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.

Hot drinks at primary school at playtime. 20p for a flimsy plastic cup of boiling hot hot chocolate or soup from a machine. That you could then take out to the playground.

My children can’t believe that we managed to go on dates without having a mobile phone to organise! They don’t understand that you arranged it via the landline on Wednesday, and then waited outside Maccies on Saturday and hoped he would turn up 😂

Fax machines

Looking for holidays on Teletext and just having to wait while it gradually flicked through each page. If you saw something you liked, there was a panic to press the Hold button so you could note down the details or you'd have to sit through 50 ish pages again before it was back on. And playing the daily Bamboozle quiz with each question taking ages to load.

When Directory Enquiries privatised and there was a mad scramble by companies to buy up the different 118 numbers. Followed by loads of adverts to convince you to use their particular number; the ones I remember were Maureen and the advert with two men with moustaches saying "118 118, got your number"! And then pretty soon after that, smartphones made the whole thing largely obsolete.

Doing a train journey around Europe with no internet to plan it/book anything.

Teletext holidays with over a hundred pages of offers in each section and if you missed the details of one you liked, you had to wait for the page to come round again.

Going out of school to the shop across the road at lunchtime in junior school to get cigarettes for the teachers (20 Consulate).

My DD asked me what the point of Text speak was. Why not use proper words?
She was shocked by not only having limited characters in a text message... but that we paid 10p for each one.

Same - my friend and I, at 18, travelled through Asia, Australia and America with nothing but lonely planet guides and a once a week phone call home. This was only in 1997!

I worked for BT(the post office at the time) as a directory enquiries operator. We used to have shelves of paper directories and had to thumb through page by page to get to the number the customer wanted. We knew about 50 of the most requested numbers off by heart - main rail stations , department stores etc.
Then it changed to microfiche.
I sometimes used to answer the home phone with "directory enquiries, how can I help you"

Remember when it took FIVE years for a film to be shown on tv ? When every bank holiday they’d play a show with snippets of Disney films and cartoons ? When you went to the cinema and they’d play a film before the main one 🤣 and I’m not that old !

Smoking on planes and public transport. Smoked in the office that 4 of us shared. 3 smoked, one was pregnant. I was sent to the shop to buy fags with a note from my mum.

No mobiles and no internet. We used the landline and yes to the extra digit being added and I also use the 4 digit number as my pin for many things. Typewriter at work with carbon paper.

Milk at playtime at school. Cannot stomach the stuff now.

In the summer holidays you went out with your friends all day. You could be miles from home on your bike and no one worried. You just came home when. It was getting dark. You also knew where your friends were because all the bikes were in the driveway of one house.

The only way of getting online was to sit at a desk in front of a computer.

i miss this.

Blockbuster for a video on a Saturday night. Also there was a website called love film I think. You’d order online and then post your dvd back once you watched it.

Records, tapes and Walkmans.

Also miss this.

I was explaining the phone bill to DD17 last night. My dad going through it to see the pages of numbers we had called, at what time/date and how much it cost! Woe betide a frivolous call before 6pm!

Calling 1471 on the landline when you didn’t pick up on time to get told the last number that had called. You could also call 14715 to call that number back.

I remember this haha! Crazy world. When I was 5yo I had a cig that puffed out talcum powder. It actually looked real! Can't believe my mum let me have it haha !

Wasn't there a 20p or 50p fine if you didn't rewind it?

Teaching DD to read using the old fashioned Peter and Jane books. Because phonics doesn't work for everybody.

Having to explain so much:
Cycling proficiency tests
Holidays at Aunties house, not at a resort
Going shopping in a series of small shops rather than a supermarket
Jane remarking that it's time to come home because the sun is setting- after playing outside unsupervised all day.
Singing at school and how much more of a big deal it was
All the animals on Pam's farm are there to be eaten. It's not a "vegan farm". That's not a thing
Seaside Donkeys
Cricket
I'm sure there's more...

Smoking in McDonald’s

neighbours tying our sledges to their car bumpers and whizzing us round the village.

Don't know if it was thing in the uk but in Ireland a nightclub could only get a late licence if they offered a meal during the night. In my town there were 2 clubs, one served chicken & chips and the other served curry & rice. You'd base your whole night around what you fancied to eat 😂. The food would start cooking after midnight & the smell would be divine.

In the mid to late 90's I worked in a place that provided passport photo machines & kiddie rides to shopping centres. I was in the office. There were engineers assigned to different areas so if one broke down there was a particular engineer you have to contact to fix it. They all had pagers. In order to contact them I had to ring a central number, relay the message (usually "ring the office") and then the engineer would get a page. He'd find a phone to ring me back. Mad.

Rows upon rows of non food like substances in all the supermarkets with health claims all over them. This was before people eventually twigged that they were highly addictive and were making them fat and sick and leading to the collapse of the nhs. However rather than ban them outright the government trialled giving people a drug to stop them eating them.

And make Aga drawings! And Aga toast is the absolute best, in those mesh toasting thingies. (Always had an Aga wherever we lived growing up).

10p mixes. The delight of standing over a glass counter while the shopkeeper put your selection of sweets into a bag for you. And the thought that went into it. Did you go for Mojos, that were only 1/2p each so you could get 20 of them? Or did you go for quality over quantity?

Putting 50p in the gas & electric meter. Having a coin slot on the rented tv. Having a lock on the dial phone and then, when you were allowed to use it, having to yell at your siblings because they’d picked up the extension and were eavesdropping. Playing in the street and not wanting to go in for a drink or use the loo in case your mum decided it was time to come in. Being in a car, not just with no seatbelts, but 7 or 8 kids on each other’s laps, in the footwell, in the boot of estate cars etc. Watching safety ads, like making sure we never played with kites around pylons, never walked under wires with fishing rods and never played on train tracks. And Charlie said never talk to strangers. The Green Cross Code. PE in vest and knickers in infants. And if you weren’t wearing a vest, just knickers. Head teachers wearing black billowing robes and those square hats and having chalk and wooden blackboard rubbers thrown at you for not paying attention. Knowing not to tell your mum or you’d get smacked for messing around in class. Standing up when a teacher walked into the room.

The excitement when mobile phones first came out; having to press a number four times to get the letter you wanted. And those ads to text a number for various ring tones, which weren’t the actual song, but phone tones that sounded like it. And if you used a credit card (I don’t remember debit cards existing) to pay for anything, it had to be put into a contraption with a credit card slip that had that blue carbon paper in it, and a presser would imprint your card details onto paper, which you’d sign and then get a copy.

HelloYouGuys · Today 01:37

And at Xmas I used to hope that I'd get a licorice smoking set... amongst which was a licorice "pipe" with red hundreds and thousands in the bowl part to emulate hit tobacco...

The Old Fashioned Sweet Shop in Tynemouth Metro Station sometimes has licquorice pipes. About a year ago, my then ten year old daughter picked one up and gaped in amazement when I explained what it was!