Things you thought were posh/exciting/unattainable as a child that are actually everyday items

[AlternativelyWired]

I'm just searching for scotch tape on Amazon ready for Christmas. It got me thinking how double sided sticky tape was but a dream back when I was little. Blue Peter used it all the time but it was something I'd never have. The same with play dough. I only ever had plasticine. Scotch tape was fancy too, we only ever had yellow sellotape. Ribera. I'm sure I'll think of others.

Enough hot water to fill a bath. Had no idea this was even possible until I went away to university. We shared a bathroom in halls, and I only realised you could fill the bath with hot water when the person before me had left the water in. It was still steaming, so I realised you could actually FILL THE BATH. The absolute luxury.

At home we had a 1930s bath which took literally 4 inches of water before the tank ran out.

A friend had a globe with drink in and a leather sofa.

Viennetta. We had it only at Christmas. It was a major treat and MASSIVELY posh in my family.

Eating out.

Soda Stream.

I still find buying a sandwich makes me feel like I've had plovers eggs delivered, like in Brideshead Revisited

^^ I love this! 😀. and I know the guilty feeling!

This talk of sandwiches reminds me of summer holidays in Scotland where the hotel made you up a packed lunch for the day! We were ecstatic at the prospect.

And they were always good to be fair. Naice ham sandwiches with mustard. Home made tea bread. Boiled eggs with salt and pepper in a twist of grease proof. A slice of pork pie. Lettuce and tomatoes (no dressing) in a melamine bowl. 😃

We only ordered it twice (the rest of the week we made do with apples and cheese squares wrapped in plastic and cups of tea made with condensed milk) but my goodness the luxury of having someone else make and pack your lunch! It’s been down hill ever since 😂

McDonalds! If we ever had it, me and my sister would have to share a happy meal. I couldn't imagine making my DC share a happy meal 🤣

Going in attractions. We'd go on holiday and simply drive past attractions and never actually pay to go in. We went all the way to Lands End just to stay in the car, same thing at countless old castles, stately homes, theme parks, foresty places like Clumber Park etc. I've been to loads of places in the UK as a child, but never left the car.

Vienetta, badedas bubble bath and yardley soap (at my granny’s house), Alpen cereal, Terry’s Neapolitans chocolates.

Electric toothbrush. Only posh people have those😂

Bought one several years ago and use it occasionally.

Oh we had boxes of tissues. I never saw the point. When I have a terrible cold I go through 4 toilet rolls in a day. My nose doesnt stop running for the first 3 days. I think my mum thought my colds should have been a quick sneeze and done. I went through box after box of tissue and she kept buying them. And I remember thinking surely toilet rolls would be cheaper.
As for height of sophistication umm
Black forest gateaux
Real coffee, not the instant mellow birds shite
Little chef who had pancakes with cherry sauce to die for. Then one day several years ago I used a tin of cherry pie filling and yep, it was the cherry sauce of my pancake heaven.
Matchsticks, the chocolate things called I think matchmakers, by quality street, only ever bought at Christmas time.

Buying a drink when out. I seem to have spent my entire childhood dehydrated as my parents refused to buy any of us kids a drink when we could have one for free at home.
They never brought one out with us either (probably because they wouldnt buy a bottle) and used to get really grumpy if we asked or complained!

Cartons of fruit juice.

If a carton appeared on the side, we knew the fancy guests were coming round!

And, well. If a Vienetta came out! You'd have thought the Queen was coming!

Before McDonald's and burger King came to my town, we had Wimpy.....I used to stare longingly into the window but my mum wouldn't go in as she didn't have the money. I remember being invited there for a 7th birthday party, but I wouldn't go because I was too shy.

Coloured toilet roll, was this invented to match the crazy 70s-80s coloured bathroom obsession? My children won't believe there ever a time when you could buy purple, blue, green, yellow or pink bogroll. It would be quite nice to see it revived, wouldn't it?

Ferraro rocher

Pate served on slices of a toasted baguette with a wafer thin slice of cucumber curled & placed on the top.

My parents didn't like/buy pate so I first saw it when visiting some old French lady who lived fairly close.

I still have no idea why we visited her just that one time, or why we got served pate on cold toasted baguette in the middle of the day (think I was about 6), but I thought it was the absolutely poshest, most sophisticated thing ever.
We were only allowed one piece (didn't know then it's a very rich food which was probably why) which made it seem even more amazing.

I thought pate must be like proper caviar or something.

fresh coffee i.e. not instant

One of the things I had in common with dh when we first met (apart from both being one of 4 kids of pretty skint parents) was that except perhaps for birthdays and Christmas, we only ever had orange squash and chocolate biscuits at other people’s houses. So having them as a matter of course was very swanky.

Yellow fluffy dusters. In a packet from a shop.
We used outgrown vests. And boy, did we need those vests in a house with one gas fire in the sitting room.
Kellogs multi pack variety cereal. Christmas day only.
Still to this day, 30+ years after leaving home, I still appreciate a deep hot bath to myself and I can read a chapter or two in peace.

Pens that wrote in four colours.

My friend Ruth had a FIFTY colour pen. Blew my tiny mind.

Her dad was a doctor though so she was loaded.

@Ludo19 , you’ve brought back memories of my first holiday job, on a supermarket checkout. I still remember vividly one of the younger male staff - a bit of a character - who was shelf stacking nearby, saying loudly (please imagine a very heavy Brummie accent) ‘That’s the third time I’ve filled up the pink toilet rolls today - I reckon they’ve all got gastric.’ 😂

I grew up with a lot of 'posh' things that at the time, I just thought were weird because my friends didn't have them.

Table laid each night with cloth napkins... and we each had our own napkin ring.
(But we were eating dinner in the kitchen, not in a fancy dining room).

Dishwasher, most of my friends had no such thing - I just thought it was loud and smelled a bit horrid sometimes and it was my job to load/unload it.

Skiing holidays in winter, beach holidays in summer (but in hindsight the cheapest resorts possible, driving over, end of season etc etc)

Things I thought were exciting/beyond reach...

Coke/fizzy drinks
Sweets
Chocolate
Crisps (except Hedgehog flavour obviously)
A pony (ohhhhhhhhh my heart longed for a pony)
Glass coffee tables (it was the 80s. The fact almost all my friends had scars from falling through them did not reduce their value in my eyes at all!)

Scrimpy saving things parents did

We never had white paper, we had paper printed/copied onto on one side that my Dad brought home from work (he worked in local government as chief architect, there was probably a lot of what would now break GDPR on those sheets of scrap paper!).

My parents would happily tip-dive local tips for things, thats how we got a Scalextric track and cars one year!

Drawing/colouring stuff again mostly came from my dads Office and was the 'nearly all used up' stuff, if we were caught even LOOKING at the drawer of new unopened stuff there'd be trouble!

Skis, ski boots, walking boots, walking britches, outdoor jackets and kagoules, caving kit, bicycles, canoes etc...all handed down from parents friends kids. As my parents were the oldest and last in their friendship group to have kids, there was a LOT of hand me down loot to be had!

So I didn't think any of this stuff was posh as it was either weird (napkin rings!) or old and scruffy by the time I got it.

Probably the poshest thing we had was a cottage in North Wales - of course there was no stopping at motorway service stations (not even for a wee, there were laybys for that), and when we got there it would be cold and damp, I'd have been carsick, and any food left there would have been nibbled by mice in our absence. The weekend would be spent either being hauled up mountains or helping parents do various building/construction chores (or very memorably, at an emergency doctors with one or other parent having a digit sewn back on!).

From the ages of 6 to about 12, I really longed for a weekend in front of the TV (haha, nope) trip to the park (pft!) and an icecream from the icecream van (fat chance!).

Salmon. I don’t think I had it until I was about 20!! It was seen as a luxury. Mind you with the price increases I think it will be again.

L'Oreal face creams, as my mum only used the cheap ones (although now I'm adult and L'Oreal is cheap option for me. I guess times have changed).

I remember watching tomorrow’s world and they had a fax machine that was linked to a man in Australia and he sent a photo of his face live on air.

People wrote in thinking it was a prank!

I was amazed!

Oh oh oh... I was ONCE allowed to go on a school trip somewhere (generally not allowed as deemed either non educational, somewhere we'd already been multiple times, or too dangerous for teachers to keep us alive (school skiing holidays), and of course an outrageous expense).

Not only did I go on the school trip but I had the requisite £2 as instructed on the list of 'things child should have' and because it was not specified what this was for... I was given it.

It was for... wait for it.. drum roll please... THE GIFT SHOP.

I nearly died. It was heaven. Any trip we went on with parents was to something without a gift shop, or with an optional gift shop. Very few places back then had realised the benefit of forcing visitors to leave via the gift shop, so we'd really never been in one!

I bought a rubber, a pencil sharpener in the shape of a duck AND A STICK OF ROCK. Never allowed to buy sweets normally either.

1988, Martin Mere!

More than a thimble of ‘fresh’ orange juice.