Things your parents led you to think were 'special' or 'expensive' that you now take for granted?

[VladmirsPoutine]

for the po-faced

Growing up my siblings and I were wary over using too much kitchen roll - we'd get a sheet and fold it in half to tear before using, the faff was a PITA but to this day I still get a bit territorial over my kitchen roll.

We also had 'special' China plates, cups, cutlery, that sort of thing. Only used when we had guests or at Christmas - I didn't carry that into adulthood but whenever I visit my DM I still fondly look at the unit containing all those 'special' cups

My dad died when I was relatively young but prior to this death he used to always take us (siblings&I) to our weekend clubs when we were young, on Saturdays one of my sisters and I attended clubs that finished at similar times and it was always Saturdays that mum worked nights so the 4 us: dad+siblings would always get McDs and think it was basically gourmet dining.

I didn't have a deprived childhood by any definition but I do find those quirks quite funny looking back.

Takeaways and meals out. We went for meals out relatively often but they were always a treat and we looked forward to them. There was always a sense of occasion about it.

Takeaways were very, very rare and it was wonderful when we had one. Pizza and chips was a true luxury.

Plug sockets! Only one in each room. Much less gadgets in those days that needed charging than today.

Agree about the environmental aspect. The amount of plastic polluting our oceans and environment in general is disgusting and wasteful of resources too.

The rest of the litter that fast food generates is awful too. There is McDonalds waste pretty much every where you look, even though McDonalds themselves do try hard to pick it up in the immediate vicinity, they can't police the wanker who throws it from the car window 5 miles down the road.

I try to take water with me when I go out and feel annoyed and guilty when I buy a cold drink. I don't generally drink fizzy pop and hate paying for water anyway so don't do it very often.

I agree Cherry - I am quite surprised at quite a few of these posts being listed as "something that used to happen in the olden day" and laughed at as if they are ridiculous. Many of them are just 'normal' to me, and my (teen) dc too ~ things like Inigo has suggested, and quite a few more besides.

Milk. It was expensive so we were strictly rationed, and god help you if you tried to take a furtive swig from the bottle (I swear she marked it).
Eating out. I didn't go into a restaurant until I was 14 and my aunt took me.
Branded clothes.
Having a car.
Having a telephone.
Fruit. We had to ask, and again, god help you if you took more than you were supposed to have.
It's a wonder we didn't have scurvy.

Definitely takeaways! I still very rarely get one. When I was young an Indian takeaway was something my parents had as a special treat maybe a couple of times a year (grew up in a small town so not much choice) and we very occasionally had fish and chips. My mum (and I!) are still a bit scandalized when people have a big takeaway once a week. I was a child of the 80s/90s btw.

Also, snacks from vending machines. I always used to be desperate to be allowed to get something from the machine at the leisure centre after my swimming lesson but was never permitted to - my mum would have packed a cereal bar in her bag. Ditto places like Little Chef when we were travelling on holiday. I still remember going to one for the first time when I was about 13. As I got into my teens in the 90s we would occasionally eat out for a special occasion or on holiday and it seemed so sophisticated

DH's parents were stingy about different things - he is one of four and his mum never worked although his dad had a very good job. They went on foreign holidays (by plane! We never went further than France on the ferry) and had a big TV and games consoles but he never had clothes that weren't the cheapest of the cheap and they never ate out or went on days out to places of interest. My PILs are still really funny about eating out and my FIL gets almost huffy about it, because eating at home is so much cheaper etc.

Our whole attitude to stuff has changed over the last 40-50 years.

I remember watching an educational film at primary school in the 70s, all about the big waste plants we had in this country, located at the older landfill sites. They processed all the rubbish collected by ciuncils, etc, and it was sorted and in some cases recycled. Magnets pulling out metals, rags separated for the paper industry, and so on.

We were all used to the "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" mantra we hear of nowadays, it was second nature. The bottles taken back for the deposit, paper collected and baled, rags collected as we didn't have those clothing bins, and so on.

Then the 1980s, and the rise in disposable plastics changed everything. Despite what many people try to do to reduce our consumption, we have had a couple of generations who very quickly got used to the notion of "disposable" and I think it's a slog fighting against that. Throwing something away is the easy option, recycling requires work, even if only mental work in thinking about making sure the bottle goes in the right bin.

I didn't know that there were cold meats apart from chopped ham and pork, ham and corned beef until I was an adult.
Again Vienetta a treat at xmas
Didn't eat arctic roll unless I went to friends...they owned their house, had a car...and a telephone...they were rich..I was grown up before I realised they weren't, just comfortable.
Any takeaway was unheard of maybe once or twice a year get a chippy.
Had dandelion and burdock at my great aunts once a year when we visited.
Meals out were rare, when I went to see hospital specialist in London we went to a greasy spoon for lunch. I was once taken by my DGMs employer (DGM was a cleaner) for the appointment (she had to go to London, can't remember why and offered to take me), she took me to a restaurant for lunch and I was allowed a portion of gateau...she was wealthy...found out years later she charged my mother

I remember when the first Chinese takeaway around here opened in the 1970s. My Dad went to get us some food and came back with chips, bamboo shoots and water chestnuts. That was the first and last time we had Chinese food while I was at home. When I finally tried it properly, years later, I couldn't get over how tasty it was.

We only had one Chinese takeaway and one Indian takeaway in the market town where I grew up. We only frequented either once or twice a year.

Have takeaways got cheaper? Presumably as a result of supply and demand fuelled by increased immigration from those communities?

Interesting thread. Mine are similar to everyone else’s but now wondering how far my adult life is defined by rebellion!

I just got a taxi home from trick or treating (which my mother disapproved of), knocking back a freshly squeezed bottle of orange juice while my son ate a ‘shop-bought sandwich’ (we never had them). With a packet of tissues (not a hankie) in my pocket.

Just thought of another one ( it it may have just been my bloody parents )

The only hobby we had was watching TV!

So no dance lessons, music lessons, sports, horse riding etc. Kids these days seem to be constantly ferried around to a load of activities but that was unheard of when I was a kid ( 70s)

Slightly the opposite. My grandfather was a fisherman. He'd bring home whatever he caught on lines or in pots. We might have mackerel, soused herring, crab or lobster. I was completely ignorant of the price difference.

Until one day when I tried to order lobster in a restaurant and my dad gave me a very sharp elbow!

I was 19+ when I had my first Indian. I was away at college and was very green. My colleagues were kind and advised me to have a korma.

Our town had had a Chinese for some years but only the one and every other takeaway was fish and chips (and potato scallops - remember those! Battered potato rounds)

Ha ha, kez. I know what you mean. My dad was a miner and for a long time, he got a tonne of coal delivered every month that was either free or very cheap, and the house was on coal fired central heating, obviously.

So we had as much heating and hot water as we liked without worrying about the cost.

The coal we got was far more than it takes to heat a three bedroom semi, and while we were lucky to have a big cellar to store the coal, it was sometimes necessary to give some away when the cellar was full and it lasted for years after he stopped mining and hence stopped getting the coal. I bet they got a shock when they had to pay for heating and hot water like other people.

Almost everything that my brother and I wanted or sometimes needed was "too expensive". What, apparently, wasn't "too expensive" was their cigarettes, holidays without us, and then their boat!

Even the hot water for a hot water bottle at night (radiators in our bedrooms were 'broken') was too expensive.

Radiators in bedroom?! Working or not, they sound pretty luxurious.

Our bedrooms were completely unheated - no radiators, no gas/electric fire of any sort, no double glazing either. My bedroom was upstairs above a downstairs room that was rarely used, so didn’t even get warmth from underneath.

We were absolutely freezing in our computer nylon bedsheets and rough wool blankets.

Until I was about six we lived in a village that once a week, at 6pm on a Friday, the video man would drive around and you could go and see what he had and choose what to borrow until the next Friday.

I lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. I had to wait a seemingly endless amount of time to get to borrow The Little Mermaid. Another child on the round had always got it before me.

The sheer joy of when that Friday finally came and the Video Man placed it into my hands! Magic.

Can't imagine any future children of mine having to wait like that for a film they want to see!

Coloured not computer

Shocking to think you girls' mothers didn't get you what you needed

I know, and to this day she denies she kept us short, mind you she has a selective memory about a lot of things . She used tTampax but she wouldnt buy them for us despite the fact that the cheap crap things clearly were not enough for us. We did also get bollockings for "wasting" them or using more than we needed (what she thought we were doing with them I wouldnt like to think). I cannot imagine something being a neccesity and getting it for myself bu then denying my kids the very same thing.

In fact I would go so far as to say that I would have the cheap crap and get brand names for the girls because I am used to my periods and can handle them better than the girls who are still getting used to it and settling down with them.

Her favourite phrase was "Well I managed, so you will have to" as if that somehow justified us struggling when there was no need.

Pyongyang Oh yes, that cry of 'I managed, so you will' was often heard in our house too. That and 'we managed to do without in't war'.

Nighsky

Ma was a 1950 baby boomer and the spoiled youngest, which makes it odder as she often had more than she needed and not less! We were not short of money but it was only spent on things she deemed neccesary, which was holidays where she wanted to go regardless of everyone elses preferences......

Sorry, getintg bitter now, will step away from the thread!

Qualified tradesmen! My dad, God love him, reckoned he could rewire houses, plumb in new bathroom suites, fix broken boilers...this was not true.

As he’s got older he’s gradually come around to the idea that paying someone who knows what they’re doing is a worthwhile investment. But I have many lovely memories of him, happily working away on projects he was patently not qualified to undertake. I just took it for granted that there was this third state of functionality - “working”, “broken” and the intermediate one, “fixed by my dad”.