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

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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.

Arts and Craft supplies. I had a few pencils and a colouring book as a kid. I later went onto art college. It took me a long time to stop hoarding glitter, colouring pens and paints that you find in pound shops, when I had money of my own to buy it.
Always remember a kid phoning in a Saturday morning kids TV programme sobbing down the phone to Janet Ellis and Phillip Schofield, aksin why does Blue Peter always have use expensive craft supplies , we never had any double sided sticky tape either, so could sadly relate.

Sticky backed plastic - another Blue Peter favourite! Nowhere to buy it in my town in the 1980's!!

Buying clothes from M&S, never mind groceries. When I was a kid growing up in a very working-class Northern town with both sets of grandparents living in council houses, it was the height of extravagance to buy from M&S. I remember a relative saying about an acquaintance "...and she does her weekly [food] shop at Marksies!" and knowing it was a sign of how sophisticated, even decadent, this person was.

I no longer shop at M&S for other reasons but there was a roughly 15 year spell when I treated it like my corner shop for treats and extras and my go-to for clothes, especially underwear, and I often used to think how my late gran would have reacted if she'd lived to see how 'posh' I'd become!

Definitely sticky tape and most other art and craft materials. I had paper, (my aunt worked in a paper mill and would bring me a ream of paper every now and then) colouring pens, a pair of scissors, Sellotape and some glue.

I remember having home made spaghetti bolognese for the first time round at my friend's house when I was 11, in 1987. We used to have meals at home like frozen burgers, chips and peas. Spaghetti came in tins. My dad wouldn't have eaten proper spaghetti if he was dying of hunger.

Garlic bread (to get all Peter Kay for a moment) and proper pizza in a restaurant at about the same time.

My aunty served prawn vol-au-vents for a party and I thought they were immensely posh, and delicious. I always loved prawns. I remember my dad moaning about paying £1 for a prawn sandwich for me once. Also that going shopping with me accompanying him cost him more money as I would always ask for things like Iced Magic and Angel Delight in the supermarket. Obviously he was quite a soft touch and would almost always buy them.

Takeaway other than fish and chips.

I went to a friends house when I was 13 and their family ordered a Chinese. They put the menu in my hand and asked what I wanted and I didn’t have a fucking clue what anything was, I’d never experienced a takeaway being ordered before let alone had a clue what Chinese food was (the child’s parents humiliated me for that, that was nice).

Ditto pizza at another friends house.

Going to a cafe. Matching plates. Cushions on sofas. Tiny little walls /hedges around front of someone’s house. Place mats.

Born in the 1960s.

Yogurt. It was definitely new and strange and only to be eaten as a treat.

I had heard of avocados but never eaten one.

Chinese food - I first ate it at 18 at a friend's birthday meal out. I was too embarrassed to admit I didn't know what to choose - I'd never had anything like it so how could I choose? This was also the first time I ate rice (except in rice pudding).

Hair conditioner. Just not something my parents thought was necessary.

Also, eating out any where other than a cheap cafe once in a blue moon.

I was ripped the piss out of at 18 for thinking Bella Pasta was something special. It was to us the one time we went!

Courgettes. My mother was pretty open minded about food but she had to take grandad into account and he was very much a meat and two veg man, nothing fancy. When I was seventeen we I went to stay with my aunt and she produced courgettes with the Sunday roast, done with the potatoes.

Yes same here, but I was older - at sixth form college - before I ever had a Chinese takeaway, so this would have been about 1993 by then. I went for a prawn chow mein as I knew I liked prawns. And spaghetti 😀

Any 'foreign' food was wildly exotic. My mum bought frozen Findus pizza baguettes but that was as good as it got for many years. I remember her buying me a tin of curry and some rice from Marks and Spencer once and taking the plate next door to show my auntie before I was allowed to eat it because it was such a novelty. To her absolute credit, though, I went vegetarian when I was 11 and she bought loads of veggie cookery books and started to make me all sorts of lovely dishes that must have been completely alien to her.

Knickerbocker glory. Only to be had when eating out at smartish restaurants.

We weren't allowed to watch ITV. I have no idea what my parents thought might happen: corruption by the advertising industry, perhaps.

'Dial a pizza'.

I remember I had my Christmas money on me, £15 which was a huge amount to me (1993 also!)

I tried to give it to my friends mum to chip in as all I had ever heard my dad say was that take away food was too expensive. I thought one thing from the menu would be £15.

Horrible woman laughed at me and called me stupid. I honestly thought they must be very rich to be getting a takeaway.

Butterscotch flavour Angel Delight with chopped up Mars Bar and topped with Carnation Milk. This was the dessert served by my mother to fancy visitors.

See also Vienetta. And some sort of log roll desert made by dipping cookie type biscuits into liqueur and sticking them together with buttercream

The main course was usually a gammon steak topped with a ring of tinned pineapple and a cherry, with tinned peas and potatoes.

A trim phone. Very posh. We only had a rotary one on the wall.

Viennetta
Romantica
Black Forest Gateau
Ferrero Rocher
My Grandma had a gilt hostess trolley and I thought that was so posh. I begged my mum to get one, but she wouldn’t.

KFC. We had McDonald's and Pizza but there wasn't a KFC near us. We had it when we went to see my cousins at the other end of town. I have one across the road from me now but it's awful from there. Can't believe they haven't been closed down.

Great post by the way

I had forgotten about these! My grandparents gave up smoking when my mum got pregnant with me in the early 80s, but the lighter and ashtray remained on the sideboard, as did my granddads red, leather cigar box. I loved them and also thought that they were very sophisticated!

Anyone who lived in a semi with a garden.😂😂😂

Pizza Hut! My parents are not takeaway people and we weren’t allowed soft drink at home. But a few times a year we would have pizza and soft drinks for dinner and it would be a special pizza night :)

We have a grapefruit knife. It is old though.

Ooh remember when we used to get a vienetta with a bucket for £9.99?

It is posh though. Usually means you are at minimum lower middle class. Unless it is a council estate house.

In the 70s my granny had frozen concentrated orange juice, it was the shape of a mini mixer can and you mixed it water.

I guess it was marginally better than long life.