To ask for your weird family behaviours that you didn't realise weren't normal until you were older?

[Coffeebiscuitsrepeat]

1. We called a toe poking through a sock hole a "potato".

1. Whoever made the most mess at the dinner table "won the prize"... And the prize was to clean up the mess!

Meals were the same as a lot of you, meat and 2 veg, always with a pot of tea on the table and bread and butter on the side. Pudding was essential.

Mum used to make "curry" which was actually browned mince with mild curry powder sprinkled over the top. Imagine my surprise when I went for my first Indian meal age 20!! We never went to restaurants or cafes, occasionally pub lunches but my sister and I would be sat in the garden with the treat of a fizzy drink and a bag of crisps, neither of which we were allowed at home. I had my first McDonalds age 15. Unthinkable these days!

@Awrite that's the first time I've seen anyone else call it a clicker!

We had an intercom!

Made me cringe so much...

My dad used to make really watery gravy with an oxo cube. It basically meant brown water on our roast dinners. I didn’t really mind it as it was all I knew at the time.

But then as a teenager I went to the Toby carvery for dinner and their gravy is thick and lovely. It blew my mind!! And it actually tasted like a flavour, not just water!!

Now as an adult I make ridiculously thick gravy as a reaction to my watery gravy upbringing. You could stand a spoon up in it

Great topic ! Pudding in my house was tinned fruit & single cream won't touch now !Monday was homemade chips fried egg & beans . Tues - fri meat boiled potatoes & veg , fri Sunday roast no idea why in a Friday lol sat a fish supper shared with my brother . Treats at my grans on a Sunday hard boiled sweets was so excited on a Sunday ! Oh salad cucumber, iceberg lettuce & tomatoes no dressing !

Here's something not discussed so far: bedroom size, because I think our set up was probably unusual. Ours was a big Edwardian house, the sort which was often divided into flats; I didn't realise until later how lovely it was compared to modern houses.

I had a massive bedroom, bigger than anybody else's, including my parents' bedroom. I probably didn't deserve it, because I never kept it tidy - this was an ongoing battle. My younger brother had a smaller room, and my parents' bedroom was about the same size as his. Only my mum kept her clothes in their bedroom - my dad used our attic as his "dressing room", and his wardrobe was kept there. This attic was reached by a proper door, not a trap door, but it was unfurnished, i.e. unpainted walls, sloping ceiling, no fitted carpet, tiny window, visible rafters, and mostly used for storing things. Not once did my parents threaten to move me to a smaller room for not keeping my bedroom tidy, which would probably have been the Mumsnet "consequence".

I remember being in primary school and being gobsmacked at my friend's parents who regularly went out for a meal. I had no idea why they would do that. For me eating out was fish and chips (a rare treat) or a 99 when we went to the beach.

I eat out regularly now

We ate dinner on our laps but always had our own round trays to put the plates on I don't know how you would keep them on otherwise!

@katew355 my grandfather also did ginger on melon, I love it, but I love ginger

We had a tiny terraced house, two bedrooms. When my brother and I needed separate rooms, my mum and dad moved downstairs to turn what would have been the front room (which was never used) into their bedroom. This wasn't seen as anything unusual among my similarly poor friends - nobody could afford to move so it was all shared bedrooms or, in the case of one friend, one bedroom turned into two with plasterboard walls that meant you had to walk through bedroom 1 to get to bedroom 1.

bedroom 2!

@YetAnotherSpartacus

Thank you! I was expecting plums or prunes though :)

That's just to confuse people

@Guineapigbridge ... the kind of kindness your mum demonstrates is exactly that which I aspire to. She sounds lovely

@Peregrina

We used to have a 'starter' before Sunday dinner of a big Yorkshire pudding & gravy, just on it's own.

That is How Yorkshire Pudding is supposed to be served, if you are from Yorkshire. Made in a big tin, and cut into rectangles - none of these little round things on the plate with the meat. Sacrilege! I should know, my DM was from Yorkshire and it was always served like this.

Now DF who was a Lancastrian would eat his cold sometimes, with jam!

My DM is also from Yorkshire and my Df from Lancashire. My mum says when she was a kid it was a big Yorkshire pudding made it a big tin and cut into 6. They would have one piece each with gravy before dinner and the other two pieces were for the kids pudding with jam or golden syrup on.

@Laiste my nans neighbour called social services on her because she saw my mum sitting on the front step eating plain bread (not sure if it was because she was eating in the street or because she didn’t have anything on it 🤦🏻‍♀️ None of us like butter and she just fancied some plain bread 🤷🏻‍♀️)

Not related to recycling, but my dad always wrote using brown ink, from a bottle, which would be siphoned into his pen. I doubt if many other people did this.

I'm in my 50s, and I've always used a fountain pen with bottled ink, since the age of 10. One of my pens is the one I first had all those years ago. I do currently have a brown ink with a gold shimmer in it.

@Sparklesocks my mum used to make "gravy" which was the water she'd boiled the veg in coloured with a bit of marmite to make it brown

I too now only make ridiculously thick gravy

The names people have for the remote are making me really cringe. Sort of unexpectedly actually!

It's reminding me of a few friends who had dad's who made lots of dad jokes and instigated those kind of in family jokes and names.

My grandparents do that set meals on set days. It's changed a bit as they are quire old now. But Sunday dinner every single week. Fish on Friday, mince and dumpling on Wed. It was a bit more seasonal as my grandad has a big allotment so would change to new pots instead of homemade chips in the summer.
We used to go to their house a lot as kids but don't remember being fed up of the food! The homemade chips were lovely!

My nana had an onion pot which was brown with a pointy top, and a sad face on the front. She'd put sliced onions in there and top it up with vinegar.

Christmas cards were always saved and in January we'd sit and cut them up using pinking shears, to be made into gift tags.

In the 70s a dessert made from ginger biscuits. I can't remember it exactly but they were sandwiched together into a log, maybe with whipped cream?

Some sort of game that involved putting layers of clothes on, including hat and gloves, then eating a Mars bar with a knife and fork. While you were doing this the other people would take it in turns to roll a dice. If they threw a six you had to stop putting the clothes on and hand over to them.

tumbledglass My nan still has that pot, and one that has mint leaves and a face on for mint sauce. She keeps the keys to the backdoor in the mint one, and the recipe for her fruit cake in the onion. Only I am allowed that recipe. My mum is quite upset about that!

In the last few weeks I have eaten fruit cake with cheese (cheddar), weetabix with butter, and honeydew melon with powdered ginger! I don't have digestive biscuits with butter on any more though....

Growing up DH always ate the same meals on the same days, his Mum's shopping list didn't change for decades. Cups of tea were served with all meals, never water or wine. Fresh fruit was only for when you were ill. Baths were only on a Sunday night, because to have more would weaken your immune system He had only eaten out a handful of times in his life and wasn't aware of the correct cutlery/glasses to use. He'd never gone on family days out or on a family holiday. The inexplicable thing was that his Dad was on a very good professional salary and there was plenty of money available. But his Dad was always a very absent parent who spent all his free time pursuing his hobby and had no interest in family stuff. And his Mum had grown up in extreme poverty and (most likely) had ASD so just wasn't up to being a normal, engaged parent.

We used to have baths on a Sunday to save water and heat when I was small. Dad first, then Mum then me in the same water.

Never heard of ginger on melon.

As a kid dinner was always bread and jam. I had a hot meal at school (although not nice) for lunch but we were poor so it was always bread and jam when I got home. Primary school meals were miserly. I was so jealous that other kids got to eat hot food like chips for dinner.

I'm not sure that 'eating out' was as much of a thing when I was young (1960s) or maybe it was just where I grew up we were all hard up! Although I had a friend whose dad was a barrister, and they didn't eat out much either as far as I remember, not as a family.

My first meal out was when my (child free) aunt took a cousin and I out somewhere. I was about fifteen and utterly overawed! Next time was my eighteenth birthday...