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.

We always had UHT too... I find it more practical and prefer it but we arent a massive milk drinking family.

That makes me think of the scene in Young Guns 2 when he making the deal with the govenor and asks for cake and the butler looking disgusted starts to cut a small slice from the plain white cake (looks like sponge) and Billy quickly 'corrects' him with 'no not that one, the BROWN cake with the sweet frost'.

Never knew what 'brown' was meant to be (it didn't look like chocolate and I just asumed in 1870 in the wild west they likely didnt have chocolate cake, so I assumed Malt or Fruit maybe) but had what looked like icing sugar sprinkled on.

Fresh milk. We always had to make do with powered for many years.

KatherineJaneway · Today 11:04
Fresh milk. We always had to make do with powered for many years.

Yes, fresh milk. We always had STERILISED milk, as we didn't have a fridge. Do they even make sterilised milk now ?

JustDanceAddict · Today 07:10
I was brought up oddly!!

'Every family has a secret. The secret is they are not like any other family.' (Alan Bennett)

Branded anything - my mother was an own-brand devotee. I've retained that attitude, largely.

Butter - we always had margarine, later 'spread'. We did own a metal butter dish with a wooden handle, that came out at Christmas and dinner parties.

Real coffee. My parents would buy a pack of it that they kept in the fridge and lasted months. At first for guests only, occasionally in my teens I was allowed to make myself one at weekends.

Now we only have butter and real coffee (tbf we live in a country where people are a bit about the concept of instant)

'Avocado pears' - the height of poshness.

School lunchboxes that weren't old ice-cream tubs.

I don't know. They must do. I suspect there is powdered milk somewhere in Tesco, but it'll give me flashbacks so I'll avoid😁

Most supermarkets still sell dried milk-I keep it for adding to bread dough.

I remember sterilised milk, it had a...unique taste, I liked it. We called it sterrer. The narrow necked bottles were perfect for setting off rockets from.

Having a TV, and being allowed to turn it on! I grew up in a fairly affluent family, and our (lovely!) conservative religious parents had very strict controls on TV. We had an old TV that was almost never turned on, except for some major news event or election results. So lots of hard work, prayer, exercise, reading, newspapers, but no TV or pop music.

(From Northern Ireland), when I went to boarding school in England, then I was amazed to see that almost everyone there has a color TV in their own homes that they watch whenever they wanted. That just seemed incredible to me!

In my teens I would only make coffee with powdered milk... I think it tastes better lol.

We always had sterilised milk when I was a child.
It was vile and you would dread the piece of skin?? that was always at the bottom.
Still not keen on milk years later.

Which milk tasted like carnation I liked a milky coffee made with this

I'll always regret not trying a cup of Camp Coffee when young. My granny had a bottle of it on top of the fridge for years, with a rather strange looking dude on the label. Was it meant to be General Gordon or someone?

Camp Coffee was horrible, coffee adulterated with roasted chicory and what tastes like liquorice. You could still get it in some big supermarkets before Brexit, usually in the baking section.

I add 50g when I'm making yogurt. The milk for that is UHT as it saves the faff of scalding it first, but it's more expensive than fresh now.

My elderly mum excitedly sent me a picture of the menu from her hotel in Norfolk on a recent coach trip. Starters were 'Fruit Juice - Choice of Orange or Apple', 'Breaded Mushrooms', 'Seasonal Melon' or 'Vegetable Soup'. A trip straight back to the 1970s - she was delighted and thought it v.posh.

We never ate out at all as children, but I don't think that was very unusual as it just wasn't affordable in those days.

That might have been Ideal evaporated milk,my mother was a big fan.

We loved Ideal on tinned fruit.
whenindoubtgotothelibrary; was your Mum's trip one of those 'nostalgia' weekends?

Teachers too.
I remember various teachers telling me I had to cover my school books with something like pretty paper or contact paper or similar. We had painted walls, no wallpaper in our house, no contact paper, no pretty paper, in fact looking back the only thing I could have used was newspaper or material.
I used material, I dont know why, but it was sneered at by every teacher. Still fo not understand why we all had to cover our books. Seemed pointless then and now.

On another note, reading about Chinese and takeaways.
My first Chinese I was 17, I'd never even heard of the concept. I had to choose from a menu that gave no clues what was in it. I went with sweet and sour chicken balls. It was gross and put me off Chinese for years.

Moonatics We didn't have any nice wallpaper "lying around" for covering books either and my mum wouldn't shell out for special contact paper, so grudgingly she allowed me some sheets of wrapping paper, the very thin and cheap type. Not much use as they tore immediately so I sellotaped round the edges and over the tearing which wasn't much of an improvement and they looked scruffy next to everyone's nicely covered books.

We were told to use brown parcel paper. Nothing else allowed

Going through this rigmarole with my children, we went to b&q and took book sized samples off the opened rolls of wallpaper.

On another note, reading about Chinese and takeaways.
My first Chinese I was 17, I'd never even heard of the concept. I had to choose from a menu that gave no clues what was in it. I went with sweet and sour chicken balls. It was gross and put me off Chinese for years.

I'd been into Chinese restaurants when on holiday (B&Bs) with my parents, but they always stuck to the 'English' options such as omelette and chips. DF couldn't eat onions, DM had conservative taste in foods. I thought other peoples dinners arriving looked and smelled wonderful but I'd no idea what to order especially for just one person.
So the first Chinese meal I had was when I was 16, my first BF took me out. We probably shared spring rolls or suchlike, and I ordered chicken and cashew nuts, it was the best thing I'd ever tasted.

The tiny seedless grapes and a fresh pineapple at Christmas time!