What's the strangest thing you've seen in someone's house that they thought was 'normal'?

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I'll go first.

When I was 7, I went to a friend's house, and had bright red mashed potatoes for dinner.her dad always put food colouring in food. She thought this was normal, a d everyone had coloured mash.

What's wrong with spaghetti hoops and beans for a kid!

I went to a friend's house for tea and sleepover and was served a plate of small grey kidneys - no idea what animal they were from. No veg, sauce or side, just small kidneys. My friend hoovered hers up, I forced about three down. I can still remember the smell 🤢 I went to bed hungry. My mum always said that well brought up children ate what they were given so I felt guilty that I hadn't eaten more.
On a different note, I loved tinned salmon sandwiches, with vinegar, my gran made them all the time. In the 80s we regularly had chopped cucumber mixed with vinegar served alongside chicken curry .

@MeredithMae

What's wrong with spaghetti hoops and beans for a kid!

The problem was spaghetti and chips - double carbs. I didn't hear about this 'rule' until I went to the continent and my friends were disgusted that the Irish pub served garlic bread with pizza.

@HideousKinky

When I was a child my brother & I went to play at the house of a school friend. When it was time for tea we were told to wash our hands - I did this in the downstairs bathroom but my brother ran upstairs to the bathroom there. When he joined us at the tea table he said sorry for having been a long time and our friend's mum smiled and said it was fine, no rush. My brother looked surprised and said the little girl on the stairs had told him he should hurry up....

There was no other child in the house. But apparently he was not the first visitor to their house to recount a conversation with a little girl on the stairs.

I'm getting the chills thinking about it now, 50 years later

You went to a friend's house but only you and your brother were there?

@youvemademyshitlist

My friends parents had nothing out on the worktops in the kitchen. If you wanted tea, they got the kettle out of a cupboard and plugged in, toast? The toaster came out of another cupboard. They were always put away afterwards.

We do this with our toaster 😂 the kettle stays out though

@RevolvingPivot

I can't believe of all the comments on here people are more shocked at the cucumber and onions in vinegar. (We had it too in Yorkshire).

I'm more concerned about the young girl watching porn with her parents!!!

It's about relatability

I once went to someone’s flat, which was one of those maisonettes with its own front door and the stairs immediately in front of you.

At the top of the stairs was a table with a bowl of condoms in it. All different colours, sizes, styles, types…there must’ve been at least 100.

I still regret to this day that I didn’t ask her why.

@thegreylady

My daughter in law’s elderly father had a framed photograph of two dead bodies lying in a road. He had it on his living room wall. They were his parents who had been killed in a massacre when he was a child. It was the only photograph he had of them. He was 90 and Turkish. I don’t know any more details but that photograph gave me chills whenever we visited.

That is heartbreaking. What a terrible thing for him, in so many ways.

A mum at school invited me back for coffee after dropping the children at school. She asked that I removed shoes which wasn't a problem and went through to the lounge. It was completely white everywhere and immacculate. I asked how on earth she kept it spotless and she said the children weren't allowed out of the kitchen that was the adults' room. I couldn't imagine having a living space that the dc weren't allowed in especially as the kitchen wasn't either large or especially comfortable.

I was reading this thread thinking how boring and ordinary everyone I’ve known is — but I remembered one! A childhood friend’s father was a professor of tropical medicine. Most of their house was completely normal, but in the dining room there was a display of loads of huge tropical insects and spiders, each encased in glass/Perspex - including a massive tarantula, and an assortment of preserved tropical parasites, all on show fir visitors. And all her father’s medical textbooks, which contained full colour photographs of tropical works being removed from people’s legs.

I was FASCINATED, but I’m not sure I would have wanted them in my house!

*tropical worms not works!

Mookie81
Apologies I explained badly.
When my brother arrived at the table, everyone in the house was already sitting there.
The child on the stairs was some sort of "ghost " or apparition. The family had never seen her themselves but occasionally visitors, like my brother, would comment on the child sitting on the stairs. They had lived there a long time and seemed quite unfazed as it had happened several times

So neither our friend nor his parents had ever seen it, but were no longer surprised if a visitor mentioned it because this was just something that happened from time to time

@grey12

When I asked why, the excuse was that fresh bread was indigestible!

wow! I'm portuguese, I think as a nation we would find that kind of statement a heresy! There's always a small bakery in every corner and people go in the morning to buy fresh bread every day. The bread goes stale by the end of the day, only ok for maybe toast

@grey12 Where I am bread can last at least 5 days, and still tastes and smells fresh. What are Portuguese doing wrong with their baking, or storing - that bread goes stale in one day? That's not normal, surely?

@Gwenhwyfar Someone should tell the Italian then. It's customary to serve Spaghetti and garlic bread together.

*Italians

I've spent a lot of time in Portugal. We had fresh bread delivered every morning. How long does a baguette last here?

@MyMummyHasGotABigBottom

On the cucumber and vinegar thing… my Nan (nearly 90) and my mum have a thing about salmon sandwiches. It’s red salmon (not pink, but red) from a tin. You tip it out into a dish and have to remove all the bones. Then the salmon is seasoned with malt vinegar and ground white pepper. And put in sandwich with thinly sliced cucumber.

Now. The sandwich itself I can manage as it tastes nice. But the salmon being from a tin and the bones… 🤢🤢

Tinned red salmon was always in my mums cupboard for when we had visitors. It was the only salmon my dad would eat because he didn’t like fresh.

Halsie, my gran thought olive oil was for ear ache and you’d get a little bottle from the chemist. She’d have thought it very odd to pour it on your lettuce!
As did we all till we joined Europe and things like green peppers appeared in the shops.

And I know those salmon and cucumber sarnies! Very posh and yum!

@grey12 Where I am bread can last at least 5 days, and still tastes and smells fresh. What are Portuguese doing wrong with their baking, or storing - that bread goes stale in one day? That's not normal, surely? confused

It’s because there are no preservatives in it, same as French bread. Uk bread is full of crap

A baguette lasts a day here.
It can safely be kept, but two day old bread like baguette misses the point.
A fresh baguette has a crunchy crust and a soft middle. The pleasure is in the texture.
Keep a baguette for a day and the crust goes soft and the interior dry.
Still edible, but chewy and nasty.
I will turn yesterday's bagette into garlic bread or grill it with cheese, but a baguette is best eaten on the day it is baked.

Going for Sunday dinner at my friends house and her mum put a plate of sliced cucumbers in vinegar on the table along with the gravy boat. I've never seen or heard about cucumbers in vinegar before or since. Just weird???

Totally normal in our house but I was brought up outside of the UK. Salads are made with vinegar and oil or oil and lemon juice.

The vinegar makes cucumber more digestible and, same with raw onion, makes it far less harsh to eat.

@PlanDeRaccordement

A fireman pole....for pole dancing. Mum was teaching her pre teen DDs...