza ball from the craft. The guys on wheels and headless queen made me want to hurl.

That computer with the green screen. Amstrad or something

Snake on the brick phones

Tennis on the brick phones

McDonalds happy meals were cheaper than what they are now.

School dinners, a carton full of chunky chips, a chocolate milkshake and a huge coffee and chocolate cake all for £1.20. How I wish I could that now!

I'm a 90s and early 2000s child and teen.

Now I am 34 and still wish for an inflatable chair lol for my daughter who is 7.

Jacqueline Wilson started writing in the early 70s. Suspense novels then novels for teens e.g. Amber, Falling Apart, Waiting For the Sky to Fall. Then in the early 90s she created Tracey Beake r. My gran got me The Story of Tracey Beake r in 1992, I was 10! Then when i went to secondary school I discovered her older books for teenagers.

StillWeRise it was a pretty good shop as I remember it. My parents bought a modern 60's three piece suite there with a put u up. It replaced the Utility suite they had (which I loved). I didn't think the new suite would last but Dad still had it about 30 years later with Plumbs covers on it.

Apart from the Utility furniture, which nearly everyone had after the war, kitchen cabinets. There weren't fitted kitchens in every home and most people had a kitchen cabinet with a pull down work top. Some cabinets had glass doors at the top, but ours didn't. Slot of houses had old lady sinks with wooden draining boards. We always knew them as butler's sinks, but now they are known as Belfast sinks. (We were modern and had a stainless steel sink).

I've got two pieces of my parents' utility furniture! Chests of drawers - still going strong!

Phoning up Busby
Telephone boxes
When phonecards were introduced it felt very hi-tech
3 tv channels
Strange 'Eastern bloc' cartoons on tv with subtitles
Primary school Headteacher getting the naughty boys over her knee and smacking them.

Smoking.

In pubs, restaurants, buses, houses, even remember teachers smoking in the staff room.
My first job, people just smoked in meetings and the office in general.

That really does seem like a different world and totally unimaginable

Using appliances after 6pm because electricity was cheaper at night.

Going out for long bike rides with a 2p in my shoe for an emergency phone call. Also, taking a puncture repair kit out with me from around age 10.

Never having stuff that was new to me- all clothes and bikes were second hand.

Dogs used to play out with us, without leads on. White dog poo because the butchers used to give free bones for dogs.

Not being allowed to take Technical Drawing as on O level because I was a girl (I’m still cross about that!).

Yomping up huge fells with my parents, wearing Dunlop wellies and a cagoule; drinking from streams when I was thirsty.

Taping the top 40, and also borrowing records and taping them (being really quiet because my record player and cassette were separate.

Making prank calls after school at my friend’s house, until her parents put a lock on their telephone.

The dot in the middle of the TV screen after the National Anthem.

The ice cream van, playing The Happy Rambler as it arrived. Cider lollies.

Jumble sales in church halls.

Getting the Beano delivered.

Trying to make fires by rubbing sticks together.

Bommie gangs- guarding your bonfire until bonfire night. Catherine wheels nailed to the garden fence.

Limeade, cherryade and orangeade from the pop man.

Rag and bone man with a horse and cart.

Wearing dresses to Brownies and Guides.

Reading. Being told to stop reading and carrying on under the covers with a torch.

Collecting the family allowance from the post office for Mum.