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

This is the thing though isnt it? For everyone saying how lovely the "old days " were, the reality is here plain and simple ! Being "normal" to have an older boyfriend ,smoking all over the place .children "needing" a "good"smack (surely a contradiction in terms)! Mobile phones and the internet have so much info now .Its not perfect by any means but gives worthwhile information .

Mine had a Ford Fiesta XR2i a Sovereign ring and a job in sales.

Hah so did mine. It was white with the black & red stripes down the side. I was fifteen and he was twenty two, he worked in the civil service though. Looking back it seems very wrong but at the time no one batted an eyelid and I remember my Mum saying she thought I'd be safer with him than with a boy my own age!

Re the drinking during pregnancy. I don’t still have the booklet obvs but the NHS guide to pregnancy I was given in 2005 still had reduced drinking and said nothing at all about caffeine. Even though midwife and doc advice was more clued up the booklet was way outta date 🤣

Some things were easier back then, but also some things have changed for the better too.
It's a mix really I think.

Recent bat shittery also relating to parenthood would be the not giving your kids nuts or eating nuts in pregnancy. My MIL confiscated my Snickers, I recall 🤣

The smog in London. If a man wore a shirt and tie while walking in London, at the end of the day you could see the tie outline on the shirt thanks to the smog sticking to it. It was gross

I got into cars with lads who I fancied who were totally drunk. It was dreadful

Trying hard to get a gold star at early primary school because ... And I shit you not ....
You got to use the teachers hand grenade shaped lighter to light her cigarette in class.
1980/81

@Wonkywinky you win!

ginasevern

I had my son in 1976 and several of my friends also had babies around that time. Absolutely nobody was encouraged to smoke or drink during pregnancy. It was as much frowned upon as it is now. Even Victorian women weren't encouraged to drink alcohol during pregnancy, let alone in the 1970's!

I'm not doubting you but I was born in 1976, my mum couldn't smoke due to the sickness, so her friend sent her a pack of Lambert and Butler and told her to persevere...!! She did! 😶

Your OP made me think of my youth. Smoking everywhere! I remember getting the bus to my first job, having a fag upstairs on the top deck, then when I got to work, smoking another one with my coffee at my desk. 🤢

My 20-something boyfriend used to pick me up from school in his BMW when I was 15, and nobody batted an eyelid.

This was the 90s, not the dark ages.

I used to love sitting in the front of the car and was incensed when the law changed to mandate wearing seat belts - we ignored it for quite some time. Oh, and regularly wedging about 30 children in a Volvo so that one mum could drive them all home to an after-school birthday party.

If you bought sanitary towels for your Mum, they had a loop on to attach to the belt they wore round their waist, no sticky liner back then. Plus it was embarrassing and the lady in the shop handed it to you in a brown paper bag so no one would know what you bought.

Being sent into a shop to buy your Mother cigarettes when you were 9 and they served you because they knew your Mum was sat outside chain smoking in the car. Guess what my Mum died of? Yes, lung cancer.

Doing PE in your knickers and vest. How on earth are we not traumatised?

No seatbelts, my sister genuinely fell out of the moving car because she hadn't closed the door properly and no child locks. Mum took a corner and my sister rolled across the vinyl bench seat and the door just opened. Yes, she is fine.

Cars were much simpler and you could maybe fix it with a Haynes car manual.

Being left in the car whilst your parents went to the supermarket.

staff at my shite girls school in the mid/late 80’s included a domestic science teacher whose westie stayed (mostly) under her desk and got petted between her poking in about food. No hand washing for her, but forensic hygiene for us.
An art teacher who had no teaching qualification and was plain mad- treated a skelf by making a girl sit wrapped in a fur rug while balancing their toes on a glass of water full to the brim. Also stalked the minister who took prayers once a week until legal sanctions were instigated.
An English teacher who was regularly induced to throw chairs in fury and a music teacher who would hide behind the curtains if the head teacher came in.

All the staff were ancient ladies who looked like Hinge and Bracket, unsurprisingly it closed about 1990.

I’m 55, my very first job at 18, there was still smoking in the office and a tea lady with a trolley. I worked in a typing pool in a local council as a temp, all the secretaries were female all the managers were male.

• Sitting in the footwells/boot of the car, or squeezing 4 or 5 kids onto the back seat
• Never wearing a helmet
• Having to hang up the phone to use the internet
• Driving whilst trying to read the huge roadmap, or scribbled instructions
• second hand smoke everywhere
• Rampant discrimination
• things like page 3 and the diet coke break ads were totally acceptable
• having to rewind the VHS you rented from blockbuster because the previous lazy git couldn't be bothered renter hadn't done it
• waiting for ages to hear your fave song on the radio so you could record it only for the DJ to talk over the end
• having to fiddle with the TV aerial when the weather changed
• only having 4 TV channels
• commercial breaks where you could get a drink/wee but in a high pressure time limit!
• Wait a week to watch the next episode — no streaming, no binging. And then you'd have to watch it with you parents because there was only one TV!

White dog poo

Sunday pub closing on Good Friday. Always caught us out at uni. Even the supermarkets were cordoned off. And before 11 on a Sunday.

Hello is Mr walls there ,Mrs walls any of the walls there..no ..well what keeps your roof up..we thought we were hilarious..all that fun for a 2 p phone call.

Late night shopping on a Thursday.

16 year olds on Page 3.

Men thinking that the younger their girlfriend, the better. Eg Bill Wyman. And societies acceptance of that.

I hated that as I worked in retail it meant if someone didn't turn up you could be on from 9am till 8pm.

I had my daughter in 1989 and was in hospital for a week. There was a TV on the ward where people were allowed to smoke. I made the mistake of opening the door once and it was absolutely disgusting. It was a windowless room and just full of smoke. The babies weren't allowed in that room but of course anyone going back to the ward would absolutely stink of smoke.

I remember the contraception woman coming round - it had just taken me a hell of a long time just to get on the bed (forceps delivery). She said that a lot of women were back in within the year.

The last 20 or sorows at the back of the plane was designated smoking. Had to sit there once on a 13 hour flight

Pregnant women and breast feeding women encouraged to drink Guinness. Apparently my mum's maternity ward smelt like a brewery both with me and my brother in the mid-late 70s!