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

Going on a college trip at 16 when all the students and teachers were allowed to get blind drunk in the hotel and walk around with a hangover at the event we were going to the next day.
We were in London and allowed to leave the hotel whenever we liked in our free time and do what we liked, that would never happen now.

That was in the mid 1980s, not the 1990s. Tjey actually got married in 1989 after a five year relationship .(which was encouraged bu her mother…)

To me it was 20/30 years ago. Sorry about that. I’ll keep quiet now and join gransnet.

Cigarette adverts as well! I remember being quite fascinated by the Marlborough Man billboard. And the purple Silk Cut double page spreads in the Sunday magazine seemed rather glamorous. These days it’s all online gambling adverts. Maybe that’s what will seem strange and outdated in 30 years!

I agree, although by the time I went to work in 1995 it was not acceptable to smoke in most workplaces per-se, though many shops and offices I worked in had smoking rooms. One office I worked in during 2003 faced a continual battle with the smokers from the factory downstairs, as they were not insured to have smoking on the premises, not that it stopped people lighting up by the back doors. After that, I had an evening job in a large Tesco and I was really shocked to see they had a smoking area of the staff canteen...this was 2004, though of course the smoking ban then only applied in Ireland. I do recall smoking being much less socially acceptable as we worked out way through the 00s.

The paper ticket making a nice souvenir from an event or concert.

Writing letters to Jim'll Fix It as a classroom activity...

And a penny book of matches.

Being told in my first bar job to wash the ashtrays alongside the beer glasses in the washing machine.

Drinking from 16 in the village local. You wouldn't dare misbehave as it would make it back to your parents... Who knew you were there. So much better then sneaking about.

Oh I remember doing this circa 1993! Yikes!

And in many ways lovely

Students sharing bathrooms, or even bedrooms
No student loans
Uni was for the few, not everyone.
Shops not open on a Sunday
The alcohol aisle being closed off it was open on a Sunday.
The noise the modem made dialing for the Internet /connection speed
Dog license

Venture scouts activities. If you were a venture scout, you know. H and Safety didn't exist and POR was 10 pages.

Everything being grey these days.

My mum allowing dogs upstairs or on furniture.

🤣 to be fair doing the maths horrified me too

Ah, the good old days, when 20 years was at least half a century.

And didn't her mother marry his son?

Yes, people of all ages were more capable of thinking for themselves and looking after themselves. This is one thing I miss from the modern day. I'm not saying the long-term effects of things like smoking aren't a problem, but when you look back at the dangers then and consider how much didn't actually happened vs. what could have, it speaks for itself. Put it like this, I felt safer walking down the streets then than I do now.

Giving 'three rings' to let family or friends know you'd got home safely - ie you'd ring their landline, let it ring three times then put it down. They knew it was you, no one had to actually pay for a phone call.. probably most common in the 80s but I'm sure my mum and nan kept it up well into the 2000s!

20/30 years I definitely worked in an office where people smoked. It was horrible.

When you made an arrangement with a friend you had to just make sure you were there (most people didn’t have mobile phones). We used to do this with overseas meet ups as well, while travelling. You’d leave a note on the pin board of the hostel saying where you’d be and when. It mostly worked!!

My SIL is 59 and is the most scatty, dis-organised, wishy-washy person I know...by all accounts she lived life to the full during the 80s and early 90s, which I find unbelievable in an era where one required so much from oneself to ensure arrangements were made and stuck to. Frankly it's a wonder she had any friends at all, seeing how now she's got Whatsapp it takes as much as ten messages just for her to agree a time to meet. I don't know how she made it through TBH.

I was thinking exactly that. Lots of the memories on here would fit with my childhood in the 1970s. By 1996 (30 years ago) I was married with a child and things were very different.

For example, I don't think smoking in offices was widely tolerated anymore, certainly not in any of the ones I worked in.

I remember visiting someone in an orthopaedic ward in the early 80s and old ladies were smoking in bed! Hard to believe isn't it?

I remember the signs people had in their cars about the campaign to get rear seatbelts made compulsory in new cars, saying, “I’ve told Thatcher to belt up in the back”!

Maybe that full life is one reason she’s so scatty now?! One of my Mum’s friends is like this and I blame the copious amount of drugs this lady apparently took in the 60s and 70s!

University essays were all handwritten. I did get my dissertation typed though but by someone else from my manuscript. Nothing on computer and I didn't own one until about 1999. I graduated in 1991.

Me too. 1970’s baby - doesn’t feel like 40/50
years ago