Batshittery that was normal back in the day

[Pleasetakeaseat]

Smoking upstairs on buses

Smoking / non-smoking areas in restaurants

Smoking rooms in hospitals

Teachers going for boozy lunches and teaching afternoon classes pissed (my English teacher was always smashed by 1pm 🤣)

Chopper bikes with that brake thing in the middle that could easily disembowel you if you weren't careful

White van men picking up their underage girlfriends from school

White van men thinking schools were a good place to pull

Little kids being sent to the shop on their bikes for their parents booze and fags, and no law against shopkeepers serving them

Bang on! pretty accurate

My dad was in the pub when i was born (born at home). All my mums friends were with her, one of which nipped to the pub to tell him I had arrived. He finished his bloody pint first!!

Thinking of ladies having to give up work at school when pregnant. A relation of mine told me a strange school story.

She had to take a few weeks off her teaching job because she had had a miscarriage. When she came back, and older lady teacher came up to her and said "don't worry dear, Mr Smith had exactly the same thing happen to him when he was a new starter as well". Mr Smith was definitely a bloke. Apparently there was no way to explain that actually it was a miscarriage and my relation never found out what had actually happened to Mr Smith.

I’m only in my 30s and it blows my mind that when I was old enough to go to gigs/concerts with my mates without adult supervision, it was still legal to smoke inside the venues! I remember getting burnt in a standing only gig once. It was ridiculous that it was allowed!

On sun block, I don't think I heard of it until the 90s. I do remember Australian cricketers having zinc oxide cream on their noses and everyone going,

What do they look like?!

I think we went to the same school, if not ours was a similar crazy experience which sounds unbelievable when you talk to people about it. Funny, but also leaves a lot to deal with.

I got the slipper at school aged 7 as me and my mate had misbehaved
metal work teacher used to smoke in lessons and had bottles of scotch stashed away in the stores
At secondary school some of the masters would really relish being an arsehole to you

‘I only said that piece of fish was good enough for Jehovah!’

At my primary school in the late 60s/early 70s the boys got the cane & the girls the slipper. One of the teachers had an ebony ruler that she hit children with.
We also had Hinge & Bracket at my senior school. All the teachers at my (private) school seemed to be middle aged spinsters of a certain look. The story was that they'd lost fiancees in the war.

Absolutely! There were pictures of big, bare breasts everywhere. And men who were total strangers thought it was ok to make comments on your boobs.

I’m going to have Google the fish and Jehovah comment. 😀. I’ll probably feel really thick when I figure it out!

Life of Brian 🤣

I remember my (Catholic) mother being v v disappointed my (non religious) dad insisted on keeping his Life of Brain video 😂 she ordered us not to watch it, so the moment her back was turned we watched it. It was, and is, pure genius and v prescient

Thank you! 🌺

Friend who went to a Convent school in the 60s. No patent leather shoes as these might reflect what knickers you had on. Sitting on a man's lap? A phone directory between you and him

Weaning at 10-12 weeks.

My mother in law was aghast at Dd3 not weaning until 6 months. We were starving the poor child.

Also adverts saying "If you must drink and drive 2 will do!"

Anyone from Northern Ireland remember the adverts about the troubles in the '80's ? These were official adverts (about informing the police.) There's no way kids would be exposed to that now.

I knew someone who used to display a lovely picture of her and her husband at dinner in a restaurant that was taken a few days after her baby was born when she was still admitted to hospital and the baby was being looked after by the midwives!!

I'm actually surprised how much of this chimes. I'm only in my mid-forties.
Cars with no seatbelts in the back were still common in the 80s, as was squishing more than three kids into the back seat. I'd been in a car crash aged seven, and found this terrifying whenever I got a lift with a friend. I'd be hanging on to whatever I could with white knuckles.

Smoking on the top deck of the bus lasted into the 90s, and smoking areas everywhere else until I was early 20s. I worked in a pub and used to come home stinking (from that and the coal fire) and hang my uniform outside in the dew to air.

Earlier than that, having teenage friends who smoked and being very anxious one of our mums - or a teacher - would come round a corner and find out. I was a goody-goody but thought I'd be guilty by association. I must have been a riot...

As for dating older boys... I was a fan of an actor on TV, or at least of the character he played, and my mum thought this was an excellent sign as otherwise I wasn't interested in boys at all (or indeed girls - and nobody was interested in me). Once she was teasing me about fancying him and I tried to evade this by saying "Well, we could never really go out - he's twice my age," (so about 28?) and she said "Well... we would probably let you, if he was a nice boy." This would be 1993-ish.

I only had children in the 2010s and still didn't get kicked out of hospital quickly. My son was slow to latch and we didn't get to go home for four days. I was so desperate for my own bed without a crackly plastic sheet - and Son caught his first cold in the hospital, which didn't make feeding him any easier. Still, my mum was told NOT to breastfeed me at the first sign that I was having trouble latching.

One thing I miss is just getting to sit in the car with my book when my parents were doing something boring like going to the supermarket. It was the UK (so not baking hot) and I had the car key with me and the door locked. And I didn't have to put the key in to wind the window down a crack!

Having to call you mum’s friends ‘auntie’. Hated that. Everyone very invested in me drinking tea as a very small child and my granny pouring her very strong loose leaf tea into a saucer and adding milk for me to drink.

Purple beret?

If you really want school batshittery from back in the day, watch the 1968 film "If", in a boys' boarding school, with young boys carrying out unspeakable duties for the "whips" (prefects), such as warming their lavatory seats, shaving them, and lining up for medical inspection with the matron looking between their legs with a torch, in front of the entire school. Also, with the ending of that film, there's no way it would be made today.

@Mydahliasareshit Remember also fifteen foot high playground slides, above a solid tarmac surface, instead being built down the side of a hill like they often are now, or the modern soft surface of nowadays? I remember some slides in childhood which had a nod to safety by having a wooden enclosure around the top of the slide.

Also, and I say this as a regular churchgoer: the idea that many people once had to take part in Christian activities out of politeness whether they wanted to or not seems batshit to many people, perhaps especially on MN. For example, prayers used to be said far more in school assemblies, even in non-faith schools. Nowadays, there seems to be an unspoken rule "you only mention God if you are sure you are in Christian company". A remake of a TV show from the 1970s replaced "pray to God" with "pray to your God". On many MN threads about Christianity, my bingo card is ready for derisory mentions of "it's a fairy tale", "imaginary friend", "deluded", "indoctrinated".

Good old Life of Brian. As an aside, there's a sketch with Rowan Atkinson as the Devil (easy to find on Youtube), very politely welcoming people to hell, saying "that space is reserved for those who have seen Monty Python's Life of Brian, it seems God doesn't have a sense of humour"; and also "we're reserving that space for a Mr... a Mr... (checks list) Trump". Rowan Atkinson has often said that he considers organised religion as an acceptable target for comedy and satire, which is one reason he has played so many vicars.

@scalt Yes, I do remember that Rowan A skit - the Devil's name was Toby 🤣

Is this not normal? I did this in 2017

Your boss got you to do personal errands not related to your/his job during working hours and that weren’t part of your job description on a regular basis in 2017, @CatMumSlave ? Not an occasional personal favour that you could say no to, as an “order”. No, that is not normal.

@scalt

Interesting how many people pray to god when they are in deep trouble. I did it my self when I was reading up on witchcraft out of curiosity and started having the same disturbing dreams at the same every night . I started to pray and the dreams went . My Grandad served in the battle of the Somme and he said that men cried out for God and their Mothers in their last moments or when they were badly wounded.