Things that happened 20/30 years ago that wouldn't today

[Putrid46]

As a child I recall aunties, uncles and grandparents smoking around me all the time with no ventilation. I'd stay at my grandparents for the weekend and go home with a cough, it was seen as normal.

Parents driving me to school hungover from the night before possibly still slightly drunk.

As an A level pupil in the early 2000s I recall staying until around 7pm one evening with 2 teachers to finish coursework due in the next day, the teachers practically did it for me and then one of them dropped me off home in her car, nobody batted an eyelid.

We had a French language assistant, who was actually French and she invited us to her home one Sunday to do coursework and eat croissants, again it was all above board, she was a lovely Mrs Doubtfire type lady and it was all fine but looking back, that'd never happen now!

Interested to hear from anyone else

And the insurance man! I used to hate him coming as he talked so much it disturbed us watching TV

Doing a supermarket shop without needing a loyalty card.

Shops selling pots of cream with lids on.

Cans of pop with actual sugar, not Jamie Oliver cancer chemicals.

Sitting in the footwell of the car on the school pick up because there were too many kids for seats. Also did this on a 1.5 hrs day trip journey when my mum took a load of us round the m25 for a day out in the holidays 🫣.

Sleeping in the back of the car with the seats folded down flat and a mattress across them en route to Europa Park circa 1990.

My mum paying for the weekly shop in Sainsbury’s by cheque. Also buying all the meat separately from the butchers, milk from the milkman, eggs from the local farm.

My great uncle lining me and my cousins up so we could have a toke on his pipe…I was sick on the carpet. My great aunt was furious at him. Found out as an adult that my grandmother and parents knew he was a paedaphile yet my parents still took me and my brother round there each week. my grandmother was known as the difficult one as she went no contact with him and my GA (her sister), when today the reaction would have been completely the opposite way around

i remember going out for a meal with my friends to celebrate finishing our GCSE’s. Our D&T teacher ordered us a bottle of champagne to the table. We thought we were so grown up but my god how inappropriate!

I remember smoking in the staff room at work, restaurants etc. Being touched on the bum, boobs etc by random men on nights out, it would be classed as assault now and in the early 2000s it was basically the norm.

Smoking everywhere is the big one, I think. I was at university when the indoor smoking ban came in. My sixth form had a smoking area!
Page 3 and similar porno just being casually around, in the supermarket or newsagent. Similarly, the media’s sexualisation of young girls (Charlotte Church springs to mind), and the promotion of thin-is-in and heroin chic in the early 00s. How messed up we must have been by being told Britney Spears was fat!

That sounds brilliant.

What a lovely sense of community.

The smell of your clothes after a night out - I can smell it now. I can’t even describe it! You could never wear anything again without washing it. I think I am going 40 years + ago.

Smoking inside the plane on Spanish airlines !

On all airlines!

Air France were the last major one to let it go.

I qualified as a mental health nurse in 1996 the main patient lounge was the official smoking area ,where patients had their breakfast and drinks
Those that didn't smoke had to sit in the quiet room ,its unthinkable now!

I love these threads!
I wonder what we do today that will seem weird in 2056?
Everyone gawping a phones all day? dogs literally everywhere even cafes?
The big lip/eyelash trend.
There must be loads of things that are 'normal' to us now.
What else?

I was born in the late '50's so my childhood was in the 1960's.

My Dad's first vehicle was a small van. There were only the 2 seats in the front so Dad put an old sofa in the back (not secured to the floor or anything) for us 3 kids to sit on.

Obviously no seatbelts

Cornering was.......interesting 😂

Trust me, 40 years ago most people smoked around children. We could smoke in pubs, restaurants, cinema, trains, planes, school staff rooms, factory staff canteens, lecture theatres at Universities.

Thirty years ago, obviously - 1970😂

Lol I remember my dad braking and his pedal went through the floor! Not onto the tarmac or anything, but you could see a wee bit of road through the hole. Some kind of Ford car, they were rust buckets.

Also, how different flying was pre-September 2001.

Same here except there were 5 of us!

I remember in hospital wards (huge - as many as 20 beds) there was always a long table in the centre of the room where those who could get about sat to eat their food - and it was where you sat to smoke!!

Smoking on planes - was that crazy!
Walking 2 miles to primary school at 9yrs, in charge of my 7 yr old sister
Being wacked with a wooden spoon on the leg by my Dad
Going out on my bicycle all day, and only getting home when it went dark
Being asked about my maternity plans at a job interview
Being told I couldn't have a job as a site engineer, because the men wouldn't like it.
Getting an apology from the taxman because my student husband had to sign MY tax return

We'd have a decent Labour Government.

Chris Evans weighing posh spice on prime time tv

A friend of mine still has the letter she received from the FCO in 1973 telling her that she would no longer have to give up her job if she got married.

Being forced to sit and stare at a plate of rhubarb and custard all afternoon because I wouldn't eat it and the dinner lady wouldn't let me off as I didn't have a letter from home to excuse me from eating it.

Our eldest was born in 1994. We wouldn't have dreamt of taking him to a smokey pub.

When I was 15 my 18 year old boyfriend used to take me to the pub and buy me a gin and tonic.

Longer ago, when I was 7 or 8, my mother would drop me on the train and give the guard a couple of bob to keep an eye on me. 1hr, 40mins later, my grandmanwoukd meet me at a main London station.

Some rules were far stricter, some far more lenient. The trouble we got into at school if the head mistress heard we'd been eating in the street. I also remember a girl being expelled for stealing and another for getting pregnant in the lower 5th. She brought the baby to the school gate and the head mistress strode out and tore a strip off her and told her shebwas never to come within sight of the school ever again.

20-30 years ago was 1996 onwards. Why is this thread full of references from the 70’s and 80’s? Twin tub for gods sake 😂

I remember being in the last year of primary school and the whole class had been to a concert
We where all handed a glass of red wine afterwards
Best laugh is,id been drinking Guinness since I was 7!
My grandad would hand me a small mug full and id neck it

I lived with my grandad and used to walk the 2 and a half miles between his and my parents houses from aged 4 (over 3 very busy roads)

My mother walked me to school for my first week and the I was to walk there and back by myself (my father was amazed I walked my year 6 child to and from school)

My mother learnt to drive and drove us (more than once) with her driving,my aunt next to her,3 children in the back (no seatbelts) 2 in the boot and one in the footwell (between my aunts legs)

Everywhere had a smoking section

I used to do a gym class when I was really small and friends of my parents would drive my grandad and I to and from the class-wed be sat,curled up in the back of their van,eyes streaming from their chain smoking and feeling sick from the smell of grease (they where Onslow types that lived on beer and fried breakfasts)

My grandparents chain smoking around us and having a go at us for daring to say we felt sick from the smell and screaming at us (fag still in hand) when my brother had an asthma attack which landed him in hospital

Being perved at walking to or from school/creepy teachers

Young girls meeting much older men at lunchtime/after school and the teachers did nothing apart from shaking their heads and muttering about them 'getting themselves pregnant'