A Thing You Don't See These Days

[xYerDaSellsAvonx]

I found a picture of my mum standing on one of those big red coin operated weighing scales today. It had a big dial face. It was in our local shopping centre but I remember seeing them on piers, train stations etc too. Did you ever use them? Other than this picture of my mum I don't remember seeing one in use

@FrangipaniDeLaSqueegeeMop

The milkman

There are still milkmen round here but they tend to come very early so you don't see them.

Haven't read the whole thread but if anyone is interested in 'The five boys' here they are www.alamy.com/stock-photo/five-boys-chocolate.html

At primary school we used to do a thing for Help the Aged (as it was then) where you got a blue paper sheet with a cartoon dog on and there were spaces on it where you had to collect random items like a twig, a penny, a thimble etc and you had to sellotape them on
I can't remember how it raised money but I remember being gutted that I never could complete one before I had to hand it in!
Hope someone else remembers this!

Pots on a broken arm! White bandages bandaged in a herringbone pattern and then set with plaster, then lots of autographs and drawings on the plaster, then held in an unbleached sling. There seems to be a much more sophisticated contraption used in most cases now.

Credit card swiping machines that used carbon paper counterfoils. They had a slidey see through top copy.

Sealing wax sold at stationers to seal wills and other documents.

@Magissa

The X-ray machine in shoe shops for measuring children's feet!

Yes! I was talking to dh the other day about these and he had no idea what I was on about. Were they mainly in London? He grew up in Bath.

Chocolate boxes with landscapes or flowers on and big ribbons across them. My mum used to keep some to put jewellery in.

@ThreeImaginaryBoys

Cigarette vending machines (not saying it's a bad thing!)

Nor those candy cigarettes with a red tip we all used to pretend with.

National saving stamps. I used to get one a week to stick in the savings book. I think the 6d one had a picture of Princess Anne and the shilling on of Prince Charles. Do correct me if I am wrong.

@PeskyRooks

At primary school we used to do a thing for Help the Aged (as it was then) where you got a blue paper sheet with a cartoon dog on and there were spaces on it where you had to collect random items like a twig, a penny, a thimble etc and you had to sellotape them on I can't remember how it raised money but I remember being gutted that I never could complete one before I had to hand it in! Hope someone else remembers this!

@PeskyRooks I remember! I loved doing these

Peter and Jane reading books, or Janet and John. Blue carbon paper if you wanted to write or type out more than one copy and kids in NHS glasses with blue or pink frames. Friendly dogs (and free range kids) that would free roam the streets all day without getting stolen and only went home for their tea, and cordless house phones with a huge antenna which allowed you to dial 1471 to see who had called whilst you were out (is this still a thing for landlines?). Those strange toys that looked like a UFO for jumping on (kind of like a basketball with a plastic ring around the middle) and the guaranteed skinned shin you got from the edge of the plastic if you fell off it wrong. Paper Filofaxes- does anyone still use these? And alphabetical address/telephone books usually with a picture of a dog or a country garden on the front that your mum would diligently write all of her contacts' names and adresses in and keep in the drawer in the telephone stand along with the phone directories. Visiting a friends house and thinking they were posh because they had an Eternal Beau dinner service with it's frivolous shape and pretty pink ribbon print- we had blue willow pattern at home, that was just so functional and boring by comparison. They also had a fluffy toilet seat lid cover and a matching pedestal mat. My mum's friend had a doll in a long knitted dress to hide the extra toilet rolls in her bathroom which I very much admired, we just kept them in the cupboard under the sink at home. Our home toilet had a pull chain though like the school toilets, which my friends found amusing in the 80s, as most of them by then had lever flushes at home.
Electronic digitial diaries that were so hi tech at the time (and expensive) but took forever to programme your info into and only held about 20 appointments at any one time, such was their lack of memory space.
Tea strainers and the shock I got aged 10 at my friend's house when I got to the bottom of the cup and discovered that her mum bought loose tea and not tea in bags, sitting there trying to swallow the last mouthful of tea complete with tea leaves so that I didn't have to rudely spit it back into my cup in front of her mum. Lift lemon tea, that was a particular favourite of my elderly dance teacher, and tough leather ballet shoes with a hard full cardboard sole that didnt bend too well before the soft suede sole ones came along.
The manual school bell that had to be rung by a prefect / monitor to announce break time, lunch or home time, and eraser pens that would quickly delete a rude message written in fountain pen ink before the teacher saw it. Klix (?) vending machines at school / the swimming baths that would deliver a scalding hot watery soup, tea or hot chocolate for 15p, and always too much water for the size of the cup meaning that you were pretty much guaranteed to spill hot liquid on your fingers. Rubber swim caps with a pattern embossed on them that made you feel like you were being scalped alive when your mum tried to stretch it over your head, nylon clothing that meant that you got electric shocks when you touched the handrail of an escalator or the button of a lift. Scratch n sniff books and Superwhip, - looked like a tub of ice cream but tasted like cream, my mum was quite partial to a spoonful of it floating in her coffee. Bicycle clips that my dad wore around his trouser legs when he cycled to work, McDonalds burgers in polystyrene trays rather than cardboard and the joy that you would get as a child from coming across a discarded one in the street and jumping on it to make a satisfying crack sound, and the disappointment if you got ketchup on your socks when it split.

I remember all these! I was born in ‘47, so a post-war baby. In the early 50s we still had pig bins on the street corner to take kitchen scraps for feeding farm pigs. They were pink and chained to a lamp post.
The trees lining the street still had white striped bands round them, left over from the blackouts so you could just make out the road. Horse-drawn milk carts and coal carts. A lamp lighter would go round and light the gas lamps that were still in use in some side roads.
Buying savings stamps at infant school with pictures of Prince Charles and Princess Anne as toddlers.
And the fogs! I remember the pea supper fog of 1952 that lasted for four days and killed thousands - you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. That led to the Clean Air Act of 1956 which banned the use of coal in domestic homes.

@sallyedmondson x-post! Yes, National savings stamps!

'Rubber swim caps with a pattern embossed on them that made you feel like you were being scalped alive when your mum tried to stretch it over your head'

And of course mum would be wearing her version with huge great daisies on the side

In Canada our first reading books were Dick and Jane, not Peter snd Jane. Haven't seen one in years.

"See Jane run. Run Jane run."

@FrangipaniDeLaSqueegeeMop

The milkman

Odd. There are plenty about. We have one at work daily.

Coal bunkers
Changing robes at the beach, where your mum took a length of terry, sewed the ends and put a loop of electric round the top
Huge metal trampolines at the seaside, when you jumped off you got dead legs
IRA leaders blacked out in TV interviews (good thing obviously, but actual Jerry came as quite the shock)

scary public information films remember Petunia?
Taking money to school to pay into a national savings book
Dr Barnados saving boxes in a pretty cottage shape
washing up in the school staffroom is a privellege!
Xerox copying
the satisfying clunk of a typewriter when you write with one
cold meat on a Monday leftover from the Sunday roast
waking up to frozen windows in the winter
having to use chamber pots at night
freezing cold outdoor toilets
Coal bunkers and the coalmen delivering big sacks of coal

Flies splattered on the car windscreen.

The toilet paper that was like tracing paper - no absorbency at all

Built-in cigarette lighters in cars

Big moths.

They are a real rarity these days.

There used to be those big coin operated weighing machines in the lakeside mall in essex close to the loos , but I noticed it had gone the other day !
It was there for years (probably covid has ended its use)
We have a milkman that comes around our way.

I miss telephone boxes although they were always being vandalized round my way so maybe it is saving BT money not having them anymore.
Vending machines on train stations went years ago along with people to buy the tickets from at many stations
It's all machines now.
I also miss bus conductors snd those big silver machines they had to give you the ticket.

C D players in new cars! Too many tech in cars these days !!

Hovis crackers. Once one of my favourite things, now they’ve vanished

2 in 1 shampoo eg wash and go. That was a phenomenon for a while.

Some of the other things are still alive and kicking in my town. There’s a photo processing shop, Tuesday evening speed walkers, and at 2am a milkman comes down our cobbled road, as fast as he can - which probably isn’t that fast but it’s the noisiest way to wake up, I promise you.

Green shield stamps / co op stamps.
We saved up for about a year and was able to purchase a free door mat!
The petrol stations also did the stamps and my brother came home with four drinking glasses!
Took ages to save them up too!