Did they have telly in the olden days when you were young Mum?

[ghosty]

DS' corker of a question 5 minutes ago!

So, I have been thinking ...

What do we take for granted now that we didn't have in the "olden days"?

I remember not having a tv. My mother says the first time I saw a tv I was 2 and a half (I was born in 1970)
We always had a phone but didn't get cordless phones till I was well over 20.
I remember my Dad getting a VCR player when I was about 12 ... that was cool!
I worked for a 'mobile' phone hire and repair firm in my Uni Holidays ... they were mostly those brick like car phones
My Dad had a telex machine when I was about 8 ... a great big thing the size of an electic keyboard that clattered INSTANT messages to him from colleagues in America ... ...
I remember an american friend of ours showing us this amazing new innovation called BAR CODES on the label of his peanut butter jar that he travelled everywhere with ....

What else, Oh, being the first in the school to use the brand new Electric Typewriters in my typing lessons and the dizzy heights of BBC computers in the computer room at school (state of the art technology in 1984) and Amstrad Word Processor ... my Dad was so proud of his in 1986!

[Mercy]

Duvets were almost unheard of, fridges just had a little ice-box (no freezers), everything was paid for by cheque or cash, holidays abroad were for the well-off only, etc

[TwigTwoolett]

I remember the launch of Channel 4

I remember when the first cashpoint came to our suburb

I remember when I was thin

[ditzymum]

We had a telly that had a meter in the back so when it ran out (usually in Coronation Street) we had to find 50p to put in it. The same with the gas and electric meters, I was always being sent next door with a pound note (!) to ask for change!

I remember getting a sony walkman when I was about 15, it was the size of a brick but I thought it was the dogs ......'s.

I also remember being sooo jealous of my best friend because her dad worked for Telecom and their phone had BUTTONS!!!!

Aaah and sherbet dips and parma violets and black jacks ...

[suedonim]

I'm of 1950's vintage but my mum was lucky in that she first of all had a washing machine with an electric mangle then a twin tub. Also a modern hoover. I think we always had a TV as grandad had bought one before I was born for the Queen's Coronation. Didn't have a fridge until the 60's and my parents didn't have a phone until the 80's. We had a gramaphone on which mum played 78's - I remember my sister stood on some accidentally and loads got broken.

Dh and I married in the 70's. I bought a tumble dryer with my last pay packet before leaving to have our first baby. Didn't have a phone until ds1 was one year old so dh had to run to the phone box to call the ambulance when I went into labour. Bought my first disposable nappies and baby wipes in 1980 and we got a microwave in 1987.

My sister has always been v old-fashioned and raised two children in the 70's and 80's without a washing machine. She had a Baby Burco boiler in which whites were boiled after being soaked in the bath overnight. Everything was ironed and then aired for days and days. She wouldn't use waterproofs on her first baby so when he wet everything had to be changed, sheets and all. They got a TV around 1980 but the children were scared of it. They eventually they got a tape cassette player but it was apparently too technical for sis so it was only used when her dh was home.

[SCARErenity]

I remember that one of my chores when I was about 5 or so was to sit on top of our twin top as otherwise it would travel across the kitchen floor

We were quite 'up' on technology as my Dad thought nothing of blowing wages on new stuff (much to my Mums disgust) I always remember having a colour TV although I can't remember watching anything before the age of 6 or 7.
We got the Atari pong game in the late 70s, first computer (Sinclair Speccy) in 1983, used to play The Hobbit constantly. Microwave 1984, Mum was very wary, so it was my baby - I worked my way through the cook book we got with it. Got our first VCR in 1985, and I still have all the videos full of music and interviews that I taped from TOTP, Saturday Superstore, The Chart Show etc. I can't bear to get rid of them . Born in '71 btw.

[notagrannyyet]

Until I was 9 we lived in a house with no bathroom & an outside loo. My kids never believed this but it's true. It was a bath in a tin bath in front of the fire, or an all-over wash at the kitchen sink. When I was 9 we had a bathroom built on to the house.
The only labour saving device mum had was a twin tub washing machine. We had a wireless when I was very small but didn't get a TV until I was about 7 .It was black & white and you could only get BBC1 & ITV. There was no day time TV apart from the mid day news followed by Watch with Mother (only 15 mins) Andy Pandy, Bill & Ben etc. The only other daytime programmes were test match cricket & tennis.
Dad never learnt to drive so we never had a car. We only had a phone because we moved to a house which already had one when I was 11. Mum and dad didn't get a colour TV or a fridge until after I left home in the mid 70s!

[LunarSea]

TwigTwoolett - my father was involved in introducing some of the early cashpoint machines in this country. Once they took their lastest all singing, all dancing prototype (well, you could pay utility bills through it and it had a built in hidden camera in case it recognised a card reported as stolen) to London for it to be shown on Tomorrow's World. When they got there the BBC forklift came along to the lorry, and despite them telling the driver that the machine had concrete in the base of it so was a lot heavier than it looked and he therefore needed a bigger forklift, he insisted it was ok and carried on trying to unload it. CRASH! End of prototype, and no appearance on the programme until they'd built another one!

notagrannyyet - I must have lived in one of the last houses ever built in this country with an outside toilet - built in 1965. It actually had an inside one too, but the people who had it new had apparently won the money to buy it on the pools, and as they'd only ever had an outside loo thought they'd miss it, so got the builders to add it on as an extra!

[caterpiller]

We got a phone when I was about 6. Before that I remember going round to the phonebox on a Sunday to call our better-off relatives who had one.
My mum used to wake up at about 6.30 to make the fire. No central heating obviously.
We had a b&w tv until I was about 8.
My kids don't believe that when I was little, crisps cost 5p and a can of coke was about 11p!
We had a twin tub too, and Saturday afternoon was washing day. My dad's oily boilersuits were sent to the laundry though.
I remember my mum using the old treddle sewing machine too. I think she was one of the first in the village to get a state-of-the-art Singer which I used a lot to make dreses for my Sindys

[MadamePlatypus]

Cashpoints! I remember my mum having to cash a cheque in the supermarket if she wanted to get money outside banking hours (late 70's early 80's?). I think the biggest change is that we used to have to wait for things much more - the shops to be open, the testcard to finish, films to be shown on TV before video came along.

[rachluv]

well going on the way we treat our children today we were a generation who should never have survived lol im 34 and lived in a tiny row of cottages 17 miles from the closest village. we had electric put in when i was born and we had a tin bath on the back of our celler door which came out on saturday nights in front of the coal fire in the kitchen.... the rest of the week we were washed in the huge butler sink.. very cold and god if you banged your head you knew about it.. we had an outside toilet that froze in the winter, i remember my mum having to go across to it first to pour a bucket of boiling water down, i remember my uncle having a computer and playing the tennis game you know the one the two lines at each end of the screen pmsl.... i remember the queens jubilee in 1977 and the whole village had a party and i remember the milk man delivering our milk only hours after it coming from the cows in the field behind our house non of this sending it away to mass mixed with other farms milk and pasturised beyond it even resemeling milk.... it came in the churns and we bought it by the jug...oh and get this one the coal man delivering coal ewww wasn,t that a glamerouse job. RIGHT now i feel really old im off to have a sqint at my old photos.... yes we had a camera hahahhahaha

[slackstockmistress]

No central heating until I was twelve.
We never had a car so if Mum went for the big shop I had to go with her and help carry it all home. Sometimes she sent me shopping with an old lady shopping trolley on wheels .
When we first got a betamax video, we went and chose three films (Rocky, Kramer vs Kramer and Annie) and the whole family watched them back to back one Sunday.
If you wanted a bath you had to 'put the tank on' an hour before for hot water. Never had constant hot water.
Didn't have a duvet until I was about nine - sheets and blankets.

[LunarSea]

I remember coalmen too. And does anyone remember French onion sellers? Yes the frenchman on a bike with strings of onions isn't just a cliche - they really used to exist. And other tradespeople on bikes - knife grinders, and the man who had big baskets of fresh prawns and shrimps which you used to buy by the pint jug full? And no such thing as takeaway deliveries, just a mobile fish and chip van which used to call at the village once a week.

[ZacharyZoo]

My DD nagging for a mobile phone aged 8, asked how old i was when i got my first mobile, err... 25 i think! I was born in 1967, i was prob 13 when mum got her first automatic washing machine, and i remember us all sat watching it through a cycle in amazement! Was trying to explain to my 12 year old about everything shutting on a Sunday, and on a Wed afternoon all the shops had early closing, no cashpoints, computers, takeaways, ready meals, my dad didn't have a car til i was about 10, she was horrified, thinks i grew up in the dark ages. I found some old records in the cupboard and she had no idea what they were!

[MissGolightly]

I was born in '77 but my parents weren't very up on technology so we had a black and white telly until I was about 10 - just like lunarsea's - it had a dial to tune the stations. Weirdly I have very vivid memories of watching an orange and white bagpuss and a yellow Orvill. When I saw re-runs a few years ago as an adult I thought something bizarre had happened to the colour and tried to adjust the set. Imagination is a strange thing - I could have sworn I had actually seen orange bagpuss.

[KTeepee]

On the subject of laundry - twin tubs werw the height of modernity when I was a child. We didn't have one though - we had a single tub thing with a mangle on top. We were probably one of the first families in our area to have a tumble dryer though - at one stage there were two of us under 20 months (and in cloth nappies). My aunt living in the UK told my dad to get one for my mum - they had to order it specially as you couldn't buy them in the local shops...

[CountessDracula]

i was born in 1966, I always remember having a tv, it was bright orange and round and black and white (my parents were rather into all that stuff). I can't remember when we got a video I think I was about 12.

I always remember having a washing machine and dishwasher. Also we had one of the first microwaves I remember all my friends being amazed by it.

[JoolsToo]

I remember when me and dh got this we were fascinated

how times have changed

[kittylette]

im only 21 so had most things when little,

but i do remember my dad gettin 'laser discs' HUGE dvds,

the thing i liked about being little is how everything seemed so big and magical.

how my grans garden felt like a magical woods, with a secret area at the back and a big old haunted house at the bottom,

but now i just see a garden with a partition, a few bushes and a shed!

[sockmonkey]

We had a coal fire... my job was to fetch coal from the cellar...where the monsters lived too. eek.

My dad got a VCR from work when I was about 8. And one year work lent him a camcorder, which took full size cassettes, i think I might have been 10.

Holidays to Filey were the best. Mum, Dad, 7 children, and dog and usually a friend, plus bedding & food for 2 weeks all crammed into an Vauxhall Astra estate car. No booster seats, or even seatbelts then.

[sockmonkey]

Oh I am 27...just

[rachluv]

like i said we should never have survived its amazing how we wern,t all killed in car crashes for not wearing seat belts or burnt making coal fires or falling down celler steps fetching coal or drinking milk straight from the cow, or eating sea food that had been driven around on a bike for hours or dying in our beds from hypothermia coz the blankets were thread bear pmsl none of us should really be here now theres a tought

[Tortington]

inside toilet!

[laudaud]

speaking of cars, 9 of us squeezed into a car to see the Pope in Dublin - 3 adults and 6 children and there weren't any 7 seaters then either!!!

[caterpiller]

I also desperately wanted a Soda Stream, but my mum never got one. I'd still like one actually

[puffling]

I was born in 1970. In the 70's there was lots of dry white dog poo on the pavements. What happened to that?