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Original poster

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

646 replies

00100001 · 14/08/2021 21:53

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.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
8
ThumbWitchesAbroad · 18/08/2021 05:15

[quote Rugbycomet]www.headington.org.uk/shark/[/quote]
Ah thanks for that link!
I'd forgotten that he used to run the PPP as well.
I used to work at the JR so this was all very familiar to me!

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 18/08/2021 06:22

Thanks for shark link! The Oxford Tube coach service passes the end of the road and I always used to watch out for it during a period a few years ago when we regularly visited Oxford.

@CherryRipe1, that's hilarious about your parents' TVs! Closest I can get to that is my FIL refusing to pay for a colour TV licence in the 1980s. The difference between that and the black and white licence was a few pounds a year. He wasn't hard up, just tight. Claimed he could see no point in having colour, even though all programmes were being made in the expectation that viewers would see the colours. Snooker not easy to follow on a b&w set, for example! However, he shelled out for the largest b&w set he could find so you saw the frustratingly monochrome picture very clearly. Hmm

AngelDelightUk · 18/08/2021 08:14

@sadeyedladyofthelowlandsea has she still got the duck?! I’m curious what happened to it in the end

LoislovesStewie · 18/08/2021 09:07

@CherryRipe1

Whilst deriding others, forgot my own parents were slightly bonkers. They were given a tv which the sound had conked out on, they then aquired a tv with sound but no picture so stacked one on the other and went through an elaborate rigmarol to turn both on. I used to sing Bowie's 'Sound and Vision' to them when the 'turning on' ritual began. I gave them a perfectly good tv which they plonked in their junk room & continued with the two tv method.
Please stop doing this; I am crying with laughter!
longwayoff · 18/08/2021 09:08

There's a house in Bruton, Somerset, which has a large key sticking out of the side of a gable. Why? Anyone know? Noticed it years ago and not knowing has been a vague irritation ever since .

Thisbastardcomputer · 18/08/2021 09:17

F

IWillWashTheGreenWillow · 18/08/2021 09:51

[quote Carly767]The ins and outs of Yorkshire salad

www.southyorkshiremobility.co.uk/post/what-is-a-yorkshire-salad[/quote]
Oh, now I've followed the link I have a sudden memory of crinkle-cut cucumber in vinegar at my grandmother's house and tinned salmon and cucumber sandwiches (with bones to crunch) as a treat. Tuna is also always served with vinegar and black pepper, for preference - we didn't buy mayonnaise regularly til I was in my teens.

Mirw · 18/08/2021 14:22

I had a 6ft TV aerial in the middle of my living room for 2 years. Others thought it odd.
My sister had a 6 ft fig tree in her living room which meant you couldn't watch TV.

SamiReed1 · 18/08/2021 14:54

@Thisbastardcomputer

F
@Thisbastardcomputer Just so you know, there is a Watch this thread thing that you click on, at the top and bottom of the thread. It automatically puts the thread in your watching section. So no need to take up a post just with F.
SingleMamaGY · 18/08/2021 14:58

I once went to my friends house and her stepdad put porn on the TV. I was ten.

CovidCorvid · 18/08/2021 14:59

Side by side toilets in the bathroom! I could just picture me and dh having a shit side by side! 🙈. It was a house we were viewing….we didn’t buy it.

Garriet · 18/08/2021 15:31

@SingleMamaGY

I once went to my friends house and her stepdad put porn on the TV. I was ten.
Big red flag for sexual abuse.
MorriseysGladioli · 18/08/2021 17:20

It actually is sexual abuse.

Sweetpea1532 · 18/08/2021 17:35

I had a friend when I was a child who kept 2 pet guinea pigs in the bathtub with shredded newspaper as bedding(no water, obv)...very entertaining when you visited the loo....oh, wait a moment! That wasn't at a friend's....it was at ours Grin...we never took baths only took showers in the shower room so the bathtub was the perfect spot for Harriet the guinea pig and her friend, Apples.Grin

sadeyedladyofthelowlandsea · 18/08/2021 21:45

@AngelDelightUk Once the duckling was fully grown, she gradually rehomed it with someone who lives in her village and has a pond with other ducks. And I do mean 'gradually rehomed', she & her husband used to carry it over in the bucket for playdates to see if they all got on. I haven't heard about the duck for a few years now, so I assume it all went well.

If ever I want cheering up, I just remember the duckling being ceremoniously carried up to the front of the conference in its bucket (for some reason my friend refused to sit with it at the back) and the gentle quacking...

Original poster
00100001 · 18/08/2021 21:46

@CovidCorvid

Side by side toilets in the bathroom! I could just picture me and dh having a shit side by side! 🙈. It was a house we were viewing….we didn’t buy it.
Maybe it was his and hers... And they only cleaned/used their own.

I'd love that!

OP posts:
CovidCorvid · 18/08/2021 22:21

@00100001 the estate agent said it was for the kids to stop them arguing over who went to the loo first!

alexdgr8 · 18/08/2021 22:23

there was a very nice young lady whom i met through church when i was a student.
her parents had quite a large suburban house, but everyone seemed to always sit in a little sitting area, which may have been a conservatory, a kind of walk through from the garage to the kitchen.
her father always sat on what looked like a throne, a vast chair, surrounded by periodicals from his professional body.
she kind of made excuses for him, but he seemed ok if a little rigid in political views. it was only as i look back that i realise there were stacks of monthly journals everywhere, going back decades.
everyone kind of tip-toed around him, and his journals took up most of the house. and garage. literally. i never saw him out of that chair.
her mother was pleasant. no one ever mentioned the journals.

OnTheBoardwalk · 18/08/2021 22:26

See through glass on the family bathroom door. My friend and I were at a party and went to the toilet in pairs

TatianaBis · 18/08/2021 22:41

@MorriseysGladioli

It actually is sexual abuse.
Yep.
Lockdownbear · 18/08/2021 22:55

Hot buttered toast was one of the three meals they ate, cheese toasties and supermarket value noodles were the other two.

They must have eaten more than that or they'd have malnutrition. Could someone not grasp the exchange rate? Something odd going on there.

Original poster
00100001 · 18/08/2021 22:58

[quote CovidCorvid]@00100001 the estate agent said it was for the kids to stop them arguing over who went to the loo first![/quote]
Confused

OP posts:
Lockdownbear · 18/08/2021 23:11

I remember being in a house with a friend who had serious MH issues, a rescue dog which wasn't house trained. She just seemed to accept this dog and its mess.

I don't think the shelter should ever have rehomed this dog never mind to someone with MH issues.
We lost touch but I often think about her.

BluebellCockleshell123 · 18/08/2021 23:23

We once went to view a house that had several taxidermy labradors in the living room.

The same house had a home-made sunbed in the all purple master bedroom. It was on a wooden frame that you could raise or lower over the bed with a chain. It looked like something out of a torture chamber.

Didn’t buy it.

TonyThreePies · 19/08/2021 01:06

I used to be a letting agent and doing management checks was something else. The most surprising thing I saw was in a beautiful immaculate penthouse where in the bathroom by the loo was a photo of the man with his family next to a black and white photo close up photo in a frame of (what I presumed to be his wife's) fanny. And a box of Kleenex. Boak.