To ask what the weirdest thing you experienced or saw at someone else's house when you were a child?

[BillHadersNewWife]

Inspired by a Reddit thread...there were some absolutely weird things that people experienced or saw at their mates' houses as children.

There was a man who said he hated eating at his friend's house because they weren't allowed to drink water with a meal.

There was someone who said their friend wasn't allowed in any other room but the kitchen and their bedroom.

That kind of thing! I'm thinking myself and can't really dredge much up. There was one friend who lived in a huge mansion...think National Trust style place...and it was empty!

Just room after room with less furniture in the place than in an average semi!

Normal-ish family...I think they were broke due to having 5 kids and privately educating them all!

I was jealous that we were allowed to choose paint and actually decorate my 13 year old friends bedroom, ourselves. We thought we'd done a good job

I had another friend that we were never allowed into her house. I remember knocking for her and being told they were having their tea so would need to come back later. I had walked a long way to get there in pre mobile phone days, so hanging around for an hour in cold rain wasn't much fun. In our house in the same situation, the friend would be invited in to wait, albeit would be put in a different room with the tv on for company.

I had a friend whose parents fancied themselves as a bit middle class. Most of my friends' parents were bricklayers and care assistants whereas this girl's mum was a nurse and her dad wore a suit to work (no idea what he did but I didn't know another man who wore a suit to work).

One day I went round for tea (aged about 9) and was served beef bourguignon with creamy garlicy green beans and a glass of watered-down red wine. My friend told me that they ate shit like that every night.

On the way home, I vomited in the foot well of the dad's car. He was livid and when he dropped me off he actually suggested to my mum that I or her should clean it up

Love these. Had a friend who had 6 siblings and her mum had this giant brass gong and used to sound it for dinner to get them all to come to their dining room. Another friend, her mum and dad had separate bedrooms, I found that really strange. Same friend her mum used to halve all food meant for 1 person so if you went for tea you would each get half a slice of toast ,half a tin of small beans and half an orange as dessert!!

A friend of mine lived in a four storey townhouse.

Ground floor = totally normal
1st floor = totally normal
2nd floor = all dressed like an 18th century house with antiques and no modern things at all. All dusty and we were never allowed in there (I just peeked in the open doors as we went passed it). Spooky as anything.
3rd floor = totally normal and where her bedroom was

@bertiebotts was the house with the grapevine in SE London by any chance?

My friend's mum was a prostitute. She worked in a brothel in town.

She was the loveliest, kindest, most generous person you could image.

There are loads of stories I could tell about her but two particular incidents stick in my mind:

1. Over Christmas my friend's mum put on a few pounds so one evening in January my friend and me had to wedge her into a basque ready for work. She called us into her bedroom where she was buttering up her tits (as in actually rubbing a block of butter all over herself, toast crumbs and everything) and we had to squish her into this black leather basque. It was hilarious.

1. I rocked up on her doorstep one night at 3am having nowhere else to go after a bust-up with my parents. She was so kind and said I could stay there. I said I'd go straight to bed and not keep her any longer but she wouldn't hear of it. She put her ABBA CD on top volume and made me dance with her in the kitchen for about an hour.

This happened to a DF, she told me that when she was a child she was at her pal's house and wanted to go to the loo. There was a downstairs loo but it was occupied and her friend told her DM the problem. 'No problem' says DM 'she can use the upstairs loo.' DF could see that her pal wasn't happy about this but up she did trot to find that the bath was full of coal.

Not me, but DH: his schoolfriend lived in one of those post-war prefab that endured well beyond their intended lifespan. It had an earth floor. No boards, no concrete, packed down earth with rugs over the top. Winters must have been awful.

My friends house had a fridge full of lovely food that anyone could help themselves too, apart from the full cooked roast chicken, that was reserved especially for the dog.

I came from a very poor very food restricted household so this absolutely floored me.

A homebirth. I was in primary school.

I wonder whether any of the people who have weird rules or weird stuff in their houses know they’re weird.

Remember there was no unlimited Netflix back then has made me feel so old ! Netflix is a very very recent invention, young wan. In fact, i think it was invented last Thursday, wasn't it?

1. Over Christmas my friend's mum put on a few pounds so one evening in January my friend and me had to wedge her into a basque ready for work. She called us into her bedroom where she was buttering up her tits (as in actually rubbing a block of butter all over herself, toast crumbs and everything) and we had to squish her into this black leather basque. It was hilarious.

the image of this has just left me in tears. I've had a shit day, so thank you!

I don't think they do @CruCru. Just read the utter madness of any food-related threads. Within 15 minutes you will have -

• free access to fruit and veg at all times
• fruit is evil, all that sugar
• we never allow any snacks between meals
• children have to ask permission for all food, that just 'good manners'

A whole new generation of weird to make us gasp coming our way.

I found my friends dad's porn magazines under the bathroom mat in her downstairs toilet once. I was 11

When I was a teenager I had a friend and every member of her family (herself, her brother and her parents) would lock their bedroom doors when they went out. We never locked internal doors when I was a kid and don’t now. I still think something weird was going on in that house.

Yes, the food threads on here do get quite strange quite quickly.

When my Dsis and I were young, our mum would her snowy white cotton knickers to dry on the handles of saucepans that were on a high shelf in the kitchen. We used to die of embarrassment if we took a friend or a boy home and they wanted to use the loo, which was through the kitchen

My best friend, whose parents were generous and included me in days out etc, wasn't allowed to bath or shower while she was having her period. Didn't really think much of it until I slept over, flooded and had to wash with damp loo roll before we went on our planned trip to a theme park. It was horrible for a 13 year old and I never slept over there again.

Another friend's dad used to sleep on the floor downstairs... he worked nights so we all had to creep over him coming in from school. He had a bad back I think. She also used to collect the wax from Babybels and every year she made a candle for mother's day from it

My DD aged 7 was freaked out by the "Brown and white stuff" her friend put on her chips; we don't add salt at the table and so never really thought to offer vinegar! Poor sheltered DD!

My 5 year old said her friends all decided "you've got a weird posh mum" because I once gave one of them a hot crossed bun ("a raisin cob") as an after school treat.

I went over to a friend’s house when I was about 9. Her bedsheets and pillowcase were covered in old dried blood and when I commented she told me she’d had a nosebleed a few days ago. It wasn’t just a few drops, there were huge stains. Don’t know why her parents hadn’t changed the sheets.
Her little sister also had a friend over the same day and we all played together in the living room. One of her cats shat in the corner and my friend told her mum who said “I’ll clean it up later”. I was there the whole day and it didn’t get cleaned up - gross anyway but especially with 4 children playing nearby?!
At teatime the cats climbed all over the table and ate food off our plates (I love cats and we’ve always had them as pets, they’ve never ever been allowed on the table or to take food though) I was horrified. The little sister’s friend (who could only have been 4 or 5) and I were looking at each other wide eyed in complete horror throughout 😂
Another friend of mine had a dad who was a dustbin man and I used to love staying at her house for sleepovers as he’d always bring us toys that people had thrown out!

@hapagirl We used to do this when I lived at home, locking all internal doors. It was because we were burgled while we were all in the house one evening and the person managed to make their way from room to room without being detected and stole thousands of pounds worth of stuff. My Dad felt that if the doors were locked and somebody got in through a window, they'd at least be contained in one room.

I think we were the weird house! But in a good way. My dad let me and my friends design a climbing frame which he built from scratch and was probably illegal because it was nearly 15ft tall! We used to jump off it onto the trampoline using sheets as parachutes. We also had really high scaffolding that he laid planks across and tied rope to, so we could ‘walk the plank’ and pretend to be monkeys in a zoo. He built a 20ft tipi in the back garden and a beach using some sand and tarpaulin... He also used to let us mix concrete and build things with bricks in the garden, looking back I'm shocked we never got hurt! He is a very eccentric character and my friends always seemed in awe of him.

Some of the awful stories on here are heartbreaking, they make me so angry.

I had one friend whose parents were crazy religious, she wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter or anything fantasy because it promoted witchcraft and was the work of the devil she read them all at my house instead there was just a weird atmosphere in the house, nobody seemed relaxed ever.

I had a lovely primary school friend Aged about 7-9 years old, I loved her house, huge house with lots of books and crannies. Her bedroom door only had a bottom half, like a stable door but no top bit, that confused me a lot.

My friend made me French toast and then sprinkled lots of cinnamon and sugar on top!! I was a appalled and refused to eat it. It was 1976 and relatively unheard of in the uk back then.

But the main thing was that they had 3 HUGE cats, a black one, yellow and brown one and a spotted one. Lovely friendly, loved to be cuddled and pet, used to snuggle up on the sofa and watch tv with them. One day they just disappeared, my friend was so upset at school because her parents told her they had run away. Yep they were tiger, panther and cheetah cubs one of whom a scratched the housekeepers arm quite badly so they were taken away.

We had free access to a fruit bowl when I was a child. We asked if we wanted a snack (something like half a 2 finger kitkat) and we were fed four meals at a table. We hardly ever had pop, but we would have squash. We hardly seemed to drink much, and it was usually water. Friends seemed to do the same.

Nowadays, I see streets littered with drinks bottles, parents opening packets of crisps before they've paid for them and things. What has changed?