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.

me too. we had an open fire in the kitchen and an open fire in the living room, no indoor hot water or toilet, no bathroom. heating in the bedrooms was an oilstove we were forbidden to touch and the same in the outdoor toilet to stop it freezing in winter. Our first computer was a Dragon 32 in 1982 (was about 30 then) followed by a Beeb Master.
leave out the computer and it sounds like Charles Dickens

My friend was born in Dublin in the early ‘80s and her mum said there was an ashtray on her hospital bed

My kids think I grew up in the 18th Century!
Was actually the late 70s/80s

Due to:

walking 2 miles to school alone, and then with little sibs in tow, aged 7
Being slapped with ruler at school
black and white tv
no car, no house phone, no central heating
going to the shops to buy parents cigarettes for them - aged 9/10 +
the usual - outside at first light and not home til dark with very little parental contact in between
kids tv being Saturday mornings and for a few hours after school only
Being ‘disciplined’ by random adults - teachers, aunts or uncles, any one vaguely in charge & having the wooden spoon used at home as an option for bad behaviour!

I could go on… just want to say, I had a very happy childhood, despite the risk that an adult
might feel the need to give you a whack occasionally…
If anyone touched my kids now I’d go mad!!

5p used to be called a shilling, and a shilling comprised 12 pennies.
A penny used to contain 4 farthings.
So it was possible for 5p to be divided into 48 coins of a lower value. That still blows my mind.

That's because lots of things cost less than a penny. When I was a kid we still had sweets (fruit salad, blackjacks, etc.) that were 4 for an old penny (8 for a new penny, even though a new penny was worth 2.4 old pence).

Farthings were withdrawn from circulation 2 years before I was born. You'd have to be in your seventies to remember spending them.

Video and pop man driving onto the street. Opening his boot and offering videos to rent and pop to buy. He came back the week after so you could return or pick another 😂

My first Saturday job was in 1994 in a shoe shop. I was 16 and paid £1.63 an hour. And I got a discount on shoes but there were all unfashionable so I never bought any 😂

Taking a flight to New York aged 20 in early 90s and smoking on the plane 😮🤣

just one, still seems wild

My husband is 47, the nuns slammed a door on his fingers at primary school as a punishment. His mum took him out of the school the next day.

Sorry, am looking after a poorly adult, so not had chance to catch up with all the contributions..

One of my best memory from childhood in the mid 60's, was getting the bus in to town for Saturday morning childrens cinema.

They would show various cartoon films etc, but firstly we all had to sing -
🎶 We are the boys and girls together, at the ABC (name of the theatre),🎶
Can't remember the rest of the lyrics, but could deffo sing you the theme tune !!!

They had an Easter bonnet competition one year, and my very talented dear mum, helped me (or rather I helped her🤭) make a hat. It was a basic straw hat that she adorned with a "nest" coming out of the top, with a baby yellow chick sticking out, and other Easter paraphernalia.

We added very wide and long, baby blue ribbons with which to secure in a bow under my chin...
.... well, I only won first prize !!!
The local rag took photos of me in said hat, and holding my prize of a HUGE hand decorated chocolate egg...
................I remember it had a double layer of "shell", as well as the usual chocs inside...

Loved Sat morn cinema, I think I only gave it up in my early to mid teens, as peer pressure made me think it was too "babyish" to attend such things.

Obviously this doesn't exactly fit 'things didn't seem weird at the time '

In the mid 70s one of the teachers at my Primary smoked a pipe when he was on duty and also when teaching outdoor PE!

The smoking carriage was far friendlier than the other carriages; nearly always people who were keen for a chat if you wanted one!

Yup and if we had been able to access social media in those days , we would have had ' IABU to complain about the person who smoked 60 cigarettes in the seat behind me on a 2 hour flight yesterday?' and lots of people would have said - "Well they are in the smoking seats and they paid for their tickets"😉and that would have been thought reasonable by lot of people . Imagin this on a long haul flight. Oh yes I don't have too, I experienced it when I flew to Australia years ago. Plus think of the children and babies on the flights!

I have no idea why they thought it would help much but the rows would somthing like Rows A-M no smoking, Rows N-Q Smoking

So you were stuffed if you put in Row M and didn't smoke !!

The concept of a 'Guy' on a bonfire would make more sense if the actual man had been burned alive! But he was actually hung, drawn and quartered (by which time he was already dead of a broken neck).

OMG does anyone else remember doing a charity thing for third world countries called Sunny Smiles? I was at primary school so mid 70s. You had little books of pictures of smiling children from various countries and "sold" them to raise money for charities.

My Mum took mine into work and I was one of the top collectors. Vaguely remember an event at the Town Hall to give in the money and getting some sort of reward.

Don't know where that came from but it just popped into my head....

Ooh. Less than £1!

Boots always paid very poorly.

Oooo! I remember spending a farthing or two.
Such a tiny coin, with a Jenny Wren on one face...
Loved the four for an old penny blackjacks and fruit salad.
The blackjacks were great for making your tongue go black !!
Do you also remember the first sherbet fountains?
No plastic, just sherbet in like a loo roll inner, with yellow paper on the outside.
If you sucked too long, the paper and thin cardboard would go messily soggy, and half the sherbet would get down your throat in one hit, and I remember choking for ages as the fizz did it's work.

i was telling DD Yesterday that we used to do PE in our vest and knickers!

TLDR only having three TV channels and getting up to change them by pressing a button on the telly. One of ours had a knob you twisted and a red line went across the screen until it found the next channel. You couldn't even select the channel.

I didn't want to explain any of that as they already thought the British were psychos.

Headmaster smoked his pipe outdoors supervising lunchtime play! I remember going to the staff room on errands and when the door opened you could hardly see the teachers because of the fug of smoke!

just remembered that one of my aunts would sometimes do the primary school run when we had to be back early - me and my sibs and cousins all in same school - and she’d pic up the 8 of us in her old estate car, 1 upfront, 4 on backseat, 3 in boot!
Boot was obviously the most coveted…

I'm 50, and definitely feel a door closed roundabout the year 2000.

The Test Card.

It showed on the telly when there weren't any programmes on. Which was often.

Intold my DCs that but they just don’t believe me. One forgot their PE kit and had to borrow the dreaded ‘school spare’ for cross country ( in reality it’s clean and washed at school every use but obvs they all hate borrowing spare kit)