Stuff that didn’t seem weird at the time but when you tell someone younger they think it’s nuts

[MildGreenDairyLiquid]

Just that really.

The other day I explained to my 11 year old niece that when I was at junior school we used to have a small bottle of milk with a straw every morning, and she looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

The wiring in my grandmother's house: a mixture of round two and three-pin sockets, with the occasional modern socket. She would not hear of having the house rewired: she just put an old plug on a new appliance, and it was very rare that she would buy a new appliance anyway. She was of an era when machines were made to last: she kept her twin tub (what's a twin tub, children will ask!) going for thirty-five years, and repaired it herself when necessary. She had a stand-alone single gas hob, which could be disconnected easily, which the gas inspection people would always go mad about if they saw it. She had tea towels hanging over this hob as well.

ASOS used to be called As Seen on Screen and only had copies of outfits seen on celebrities on TV. So you could see a celeb in a dress and go on there to see if there was a copy you could buy. No idea how it got round copyright!

In 1987, I joined the civil service. We used to have manilla envelopes, closed with a bit of string you wound round a little card circle to close them. You would put your internal memo in, write the destination below the previous recipient in the address box then someone would come round with a trolley and take it to the post room for distribution.

Everyone was addressed by their title eg 'miss karen juniormanager'

I remember a friend working for BP telling me about internal email - mind blown.

I sometimes confuse the children I work with by saying I remember having a ration card.

They were still used on the British military camps in Germany etc until a few years ago, for cigarettes, spirits, fuel... and coffee. (Our tax free allowance, it also included one car a year)

Being able to change plugs on appliances! My dad taught me how to do that.

‘Sanitary towels’ that were massive wads of cotton hooked front and back onto a belt around your waist. Horrific. How I longed to be a boy!

The concept of Page 3 girls in newspapers! 😮

My grandparents were the same about plugs - they somehow missed the boat on getting the house rewired to take square pins, and would just fit a round pinned plug to any new appliance they (rarely) bought. The house wasn't rewired until after their deaths, at the turn of the millennium.

No cash machines or cash back.

Being handed the material for summer dresses at school. Your mother could chose the pattern. This was in 1971!

When shops, M&S in particular, had one sweater or top on display and the rest were folded in plastic wrapping and stored on the counters. All bras came in cardboard boxes!

We have this at work, a call tree for each department as part of the disaster recovery plan.

We had a zX Spectrum computer when I was a kid in the 80's. We recently saw one in a museum exhibit about the evolution of computers and I said "oh look! That was my first computer!" DS (14) looked at me like I had 2 heads and said "Oh my God. How old are you?!" 😢

You paid but if you were poor you received a full grant. My grant included a living allowance, accommodation, a book allowance and I could claim back the cost of a return train ticket home at the end of each term. Also, no university fees. 1980's.

I went to a shopping centre with 3 friends in about 1993 and after lunch we split up to go to different shops (in 2 pairs) and soon realised there’d been a confusion over where to meet up again. We went to customer service and had them announced over the tannoy to meet us ‘at the customer information desk on the upper level next to Marks and Spencer’s’ (I can remember the exact wording as we asked them to call it several times 😂) They didn’t hear it so at a certain point my friend and I just had to go home. We went straight to the friends house and they’d given up significantly quicker on finding us and had been home hours.
Wouldn’t happen now. Don’t even Think they have manned customer service at that mall- I haven’t heard a tannoy announcement there in years!

I watched Sliding Doors with my teens and this is how she finds out her boyfriend is cheating! They were baffled as to what she was doing, I had to explain 1471.

shellyleppard · Today 07:17

50 pence slot meter for the electric and television....i was fascinated by how much money was in the boxes!!!

Oh, yes. I had a flat when I was 17 and came home to the front door kicked in, along with many of the neighbours. All the gas and electricity meters had been forced open! They dropped a few in my porch, so a sort of result!

When I was a student we shared an incoming-only phone line with the house next door. My room was closest to the phone, so I quite often had to nip next door to tell someone there was a call for them. And if you wanted to speak to someone, you had to go to the phone box round the corner, call them, tell them to call you back and run home and hope that the phone wasn’t being used. And no, you wouldn’t just stay in the phone box. 20p didn’t go very far, and also it was a rough area. You didn’t hang about.

We had chewing gum cigarets.

About 1994 for me, Rhodes to Düsseldorf! I was with friends who smoked and we sat separately.

I think 1471 still works. I use it occasionally!

@fungibletoken I bet they used the telephone tree during one school trip I was on: the whole school going to a West End theatre. After the performance, we were suddenly all made to sit on the floor of the foyer, probably because the coaches home hadn't turned up; and we were told to be very quiet, because the headmistress had to make a phone call. (Remember the signs which said "you may telephone from here"?) If there hadn't been so many of us, they might have tried to take us back to school on London buses.

Just thinking about how some people have drones now: back when a drone meant "a male bee", I find it weird to think that "remote controlled model aircraft" were once a thing, and that some children had them as toys: now that kind of model plane is the preserve of specialist flying clubs.

Go to the science Museum Power Up exhibition, you can play on one, also Commodore 64, SNES, Sega Megadrive etc. My kids discovered old games are really hard compared with modern ones, probably because they didn't have many levels so to get your money's worth they made you play lower levels over and over again to get good at it.

We had a commodore 64 with games on casette tape. You put one in and then waited 5 mins for it to load. If you wanted to change game you had to switch the whole thing off, wait 1 minute, then wait ages for it to switch back on again. Then wait again for your next game to load.

Lines I actually really wish was still a thing. It's not a cruel punishment and does mark the occasion.

All the free things you got from buying everyday items.
Bike spoke beads or mini figurines in cereal (the excitement of finding it inside the cereal plastic pack was immense).
Cuddly toy from saving up petrol points.
Homepride flour - we had a biscuit cutter in the shape of the flour man.
Branded cereal bowls.
Moneyboxes from banks.

If there was a point/token system we got stuff!

I guess the modern day equivalent is meerkat toys and I do also collect yeokens.

Many people do this.
it’s a common phishing scam on Facebook to try & get you to share that number.

But children still get milk with straws at school everyday (the youngest ones do, anyway). Just in cartons, not bottles.