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

Shops still close by 6pm here - the rest of it, not so much.

After school wraparound care being provided by any 13 year old girl or above in the local area.

Sitting in the boot of your parents estate car on long journeys.
Playing on building sites.

In the late 1980s, I remember complaining to Personnel (as HR was back then) that I was getting a sore throat because my colleague was chain smoking next to me.

She thought that I was the unreasonable one as people had the right to smoke.

The stigma of being a single mother.
In the early 1980s as an unmarried woman you still needed a man to guarantor your mortgage. The law had just changed as I bought my first home, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to buy.
Being caned or smacked with a ruler at school in the 70s
The family sitting watching the TV together in the 70s watching and loving prime time very very camp presenters and comedians, yet being utterly homophobic and not imagining the presenters were gay.
The ‘us’ and ‘them’ of the class system was much more pronounced where I’m from in the North ( in the 80s) . Accents were a sign of lower class. Elocution lessons were popular. You were less likely to get a job in a bank, or a ‘ nice office job’ if you had a regional accent.
Aspirations for women were different in the 80s. My parents aspired for me to be an air hostess.

My dm was a single dm. Apparently I asked very loudly once if I was a bastard..
On the bus home from primary school..
Late 70 's..

Drinking and driving
Men having their own men only bar at the golf club and all the women got was a powder room off the loos.
Page 3 in the sun (topless women) and some men looking at it on the tube in the morning
Walking past a building sight and always getting catcalled or whistled at.

Smoking inside & around small children thanks mum and dad
Being sold cigarettes as a tall 14 year old when the law was 16
School was homophobic insults galore
I was allowed to stay round boys houses from the age of 14 up 🤯 my parents didn’t even consider anything untoward would happen..
Paedophiles being called ‘dirty old men’ and laughed off. It was very ‘don’t let Kevin get you on your own, he likes to feel the girls bums’ sort of thing and everyone would laugh
Kids being allowed to watch distressing things on TV - mum was quite happy to let me (and more to the point my 5 year old brother) watch 9/11 live on TV. Nothing was hidden from kids back then.
Parents taking you round their friends houses, and you would run amok with their kids until midnight while the adults got thoroughly pissed before walking home in the dark. Everyone born before 2000 seems to remember these ‘parties’ but I’m not sure they happen much now

Smoking on planes! When they mailed it to the back couple of rows only, anyone who wanted a flag went to hang out down the end. I flew a lot 1993 onwards and it was still going on in 1997, possibly longer.

Head teacher letting us smoke in his office circa 1993

Smoking in the Home Economics class room at lunch time with the Home Ec teacher (only for 5th yrs)

Being taken to parties with our parents. All the kids would be bundled into a bedroom with a load of videos, while our parents got blind drunk.

Meeting my policeman boyfriend in the police club after his shift and nipping out for a quickie in a police car.

Living in the middle of nowhere, walking miles to the bus stop with my sis and my mum who'd drop us off at the bus stop to catch the bus to infant to school. If we were lucky, the local postman would give us a lift in his van to the bus stop. I mean, actually, in the back, no seats, sat on the mail. Think he liked my mum.

I remember my Nan seeking out the smoking carriage on the tube when she took my brother and I into London. It was madness! Also smoking on planes and trains and I used to be a smoker!

PP mentioned chopper bikes with the central gear stick. I did myself a terrible injury on mine. THE PAIN.

My mum and dad wedging a carrycot with me in it in the folds of the roof of my dad's sports car. Perfectly safe according to them. Obviously I don't remember that but there is photo evidence🙃. They were utterly flummoxed by car seats when they became grandparents to my daughter.

The way kids were transported in cars. It makes me go hot and cold to think of the lap belt I had when I was little. It would have cut me clean in half line cheese wire in a high speed collision. And all the children squashed into the back of the car when going to a party or whatever, 2 to a seatbelt. Also never using a seatbelt in a taxi, as if you were somehow immune from disaster in those.

See my post below. It really does beggar belief! I also had a date ask me to get into the boot because he wanted to pick his mates up. Yes I did. I was young and stupid 🙄

All these ghastly things people did until the 90s.

Fast forward to now. Is society any happier? Is it fuck.

I know 😳 we’ve eradicated all this shit, why is everyone so miserable? It did used to be more of a laugh 😒

I remember my Nan seeking out the smoking carriage on the tube when she took my brother and I into London. It was madness! Also smoking on planes and trains and I used to be a smoker!

I used to run along the platform looking for the non-smoking carriage. Sometimes I'd jump into the train because a carriage had seats and you could tell immediately from the smell that it was the smoking carriage.

I started work in 1975 and by 3pm the office was like working in a fog bank because of the smoke. My sweaters used to reek and the water was yellow when I washed them.

Also, your salary being treated as your husband's for tax purposes. I got married in 1980 and wrote to the Inland Revenue telling them that we wouldn't be making use of the married man's allowance. IR wrote back to DH thanking him for his wife's letter. Told them that I earned it, I paid tax on it and if I wrote to them they wrote back to me, not him.

Going down the pub at 12 and rolling back at 3pm. DH was in financial sales and he'd regularly have very boozy lunches that went on till 5pm.

And yep, overnight travelling in the back of cars wrapped up in blankets. No seat belts, either.

I agree. Too many people take everything so seriously and they're so dour and earnest. We encourage far too much in the way of self reflection and people are so bloody thin skinned as a result.

I remember the days of no seat belts in cars. My cousins and I sat on our knees looking out the back window creasing up laughing whenever my auntie turned a corner a bit sharp and we'd fly in to each other

My mother once told me that women complaining of sexual harassment at work should be grateful of the attention, it was normal for men to pinch the women’s bottoms and they should take it as flattery. She said it happened all the time when she worked in offices - this would have been the 70s.

Getting the belt at school!

Sitting in the hatchback of our parents car on long car journeys, no seatbelts etc.

Walking to school on my own from age of six. Next to a very busy road.

My Mum being advised to drink Guinness in pregnancy.

Clackers - noisy balls of death!

Children's playgrounds with solid concrete floors.

I remember an old fella flicking me 25 cents - "here's a quarter, kid, call me when you're 16!"
🤢

Sitting in the back of a pickup truck transit tipper in the eighties to get a lift to work
bloody cold some mornings