Things where you look back and think "that really was a different world"

[StealthPolarBear]

I am only in my early 40s so young and sprightly.
When I was even younger I had a job in a dentists office. Basically sending reminder letters out, printjng the letters, and addressing the envelopes. The dental records didn't have title on them so I asked what I should do. The response was i a woman's husband is also registered at the practice, she's a Mrs.
So I did that. Mrs for those respectable married women, and using my teenage innovation I decided any where I was unsure would be 'Ms'.
I got such a telling off. Apparently people complained as it looked like they were divorced.
There are times when the 90s seem only yesterday, and times like remembering that when they seem to have more in common with the victorian era than the present day!

When I was at uni, mid 90s no one had a mobile phone or email. We just hung around and waited to find each other on campus! I arranged to meet a school friend in a different uni town by writing a letter telling them what train I'd be on (in 2 week's time) and that was enough to make the arrangement. You just trusted that people stuck to plans. Seems such a weird way to do things now.

I often think about what used to be the unwritten social rules. If you owned a garage it was considered rude to leave your car parked in the road. Now it’s impossible to fully walk down the pavement with a pram etc due to people parking their monster trucks half on the pavement. Also, people used to take pride in their front gardens and general appearance of their house. Now most people just have a concrete car park covered in weeds and litter. Again, people would not have accepted having litter all over their street let alone on their own property.

@FortunesFave

Ha! I had DD1 in 2004 and the midwives and nurses kept calling me "Mrs Fortune" and I said "I"m Miss Fortune" and one said "We say Mrs out of respect" and I said "Well please don't as I'm not married."

1950s! That was only 17 years ago.

That's it, the suggestion seemed to be that any grown woman would be happy to be called Mrs, even if unmarried. I disagreed! I wish I'd got to the bottom of what they wanted me to do, but when I asked in general they would ask to see the one I was working on, and would say "oh she's a Mrs, we know her"

Imagine buying bottles of water. When I was growing up in the seventies it was unheard of.

At primary school in the 90s, the place did not look like Fort Knox. There was no ‘single point of access’, locked gates, staff having sight of every corner of the playground at all times. Talking to a colleague at school yesterday who was already teaching then, I asked if they had a really high attrition rate or whether pupils were genuinely less likely to make a run for it in those days!

DH worked somewhere with a typing pool. He says you knew your favourite typist’s birthday and bought chocolates and flowers. Those who were more canny also knew the birthday of the lady who ran the room…

I remember doing the 80s equivalent of Googling a crush - getting a bus to the Big Library where they had phone books for the whole country and looking him up (or rather, his parents) in the one for his town.

Also YY to handwritten uni essays. Dissertation, 10000 words, numerous handwritten drafts!

Late 90s, I worked in Dunelm on the weekends and we took card payments using the card imprinter machine and carbon copy slips. Now we just wave our cards or watches or phones at the little wireless icon and it's done.

Well, I am nearly eighty. I live as I am comfortable with.

No social media except the occasional forum. No smartphone.. I have a fourteen euro Tesco pay as you go and that is perfect.

No TV. Or radio. youtube is more than enough.

In my childhood home phones were unheard of. In dire need we walked a mile to the nearest kiosk. Hardly anyone had cars so we walked everywhere if we were not on a bus route, and buses then had no doors etc.

And no TV either. Bliss.. As a family we played Ludo and drafts round the coal fire.

It was peaceful and now I am totally retired and with CFS/ME and no working immune system I live in seclusion and peace.

Using only what technology I am happy with and need.

Bliss...

I'd forgotten about dial-up connection, using the internet engaged your phone line.
But in the seventies you couldn't dial everywhere in the UK from anywhere else e.g. if the town was small in say the North of Scotland and a long way from your own exchange.

I remember that! Handwritten uni essays too.

If you wanted to plagiarise you had to copy it out in your own handwriting so you still learned something

Handwritten exams- no idea how I used to write that fast and the hand cramps were unreal by the end of the three hours.

That said, I think people have probably lost the ability to quickly plan and write a coherent argument now that we can just edit constantly.

As for titles... Mine is SISTER. Does not compute with some firms... So I type Doctor Sister. Works every time.

I think there might be only one piece of footage in existence of the first plane flying into the North Tower! Even that was amazing to have been captured - just some firemen recording some random job in the street and the guy holding the camera happened to hear the plane flying low so looked up with his camera.

There is actually a really good film that includes this.

Two French men were making a documentary about NY firefighters, they were following a rookie in his first weeks or months.

They were not having much luck because every shift with the rookie there was nothing exciting happening, just false alarms or checking for a gas leak.

Then 9/11 happened. The rookie was left in the fire station with one of the brothers while the other was out filming with the crew and of course the crew were diverted to the WTC.

It is well worth a watch as the documentary they started making is not the documentary they ended up filming.
I'm sure it will be available somewhere as the anniversary is this week.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_and_G%C3%A9d%C3%A9on_Naudet

I started uni in 1998, but I was in my 30s so I did have a brick mobile phone. But that was a contract i'd had from when I was working. Most students only started to get phones when pas you go came in.

I was also at a uni with lots of Deaf students so I think uptake was faster due to text messages.

I was quite a techie though, I wrote my first program in the early 1980s (I took O Level computer studies, the school had one computer and that was for us to use not staff).

I remember watching fellow students head to the library when we had a new reading list, I headed to the 'audio visual' room and reserved my books electronically.

My mum 'taking in typing' to make ends meet. And hiring a TV. The man would come weekly or monthly for the payment, not sure which. Mind blowing.

Only having 4 channels when I grew up, plus such limited tech - no digital camera, no internet, no consoles, no PC or video recorder. My uncle was the only person we knew with a camcorder.

I'm not even 40 yet but how things have changed!

I remember have to turn the dial on the TV to tune in the 3 channels then we upgraded to one with buttons you pushed in, then to a remote control!!

Me too. Our first remote control was plugged in to the TV with a long lead. There'd be arguments over who had to get up to plug it back in if it came out

we upgraded to one with buttons you pushed in, then to a remote control!!

No remote sucked because if you were watching something you shouldn't be, you'd have to post a lookout so you had time to switch over before mum came in (couldn't sit close to TYV as terrified of getting "square eyes" wtf that was. Our first remote had a cable attaching it to the TV!!

Imagine buying bottles of water. When I was growing up in the seventies it was unheard of.

And there was one outside drinking fountain in my primary school in the sixties - somehow we were seldom thirsty. And many walked and cycled to school.

I remember someone would come from the Prudential once a month to collect the home insurance premium. Then they drove off with your money and did who know what with it.

The Pools. I still don’t fully understand what they were and how it all worked but my grandparents were avid fans despite having no interest in football.

I think pools was like betting on football results.

I just remembered something else weird- at primary school in the 80's the toilet cubicles didn't have locks so your mate would have to put her foot under the door to keep it shut/ mark it occupied and then you'd reciprocate. Is that still the case? I dont live in UK anymore so dont know.

Also, if I walked to a friend's house, when I got there I would call my mum and let it ring 3 times and then hang up so she'd know I'd got there but the other person's mum didn't have to pay for the call.

Ms is a bit strange, I mean how on earth are you supposed to pronounce it and what is it short for? Mr and Mrs are not intended to be read or said as they are written are they- we would still say Mister in it's full form. But ms is just really awkward.

One fountain at school and no one used it. No one was permanently thirsty and sipping from water bottles all the time.

@UpHillandDownAle apologies if someone's already pointed this out, but history derived from Ancient Greek ´ιστοριη (historiē), which means 'inquiry'.

Different generations wore different clothes.

In the 80s my mum was one of the oldest school mums and she and a few of the others wore headscarves on wet or windy days. The younger mums had hoods or umbrellas.

She never wore jeans either. There was a huge gap between the mums in their 20s and 40s. Now everyone wears clothes according to what they like rather than their age.

First job we had to wear a uniform and women were not allowed to wear trousers. Spent a fortune on tights. The uniform was badly made, fitted badly and made of cheap materials.

I remember three rings as well.