What things did you really enjoy but your DC will never get to experience?

[Doubledenimrocks]

Just reminiscing today and thinking about how much I enjoyed the Clothes Show magazine and actually magazines in general. I feel like these are pretty obsolete now and my teens will never have this simple experience.

Same goes for going to the video shop and choosing a film for the night or waiting for the chart show every weekend to record it.

Things are obviously completely different nowadays. What things did you really enjoy that your DC will never experience?

the pop van, getting 15p back for bottles, playing paperboy on the commodore 64 after waiting 20 minutes for it to load.

Toys inside cereal packets.

Playing outside, my eldest dc has found one, just one, friend to play out with. We have a road full of kids and noone plays out. I remember summers outside from morning until mum called me in for tea we made perfume from petal leaves, rode our bikes, built dens...makes me really sad this won't be an experience I can give my children....my dc would love to go further than the road we live on with his friend for a bike ride to the local park (opposite the house) but I'd be too nervous I'd be told off / reported / my dc picture would be spread around fb. We often went to the park without our parents from age 7.

Doodling moustaches/ eye patches and glasses on the TV guide when I had nothing else to do.

Saturday morning cinema
Finding out who shot JR in Dallas (was it Sue Ellen, I forget?)
Birthday cards from all your family and friends, now it’s a FB message
The Christmas Eve carol service

Going into town by bus to do high Street shopping. Getting the Radio Times Christmas edition and highlighting everything I wanted to watch.

Playing tennis across road in front of my house as a child. Virtually no cars came.

Watching Top of the Pops.

Eating Opal Fruits.

Top of the pops

Nights out without evidence

Cross post with caring carer

🤘

Ah yeah, Blind date: come in Number 3!!!

Cilla 💐

Going to a gig or concert and everyone dancing /moshing living in the moment rather that taking photos/filming it

Being kicked out in the summer holidays with my siblings and spending the day in the neighbourhood looking for ways to occupy our time. Amazing memories and good for the imagination- but terribly dangerous when at one point we were only 8, 9 & 10!

Buying sachets of Silvikrin shampoo for 10p so you could wash your hair once a week. Being bored shitless on a Sunday because nothing was open so you sat in the living room in a fog of cigarette smoke watching Doris Day movies or the Eastenders Omnibus. Calling Dial a disc with a 2p coin from the phonebox while a queue of angry people looked on waiting to make their calls.

Late night shopping in town, till 8pm, and every night in the week before Xmas! I used to look forward to that so much.

I don't miss only having 3 telly channels but the togetherness it brought is missed. Everyone watched the same stuff at the same time and everyone talked about it. Remember the 'who shot JR' excitement?

Trips to the seaside. Nowadays, many seaside towns seem to play host to raucous hen & stag parties; gives the places a whole different vibe.

Did anyone else save Pot Noodle lids to get a record token? That anticipation and excitement doesn't really exist anymore.

And, yep, Woolies pick n mix. Their acid drops were out of this world!

Those smaller comic-type “books” around the late 70’s early 80’s. They were smaller than a comic, kind of a smooth cover. Was usually a few ongoing stories in each one (I vaguely remember one about a girl pretending to be blind).

I can’t remember who they were by. I remember being off with really bad chickenpox and a friends mum dropped round a huge stack of them - I was hooked!

I echo pp’s - the ability to grow up without everyone around filming your every move.

Booking a holiday on Teletext.

Getting served in a pub whilst a teenager without being asked for ID.

Looking forward to school dinners, especially if it was lemon meringue pie day (DS's school has terrible food).

Getting a Chinese takeaway on New Year's Eve.

Going for a knickerbockerglory at Wimpy and thinking it was the best thing ever.

Eating chips out of real newspaper.

Ooh yes. My dad was a tight arse and would put them in for a week. The anticipation waiting for them to come back was huge!

Taping the charts
Smoking (I've given up now but I loved it when I was young!) thankfully none of mine smoke as they realise how dangerous it is
Getting into pubs underage

The thrill of going on a plane for the first time

Yes, to renting a video from the local Co op. It was such a treat, and so expensive.

Buying a piece of furniture, it being a big family event, we were short of money, so it was very exciting.😁

Getting a taxi on Xmas Eve to get the food shop.

Sitting in my Uncles car with a drink and packet of crisps whilst he was inside drinking away in a working man's club. Probably a good thing my kids never experienced that.

Collecting stamps for our annual fizzy drinks at Xmas.

Taping the radio and waiting for the charts to be released.

Catching smoke rings blown by my late Mum and her friend from their cigarettes. Again, it's a good thing my kids haven't experienced that, but I loved it.

The sheer excitement of a library, full of free books and cosy chairs. My kids did go to the library but it wasn't a big deal to them.

Going conker crazy every autumn.

School trips overseas/anywhere. DD1 missed out on a skiing trip when she broke her foot, then Covid happened. Has almost finished Y13 now. DD2 is in Y9 and no school trips have been offered to her cohort, not even a field trip, since Y5. They had no school journey in Y6, no bonding camping trip in Y7 and now with the cost of living crisis and additional costs for schools it looks like they wil never get to do anything.

I went to Germany twice and France one in Y7-Y9, then we had a outward bounds residential trip in the UK in Y10 - this was in a regular comprehensive in the late 1980s/early 90s not a posh private school. Plus loads of subject day trips and other opportunities with playing sport.

I also spent a year studying in France during my degree - this is much less routine now after leaving the EU. First world problems perhaps but things have gone backwards.

Chocolate definitely tasted so much better, before it was full of palm and sunflower oil - heave.
Way less cars on the road. It was rare for a car to come down our road (90s) outside of those 8.30 & 5.30 commuting times.
My dad used to let me help back the car out of the drive and on the long track that led to my uncles house we used to climb into the boot and dad would drive in zig zags so we’d been thrown about, giggling like mad.
Just wandering through the fields with friends, not thinking at all about strange men possibly coming to prey on us, no phones and no social media. I standard of ‘beauty’ being low at secondary school, make up was not really at thing. It seems terrible the level of polish/sophistication girls at the local secondary school here working hard to achieve in their every day look.
I had heaps of cousins and my DC have none, which feels really sad.

The things that came from being part of a community before the days of social media and telephones

• excitement leading up to Bonfire Night watching the bonfire in the park growing taller
• guising ( trick and treat) to neighbours houses in the dark
• Christmas Eve going with my Dad to collect my bike from the shop in town ( paid up over the weeks beforehand)
• Drawing the menus for Christmas Day and waiting on my Grandparents arriving
• Hogmanay and my Dad going to "first foot " neighbours and getting to go to neighbours houses and drink advocaat
• the walk and New Year's Day dinner at my Grandparents
• Top of the Pops
• the fairground coming to town and us skipping the Church Youth Club to go and watch the boys

Young people now will not understand the excitement we had in the 1960s !

I think the gift of being bored, properly seriously bored.

The sense of having endless time that really only came from relative isolation and boredom.

I read so many books, really eclectic mix of everything and anything I could lay my hands on. My DC just have no reason to read weird old fashioned books off their grandparents' shelves or in a waiting room somewhere. They have age appropriate, enticing, modern books plus endless stimulations and entertainment from devices in their hands.

We played out for hours, unsupervised, with other dc from the village. We went on long bike rides and just explored. No sense of needing to be anywhere. My mum would have been at home whenever we left and whenever we got back. There was no need to make plans.

My DC have a lovely life but because we both work ft and are out of the house a lot of the time, their lives are v planned and scheduled. They don't have a lot of time to wonder what to do.

They don't have the freedom and anonymity I did, and I pity them that.

Sunday nights the Clothes show. I remember that too.Probably about 1989 ish ? Had the theme tune from the Pet shop boys didn’t it?
Also Sunday nights in the late 80s or early 90s used to have the Narnia series on and other children’s dramas.
We had less channels back then but the quality of the tv much was good.

Recording tv programs on a video recorder machine! It was the only way of watching something if you were going to miss it!

Having to sit by the phone in the hall if expecting a call from a boy as you didn't want your dad picking it up and speaking to him.

Having to speak through friends parents to call them on their landlines.

Buying a new single without having heard it first.

Having to rewind videoes to watch them and having to sit through the video trailers at the start. If you fast forwarded you might go over and miss the start.

Wearing snoods and balaclavas in winter.

Seeing Concorde fly over.