What did you/your family consider a treat growing up that really wasn’t?

[ClassicStripe]

I’ve just randomly remembered that when I was younger me and my sister thought it was the most amazing treat to have our mum’s bath water after she was finished with it. She didn’t even use bubble bath so it was literally just lukewarm water but we absolutely loved it. This was in the early 90’s and we had regular hot warm bubble baths which makes it even stranger that we were so pleased by using mum’s old water!

Also, aged about 7, being sent to the shop to buy fags for the adults and being allowed to get a penny mix as an incentive

Such a treat - loved it
Mum wrote a note ‘20 rothmans please Tony’ will settle up Friday - Joyce

I remember this!
"Please sell 20 John Player Special to my daughter as they are for me."

As if that would work today! Totally legit in the 80s. Can you imagine the judgement if MNers were sending their kids to buy cigarettes these days?
"It's all right, they're for me!"

One of our shopkeepers was a local councillor and he sold single cigarettes to kids, in paper bags with a match.

My DC grew up in HK and until about 2019 there was no age limit there for buying alcohol retail so you could literally send your 6 year old to 7-11 to buy a 4 pack of beer ( I never did to be fair). I always thought it was a good reflection on HK that underage drinking was such a non issue that they didn’t need a law.

Our Secondary school ice cream van man sold individual fags for 10p lol

I remember the single fags too.

This thread is so interesting. I often read here about the "good old days" when life was simpler and things so hard and complicated nowadays. It is so easy to fall into that trap of rose coloured spectacles. Even just a few decades ago there was no crime committed if a man raped his wife. Women were not allowed a credit card or mortgage without permission from husband or father. Marital violence was largely ignored, police in attendance vwould call it a "domestic" and no follow up or further action.
The good old days were very bad for some.

Ice cream float - cream soda with a scoop of ice cream in

i made this for ds and his friends they were not impressed

before vienetta Neapolitan ice cream was a real treat

My mum sent me down the road to the corner shop for small errands - I was told to ask the shopkeeper to "put it on the tab" and Mum would pop in to pay for the stuff later in the week, probably when the wages came in. I was doing this from age about five or six, which seems incredible now, but it was pretty normal back then (1970s).

There's always one...

I remember as a child in the 70s walking past women with black eyes, bruised faces etc and my mum or granny whispering, 'oh, she must be a battered wife'. And that was how it was thought of, just a very unfortunate thing that happened to some women. Unless bones were broken or the injuries were very severe , I don't think the police pursued many of these assaults.

Us too, my birthday was early December and mum would put up the little xmas tree in-the living room, then just before xmas we put the big tree up in the unused except for guests front room, dad and my uncle would carry the big tv in a cabinet ( of course ) in too and for a week over Xmas and new year we lived in there ticking off stuff in the radio and tv times that we wanted to Watch, a bowl of satsumas and a dish of nuts with nutcracker on the G Plan coffee table and a tin of quality street somewhere. The front room had the radiogram in so when we were older we were allowed in to listen to the top ten or play records, it eventually became a room we were also allowed to take friends in and boyfriends !
the week before xmas my grandma would get me to help polish all The silver with brasso and a soft cloth

It wasn’t until the 90’s it was a crime for men to rape their wife.

@demantoid I envy your parents their smallholding! I suspect that any future DC will also claim that 'anything out of a packet' is a treat, as I do most of my cooking from scratch. An older friend would buy in chicken nuggets and junk food things when her children had friends over, as the friends didn't recognise half of what was on their table otherwise!

For me, treats growing up included

1. Fresh bath water. I hated having to "share" a bath of lukewarm water.
2. Sweets or chocolate were a Friday thing, and only if you endured the dreaded Weekly Big Shop.
3. Puddings at home. Fortunately, I ate at my grandparents' house a lot, and they were not in short supply there!
4. Eating out anywhere, or having takeaways.
5. Exotic food. It was meat/fish and vegetables smothered in gravy, and that was your lot.
6. Fizzy drinks.
7. After Eights were for Christmas Day only.
8. Leaving the village where I grew up on a regular basis was a rare treat. This was the case up until I went to secondary school, because it was on the Outside, which was deemed to be unsafe. I now live on the Outside, so certain relatives would be spinning in their graves!

What does that mean?

Tea on the tea trolley on a Sunday night, sandwiches, crisps and blancmange.

Every Sunday, Mum would bake pizza from one of those boxed kits (Canada in the '70's - maybe there wasn't such a thing in the UK). There was a little packet to make up the dough, a small tin of pizza sauce, a tiny herb packet and a far too small sachet of cheese. Truly, it was bloody awful but such a treat and so exotic. I mean pizza - imagine! The only saving grace was that there was only enough for small slice each between the 5 of us...

A block of neapolitan ice cream from the ice cream van on a Sunday

Was it Delia Smith who popularised Hungarian goulash in the late 70s? That was very exciting, served with rice instead of the endless potatoes. But my father had an aversion to 'foreign' food (basically anything containing a spice or herb, or even worse, grains or pasta) so we didn't have it often.

I remember telling my grandad I was growing some herbs in my garden and he said, "What do you want to grow THEM for?" He did grow mint and parsley in his garden but I don't think he thought of them as herbs.

Getting a taxi home from the Christmas big food shop. The whole thing was a big event. I loved it haha

Every Friday night I’d stay in my Auntie’s house. It was the 80s. She collected me from home and we’d walk through town and she’d buy me a Twix bar in the local shop - a massive treat! When I was a bit older I’d pick out a Caramel bar. I would give anything to taste a Twix and Caramel bar from my childhood - it’s completely different now.
my Auntie would also get me Barbie magazine when I was older. Another treat. At the time Barbie & the Rockstars were out and there was a free cardboard model of this Barbie with the magazine. I played with it alongside my real Barbie.

• other treats - trifle that you’d make up out of a packet. We’d have that on Sundays.
• Real Coke! We’d always get supermarket brand Cola. It was rare treat to taste the real stuff!

Love this thread!

If we were going out for the day, nearly always a Sunday as my dad worked the rest of the week, we took a picnic lunch. My mum used to make the most amazing chicken sandwiches and we’d have crisps, apples and sometimes some homemade cake. We’d have coffee in a thermos flask too. Simple pleasures but very happy memories.

A soggy cheese toastie and boost bar from the community cafe after rockclimbing.
Used to look forward to it every Thursday. 😅

The occasional Vesta meal "made" by mum in the early 1970s when I was a very young teen. I suppose they were quite exotic for that time, but in reality were probably quite dodgy