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

BA flights (domestic) being handed a packet of peanuts !! and can of Diet Coke and on descent, a boiled sweet.

i know people were relaxed about smoking op but seatbelt laws changed when I was a child and I must be more than 10 years older than you based on your a level years. I was getting £10 for babysitting in the 1980’s - perhaps better rates in London!

Gross. So normalised in those days.

The whole approach to age gap relationships generally was pretty shocking until pretty recently.

I remember when George Best married his young wife in the 90s, he was already a desperate washed up alcoholic with irreparable organ failure and he married someone in her 20s (can’t remember her name). It was really obvious that she was a gold digger who was basically waiting for him to drink himself to death so she could cash in and he was a desperate old man who couldn’t believe he could still pull a fit bird.

And it was treated like Love’s Young Dream in the tabloids.

I had friends who just sprayed their clothes with febreeze instead, just after it came out in the early naughties.

Being sent to buy cigarettes for my mum age 9. It was our local shop so we knew the shopkeeper and he knew I was buying them for her. Still though, very much doubt that’d fly today

I can’t begin to imagine what they smelt like after that!

I recall well where I lived (a working class area of the Midlands) that smoking around children was very much the done thing during the 1980s. Birthday parties at someone's house on a Sunday afternoon were frequently hosted in a smoke-filled lounge, at best the adults (usually the mum, a grandmother, and random other mum's who hadn't dropped & run) would gather in the kitchen to smoke. I have fond memories of being at party at the home of one of the girls in my class, jigging away to Aga-Doo, while her older sister and her mum sat on the sofa puffing away whilst sharing a magazine.

Also I remember dropping in on another friend once, during the holidays, and the two girls were sitting crossed legged on the floor watching TV while their mum was ironing, iron in one hand, fag in the other. To say "everyone" smoked would be a massive overstatement, but that's how it felt.

Ha! I remember when Febreeze came out! I'd not long taken on my first dog, this was 1999, and Febreeze was all over the TV adverts, so I got some in, in case of the dog smells.

We had a teacher at secondary school who it was common knowledge about that he’d have the 6th formers at his house for “study” sessions, they all smoked weed there.
Another teacher let was romantically involved with a pupil the moment she left school, it was about well known and nothing happened. This was around 05/06

Yep. 30 years ago - 1970!

Im nearly 60, l remember smoking everywhere, upstairs on the bus, in the back of the plane, no idea why was just backseats. I smoked in the office.
In the 80s we used to go to the pub at lunchtime on expenses, and not go back to work at all. Then we would get overtime on a Saturday to catch up on work, in reality we would get a bacon sandwich and then do nothing all day but get an extra £100 in our salary..the good old days of working in London in the 80's.

Filling the car up with fuel
32 inch TVs
weight loss jabs
Royal family
grass verges
smoking
push bikes
plastic shite
ironing - surely fabric will be crease free by then

I’ve enjoyed this thread too. Thank you.

I remember in the 90s all the teachers going to the pub on a Friday lunchtime!

I think TVs full stop will be seen as odd. It grieves me to think that the idea of a TV being an essential piece of equipment is becoming as old-fashioned as it seemed to me when people had countless radios throughout the house....I have four TV sets in use and one for a spare. I only have five rooms and a hallway...but as soon as I get in the TV goes on for background.

I baby say 3 children under 10 from 6pm - 12 for 7 nights a week.i got my tea.:mince, potatoes and carrots and £1 50. It was only when one of my teachers complained that I wasn’t getting my homework in that I was stopped from doing it.

I babysat a boy who was haemophiliac - I was told not to let him cut himself, and that was it - no phone, no contact number, no instructions what to do if he had a bleed

I vividly remember the smell of cigarettes burning through my totally polyester party dress as my Aunties were too free with their fag waving after some babycham at my sister's christening.

We all wore so much artificial clothing that it was a game at school to shuffle your plimsolls quickly over the school carpet tiles and then turn on a light. The shock was huge and as i had fine hair, it would fly up from static!

I used to be able to bunk off, no one noticed. I was in foster care for a while, school didn't even notice. Things are so much more organised now.

no phone, no contact number, no instructions what to do if he had a bleed

A bit like when at junior school in the 80s, if anyone was driving around looking suspicious, they didn't keep everyone in class and call the police, no, the teacher just got a letter handed to them from whichever prefect had been dispatched to the secretary's office, and they'd tell us there was man driving round in a van or whatever and to not get into it on our way home.

Any sort of injury at school was dealt with by the dinner ladies shoving a paper towel on it.

Looking back through our family albums, I’d assume that it was actually be mandatory to be holding a cigarette if you were having your photo taken with a baby or young child. All my relatives smoked around us. My dad was a chain smoker. I hated car journeys because he and my step mum would smoke throughout and he’d never let us open a window.

Taking the baby out in the car - no baby carrier or seat, just lying in a carrycot on the back seat, clipped in with a normal seatbelt

@Iguesswelivedelsewhere

To say "everyone" smoked would be a massive overstatement, but that's how it felt

There was quite a long period between people learning that smoking was massively dangerous and addictive and people moving to make it a taboo. There was a good two decades of people not really doing much to curb it.

My parents (who had smoked but gave up in their 30s) knew I had started smoking as a teenager (late 80s) and while they didn’t encourage it they were pretty nonplussed about me and my friends doing it. They were educated people who must have known for at least a decade how dangerous it was. I would be apoplectic if I learned my DD smoked.

People seemed to sort of accept that it was bad and also be very inert about doing anything about it for a long time. It wasn’t until they banned smoking indoors in 2004 that people actually started to turn it into a proper taboo. I guess it speaks to the power of the tobacco lobby that people were so relaxed about it for as long as they were.

When my brother was undergoing chemo at the Royal Marsden in early 90's, there was a smoking lounge for patients, complete with games and a pool table. When it returned 17 years ago, there was still a smoking room - but it was a broom cupboard. I kinda got the logic though, they didn't want patients outside in the cold and germs when their immune system was shot.

I can remember not having a seatbelt as a child - our car didn’t have them in the back - so I’ve googled and it was only law from 1991 for rear seats! It was mandatory for new cars to be fitted with them from 86/7, but we always had really old cars so had many years without seatbelts.

Yes with the lack of baby seats! I can also remember young children just sitting on parents lap on the passenger side, so they could either see out the window, or make way for others on the back seats. Still see that occasionally, sadly.

And old classic cars still don't have them - my dad had a classic car without and legally didn't need them. No idea if that's changed now though.