What do you remember of your childhood that would be unacceptable now?

[Happyspendingthedayinthegarden]

I'm thinking smoking

We had sweet cigarettes.

Doctors smoking in their surgeries whilst examining you.

I remember when I first started working for the (then) DHSS we used to be allowed to smoke. Managers had glass ashtrays (with 'property of DHSS' & the HMSO (Her Majesty's Stationery Office) mark on - now they would be worth something on eBay now, I wish I'd kept a few) Clerical Officers & Assistants had foil ashtrays & there were large column ashtrays fixed to the floor in the public areas for them use. In the afternoon there would be a fog of smoke hanging a few feet from the floor on the floors where the benefit processors worked & the public area. 😨

Cans of shandy in the school tuck shop. Bloody brilliant.

Well we have seat belts but pretty much everything else still rings true.

There are still school buses and in more remote areas of Scotland children travel really long distances on their own to get to school. Young children. Just because loads of parents opt to drive their kids doesn’t mean everyone can or that the idea of a school bus is from the olden days.

The first house I lived in from birth to <10 was a red brick terrace with a straight, rather steep set of stairs. DB and I used to amuse ourselves by launching ourselves from the top to the bottom flying frog style (how agile we were back then!). Mum came in from shopping - the front door directly faced the stairs - when he or I were in midflight. She nearly had heart failure with the shock. 😅

One thing I hated was in winter, having a bath in a freezing, unheated bathroom. The only source of heat was the ceramic gas fire in the living room. Then coming out and having only a titchy towel to wrap round your shivering self while your hair dripped, as you dashed down the stairs to sit in front of the fire. Very different now, with my big bath towel, towelling robe and pull on hair turban. I don't miss those times.

I remember being sent to the shops with my little brother I was still at primary school so no older than 10, brother would have been 7 or 8. Mum gave me a list and on the part to do with going to the butchers (yes different shops for different groceries) she had put 'don't go to the fat man with glasses as he will give you meat that's not the freshest, go to the other man'. I got to the counter & the fat man with glasses took my list out of my hand saying 'what does your mum want today princess? I was mortified. 😳

I remember going to the corner shop on my own from around five or six. It was literally just around the corner, with no roads to cross, so it was deemed safe. My mum would give me the empties so I could get the deposit back to spend on sweets. Mum would also tell me to ask the shopkeeper to "put it on the tab", probably towards the end of the week when she was waiting for Dad's pay packet. Different times!

This! And any additional kids could squeeze into the footwells too!!!

Yes I was just talking about this the other day! We used to see how many drivers would wave back at us 😅

Sadly I remember that too. My mum was very fond of it. Smacking around the face is so much more most personal and humiliating than the "regular" slaps that my friends used to get.

Going to Woolworths & spending ages weighing out pick & mix so as to get the most out of the 2oz that you could afford from your pocket money.

We had 2 shillings (after decimalisation 10p) pocket money a week. 5p for 2oz of sweets, my brother & me would buy a Beano for 2p between us leaving 4 1/2p to save.

Also remember going to the sweet shop & buying 2oz of those tiny sherbet sweets as you got loads. But if you didn't eat them as soon as you bought them they would go all sticky & clump together inside the paper bag & you'd be eating clumps of sweets with paper attached - YUK but, as kids we didn't care.

Taught us budgeting skills, maths with weighing things out as well as cheaper isn't always better. 😂

Skinned rabbits in the kitchen sink. Watching the xmas goose get its throat cut, plucking pheasants for pocket money.
Yeah, I'm vegetarian.

Being smacked when naughty
Staying out all day , parents not knowing where we were until dusk
Sleepovers at anyone's house

My granny had chickens my gramps would kill them & we would pluck & draw them sitting in the garden while they were still warm - I can still feel the fluffy feathers tickling my nose. Gramps also kept rabbits for food, but I never could eat them, though I suspect that some of the lovely pies that my granny would serve to use were rabbit - she just didn't let on.

Me & my brother used to ride in the back of the car without seatbelts - I remember we hurled ourselves into the doors & knelt up to look out of the rear windscreen!

Getting hit with a belt as a punishment in the 00s. Only two decades later but that would be unacceptable now.

and apparently nowadays telling kids sweets are unhealthy is "demonising food groups" and will cause an eating disorder. Like damn when I gained a couple of pounds after starting secondary school and purveying of the sausage rolls my father just told me I was getting fat. Today's kids would cry

swimming in a deep river on my own at 7😐

Catching a public bus to school on my own (the nearest school to us was full, we had just moved to this town) This was in the last year of infant school so I would have been 6/7. Mum walked me to the bus stop and gave me the (10p ish) bus fare. In the next school year I was able to walk to the nearest school for juniors as a space became available there.

Some things my (not very) misspent youth:

Smoking
Casual racism
Phone boxes
Lack of parental supervision (with knowledge that people looked out for each other generally)
Sunshine

I'm pretty sure being hit with a belt was unacceptable in the 00s when my children were babies!

Izal toilet paper at school. Was like greaseproof paper & didn't do what toilet paper is supposed to do.

When I first joined the <then> DHSS we had the same supplied with Property of DHSS stamped on every leaf - as if we were likely to steal it - really?!

Playing out while my mum was in bed after a night shift.

In the school holidays, I'd be sent out the house at 10am with a couple of quid and told not to be back before 4pm.

I'd go miles. I'd meet loads of people. One summer I found an abandoned basket ball court behind some houses and spent every day there alone. I got really, really good and was on my university first team when I eventually got there.

And the smoking. Jesus Christ the smoking. That feeling of tight lungs and itchy eyes that comes from being in a room or car full of adults puffing away like chimneys. Vile.

This was all in the 1990s.

On reflection, I wish I had stolen some- I could make a tidy sum selling it on eBay now. 😂

Playing on building sites. For a short while we lived on a 1970's estate that was developing - we had such fun playing among the half-built houses.

Maybe it was beginning to be frowned upon in some circles but my parents were older when they had us. Today it would be completely unacceptable I mean