How was life different 15 years ago?

[jamontoastaddict]

2007. I don't mean personally but generally.

Got me thinking in another thread about something that happened (relatives accident) 15 years ago and it seem so recent yet seems so long ago too. 15 years before that was 1992 so I imagine 2007 seems a different lifetime 1992.

Anyway what has changed. I remember topping up my non-smart phone (Samsung clam) by text and that seemed so much better than a top up card.

I remember going out on the eve of tge smoking ban and feeding whatever loose change we had into the pub cigarette machine, I think it was a B&H one!

I had a secure job in the civil service but was considering leaving it to do temping as it was so lucrative and easy to get roles. I am so glad I didn't!

We had internet in our flat but had to plug a laptop into a cable to get it. I'm pretty sure I could buy a weeks shopping of good food for less than £40 too. Safe in the knowledge that the same items weren't going to have increased by 20p each the next week!

Ebay was good and hadn't yet been flooded by the Chinese sellers. IIRC you could still send cheques for anything you bought. I met husband number 2 on OKCupid, 13 years later and we're about to get divorced.
Happy Days

Most people didn't have a smart phone yet, so you only accessed social media or email while actually sitting at a desktop or laptop. So generally both were more limited and less of an intrusion.

Music was a bit rubbish. Landfill indie era.

I had my first flat. It was a fun time for me personally and professionally. Pre financial crash. Britain still felt a very positive and progressive country.

I met my now DH at the work Xmas party in December 2007 although we didn't start dating til the following spring.

Most people we knew thought we were on a brilliant mortgage deal of 5%. Little did we all know that rates would plummet for 15 years 😂

i had 2 kids, eldest was in reception. I don’t remember it being particularly different, no smart phone but I had WiFi at home, I applied for jobs online, did most things online. My husband changed jobs and I do recall the contracts being delivered by courier,

I joined MN in 2007 when I had my second child. I was on maternity leave for most of it. Life seemed simpler then, lots of walking round London parks with a pram.

@byvirtue I'm pretty sure that needing more women to balance the blokes was the reason I got offered a job at Lehman brothers 😂.

@caroleanboneparte I used to read all those too! I went through a massive Philippa Gregory phase until Wideacre freaked me out and I went off her stuff.

We would still take the kids to Blockbuster to get a dvd for Saturday night... or get one from LoveFilm in the post!

Or having instant and fast internet on my phone!
Can you even imagine not having this now?!?!

Sarkozy was elected
The £ was at nearly 1€50 at the start of the year.
The rules changed for expats getting into the state healthcare system in France making it much more difficult.
Some credit card issuers closed accounts for overseas cardholders such as Halifax and Post Office from memory.

😂haha. I can't lie, I like all those but 👏for the on point humour 😂

Emo was massive.
I bought CDs every week.
I chatted to other single mums on MSN Messenger
I went to the local pub on a Friday night and it closed at 11 - the rare times we went out out involved a nightclub.
I joined Facebook in 2007.
Skinny jeans were the height of fashion.
OLD was fun.
It rained all summer, and Rihanna stayed at number one with Umbrella for all of it
Hair was GHD poker straight
Sunbeds were still popular

in 2007 i came back to the UK after working in the Middle East. petrol was 99p a litre and I rented a 2 bed flat for £500 per month.

I got married in 2007 and still have some of those cardboard disposable cameras in a box which I forgot to get developed, I don't even know if I can now? I had a digital camera but it wasn't on my phone. I think I probably had some sort of flip phone back then. It's so strange how some things change so much and other things are just the same. I still have a slow cooker from the 90's but it essentially does the same thing as one I could buy tomorrow but I've had numerous mobile phones since 2007, each one being able to do increasingly more exciting things than the last.

night buses- no Uber and black cabs wouldn’t go to south London.

I was backpacking in China and India, and used to have to find internet cafes in order to keep in touch with my husband and kids at home.

The first iPhone went on sale.

Kids were very young, and there was only two of them. I broke my arm when I was thrown from my horse and I got a tattoo on my bottom. 🤭

I was running a nightclub and part time manager of a pub. Club was packed four nights a week, pub busy every day and night, and the smoking ban killed that overnight. The same club just closed down because the present owners can't afford the electricity costs.
I didn't have internet at home.
I was renting a huge two bed flat for £320 a month.
I still had a cassette player! And only owned about ten DVDs.
My TV was a big old tank.
I went on dates through the local paper ad section.

Hard to forget 2007 is it, when some turd keeps rebooting threads from then every five fucking minutes?!

@WonderingWanda you can get them developed, I've done some recently in Max Speilman. (Spelt that wrong I'm sure.)

Also you had to watch telly when it was on - not when you felt like it! Cinema was massive still.

I had forgotten all about LoveFilm til someone mentioned it up thread - that seemed cutting edge at the time!

I got pregnant with DS1 in 2007! Love Film was all the rage and I was considered very lucky because I worked from home one day a week!!

2007 was only a few years ago. Wasn’t it?

I had been getting online Sainsbury’s deliveries for years. Had a blackberry phone. Flat screen Tv.

Met DH.

Not much is different.

I had a flip phone and only really used it to call people or send the odd text.
I spent a lot less time online as I needed to be sat in front of my desktop pc to do so.
I used to watch the TV news and buy a newspaper.
No netflix etc so people generally watched the same TV programs and discussed them at work.
Paper was still used for a lot of things whereas now almost everything is online.
Life seemed simpler and slower, in spite of juggling work and toddlers.
Everything seems hectic and fraught these days. Or maybe I'm just showing my age?