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!

Loose broken biscuits in Woolworth's. It was the only way we got posh ones like custard creams.
The knife grinder used to come every few months. He sharpened knives on a special attachment on his bike that was operated by the pedals.
Walking 3 miles into town aged 4 with my mum to go shopping, baby brother in a pram, toddler brother on a pram seat, because she couldn't afford the bus fare both ways.
Having a party line phone to save costs. Sometimes you'd pick up the phone and the neighbour would be talking on it already.

The Infant and Junior school head teachers giving kids a hiding/the slipper in the 70s seems really weird now. It shows how attitudes have changed. The senior school gave the cane but I went to a different girls' school where they didn't have corporal punishment. Luckily never got a hiding at primary age either (in school anyway.) It was the norm in primary schools in the local area as friends from other schools mentioned it too.

No house phone
No car
3 TV channels on a B&W telly
A radio on the wall of the classroom for music programmes and one in the hall for music and movement
BEing allowed to play in the adjoining public rec at playtime in the junior school as we just had a square of tarmac
Walking to school on our own from about the age of 7
HAving to keep your dinner warm in the oven instead of bunging it in the microwave
No freezer
Mum doing the weekly washing in a twin tub - took hours
One bath a week
Receiving parcels of clothes in the post from our cousins - there were 4 of them before my sister and I got them!
One pair of shoes
bicycles with 3 gears

Taping the Sunday chart show and flipping between radio one and Dr fox .
Watching the chart show on a Saturday morning
Nothing open on a Sunday ( I still hate Sundays and I think it stems from hating them as a.child!)
Buying a can of coke for 25p and the outrage when it went up to 65p!!
Using the neighbors phone and giving them money!

@Sidesaladofchips

-Yes to 4 TV channels, then a 5th one - that was like a dawning of a new era. -Ceefax -Doing schoolwork and homework from textbooks only. Physically going to the library to look stuff up. -Taping songs off the radio -Using a biro to wind back cassettes if a bit of the tape popped out. -Sony discman -Blockbuster video! -Waiting to see who was at Number 1 every week -Landlines and telephone boxes

Life has changed so unbelievably, I'm not even 40...

You're 36? Same as me I'm guessing!

The introduction of seatbelts into the back seats of cars.
Blue smarties.

I remember when Lucozade bottles came wrapped in yellow cellophane and it was marketed as a drink for when you were ill.
I also remember TV ads for suet ("Atora Suet can do it") and (solid) soaps - things that just don't get advertised on TV now.

@TwoZeroTwoZero

Watching an educational programme (dusty bin? I can't remember) at school on a massive TV with a tiny screen in a wooden box on wheels.

Your thinking of Wordy from Look and Read. Dusty bin was from a game show called 321.

wingsofsteel

Papergirl1968

Birthday parties where the girls (no boys invited usually) wore long dresses, or sometimes bridesmaids dresses. Parties were always at home, not at indoor play areas or whatever like now. It was games of pass the parcel, pin the tail on the donkey, musical statues etc, with a birthday tea of sandwiches, crisps, and sausage rolls. No party bags but a balloon and a slice of cake in a napkin to take home.

I remember this fondly, particularly my brown floral party dress. Before party bags were a thing I remember sometimes being given either a small writing set (very tiny envelopes and coloured note paper) or a beaded purse. I think woolworths sold them in my town.

My children's parties were all like this (maybe not the bridesmaid dresses!) and they are only in their late teens now. Maybe we are very old fashioned though.

And gosh yes I used to absolutely love my fairy post office set and my grandfather bought me a beaded purse which I still have somewhere.

I bought my DD this:
www.frillylily.co.uk/fairy-stationery/500-new-fairy-post-office.html
for her sixth or seventh birthday and she loved it too.

So many things!
Only 3 TV channels.
Walking a mile and a half to and from school on my own at the age of 8.
Shops shut all day Sunday and half day Wednesday.
Children's hour on TV every week day evening from 4.30 - 5.40.
All the TV channels shutting down for the night at midnight.
Public phone boxes.
VHF video recorders.
The excitement when the school TV was wheeled into the classroom at the beginning of a lesson.
Buying cigarettes from a machine outside a shop at the age of 13.
Audio cassettes and constantly having to untangle them.
Dial-a-disc.
No remote controls for anything and having to change the TV channels manually.
Only being allowed to make phone calls after 6pm during the 'cheap rate'.
Playing vinyl records on a record player.

Beaded purses. The beads on my one used to fall off all the time leaving a bald purse. Still used it though
I loved Woolies. Pick and mix , ladybird clothes , kitchen equipment , vinyl , cassettes you name it they had it!
I also recall green shield stamps. You saved up millions and could choose a gift ( one time we had enough for a new front door mat)
Co op also had stamps as well. Their ones were blue.

Birthday parties where parents left their kids with the host parents instead of staying to be responsible for their own child like they do today.

Having to stick to arranged plans because you couldn't text and change them.

Our neighbour used our phone once and left behind some money for the bill , bless her.
It was an emergency, mum gave it back to her!
Things were not as hyped as they are these days probably social media has added to this new thing of bigging everything up all the time.
Big clocks that were odd designs in fake wood or had the signs of the zodiac around them !

Learning your mum's Co-op number so you could be sent to do the shopping. I can still remember ours!

Learning how to darn, so you cold mend socks, woollen gloves etc.

Vanished occupations ~
The handbag and umbrella repairer.

The man who worked at Newcastle Coach Station, tearing rows of dancing ladies and animals from folded newspaper. He'd take the hat round just before the coach left, and if you were lucky he'd give you a row of dancing dolls!

Telegram boys, cycling to deliver (often bad) news.

Door to door peg sellers, they would take an order for washing line props too.

the Property Guide in the middle of Saturday's local paper.

I remember one egregiously-priced property, in DesirableVillage-on-the-Hill a few miles out of town. It had TEN bedrooms! - and I'm fairly certain at least one was en-suite - several reception rooms and a huge garden, quite possibly with double or even triple garage.

Back in 1984, this was on the market for the utterly fantastical sum of one hundred thousand pounds.

Merry house, that house must be worth millions now :)
My brothers first home in East London was about 4K in 1973!

We have 'proper china plates' at my school, but plastic beakers and jugs rather than glass. We don't have salt and dreadful powdery pepper on the table like there was when I was a child though.

I think some schools use those multi-sectioned plastic prison trays...

Telephone directories.

Moving to a rural village where only three houses had their own phones - and our phone and another family’s phone were on a party line, so we could only make and receive calls if they weren’t on the phone and vice versa.

The cost of phone calls varying through the day x peak rates in the morning, lower in the afternoon and off peak after 6pm, so any calls during the day had to be kept short.

Black and white TV, and lower TV licence costs for black and white TVs.

As other poster have said - only three TV channels - and in our house, that might as well only have been two, because commercial TV was Evil, and we were banned from watching anything on ITV. This didn’t change until Channel 4 started, and mum got hooked on Countdown - and then the ban on commercial TV relaxed somewhat.

I don't think this one's been mentioned; I remember going to the post office to buy a dog licence, priced 37 & a 1/2p!

John Craven’s Newsround

Half day closing Thursdays. Where I live the doctors and the market still do this.
Two TV channels.
The Home Service and the Light Programme
Pirate radio
Newspaper sellers and their cries "Cidee Final"
Stop Press

I don't have children so for those who do this may be a ridiculous question, but what do schoolchildren nowadays eat off and drink out of if not proper plates and glasses?

@RichardMarxisinnocent

I don't think anybody answered this yet. They have plastic trays divided into sections - effectively cutting out the plate 'middle-man' and glomp arrange each item of food in one of the sections.

I think they also have the same trays/system in prisons....

Disabled people driving little blue three-wheeled cars that were referred to as "invalid carriages".
Dogs taking themselves for walks during the day, and the excitement if one decided to visit the school playground. I remember when the big friendly Dobermann who lived around the corner from me got in the playground and the vicious old deputy head was screaming her head off about dangerous dogs and wouldn't listen to me when I tried to tell her the dog's name so she could call him over and get him to stop running about. He was a lovely dog and regularly said hello to us when we were playing in the street.

One of the reasons I didn't encourage DD to have school dinners was the plastic prison trays!

Does anybody else remember school books about Roger Red Hat, Billy Blue Hat and Jennifer & Johnny Yellow Hat? Also Kevin The Kitten?

This brought back a lot of very funny memories for me!