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!

@Footiefan2019 I didn’t contribute. And I’m not speaking for everyone else, I’m simply putting forward an opinion that you don’t agree with. That’s all.

I completely agree with @Buscake

I agree with @Buscake

I agree @Buscake

it’s clear that some posters have experienced some really heart wrenching things, and to have it categorised as ‘classic’ seems gross to me

Buscake I'm sure that if anyone is upset about their personal memory going into classics, they could contact MN and have their posts deleted.

If people don't do this, we can assume that they are comfortable with it being left online.

Yes, the tone is all over the place - I er... I agree with @Buscake

Like Whynosnowyet, your post just there - it all sounds really grim, and I'm so sorry you had to go through all that! I wouldn't especially want to come to Classics to read it tbh (That's probably come out all wrong, I don't mean it as something against you)

Not as a kid (but maybe my DC will tell the story in years to come) but we had weird neighbours. They moved in and were quite normal, then overnight they became almost reclusive. Curtains closed all day, we would t see them for weeks on end. Then middle of summer a few neighbours were sat on our doorsteps talking (terraced road) and the husband came out shouting that we had woken them up and could we be quiet (this was mid afternoon!!!) One day a moving van turned up and they moved out.
Weeks later the bailiffs started turning up knocking on the door. The house was repossessed and turned out they had been growing drugs for God knows how long. All the floorboards pulled up and the big ventilation pipes all over, holes in roofs... They now live at the other end of the village and are neighborhood watch coordinators!!!

@VenusClapTrap I remember being hungry a lot as a child. I lived with my grandparents and they served minute portions. DS 8 would be very lethargic on what I used to eat.

1forall74
few on here will be old enough to remember the horse and carts which did collections from houses but I do. Rag and Bone Men they were called and you knew they were coming as you'd hear their cry "any old rags, any old rags". I was born mid 50s but I remember it clearly. The coal was also delivered by horse and cart when I was small by a thrillingly dusty coalman with a heavy bag over his shoulder, literally back breaking work!

@raspberrymolakoff In the 1980s there was an elderly rag and bone man who used to come to our road, complete with a horse and cart, and a bell.

Our house also had a coal chute, which my parents say was still in use when they moved in, before they got a boiler. I don't remember the coalman though.

My dad was a coal man! When we were little he’d throw us over his shoulder shouting “sacks of coal” and dangle us down coal chutes while we screamed (in fun!). And growing up, it never occurred to me that other kids parent’s DIDN’T throw them around like they were coal. I thought it was as common rock paper scissors

God I remember the coal man ( in the 80's) I remember we had a coal bunker in the garden me & my dB would play on it . I think once he fell and cut his head .

"The bread and milk thing...that's not that weird. Just that it was served oddly. Bread and milk was a common dish years ago. Usually the bread would be broken up into chunks though."

You're so right. My great uncle used to live with us, he was born about 1870 and never married. My mother sort of inherited him from her mother. He used to have hot milk with cubes of bread floating in it every night before bed. He smoked a pipe and had a glass eye. He was only allowed to smoke in his back bedroom where the walls were almost brown. He lived to be 99 dying in 1969!

Quite a few of the things people on here think weird are just generational. It was the norm for families to all bath once a week, usually on a Sunday, and use the water one after the other. Hot water was not freely available in many houses. We had an immersion heater which was only allowed to be put on for an hour on a Sunday evening. As a teenager (about 1970) I would sneak it on but it had a bright light and mum would say "we shall have an electricity bill a mile long". The first time I saw a shower was probably late 1970s people just didn't have them.

My parents generation (born between the wars) all used to eat sugar sandwiches and also dripping sandwiches yuk!

My kids went on french exchanges with the same farming family in northern France in the late 1990s and they were still using one plate for everything then, wiping with bread between courses. The house was filthy but Madame cooked all day and the food was fabulous. The French children in the family had a sort of Swallows and Amazon childhood which mine really enjoyed visiting.

BInteresred
Yes my great uncle also had his bread and milk in a pudding basin I can see it now.

Great uncle was not from Liverpool but Bristol (another west coast port city) but I suspect it was widespread.

Wanderings
Yes we had a coal door into a shed which had an internal door into the kitchen. The house had been destroyed by a bomb in the blitz and had been rebuilt with this modcon! There was always coal dust all over the floor in that corner!

Bread and milk is 'pons'

Pobs even !

I had a new friend at school when I was around 13. The rumour was she and her family ate roadkill. So I jumped at the chance when she invited me round because I always have been a nosey cow.

Everything was disappointingly normal. She was showing me round and we went into the back garden, where there was a MASSIVE snake laying in the grass. She rolled up here sleeves, seized the snake my the tail and lassoed it round her head like a bloody cowgirl before launching it into a field over the fence she said nothing and just carried on.

She then showed me the freezer in the shed which was full of various deceased woodland creatures needless to say I didn't go back and I think the snake got off lightly ...

To those who are shocked at the use of china potties... you only have to go back to the late 70s (or beyond) when I worked on an inner urban renewal project in city areas where a large percentage of people had only outmoded toilets. Needless to say they also had no heating except an open fire or gas fire. Remember this was about 1978.

Until fairly recently, most houses were unheated and had only one lavatory, often outside, or downstairs so it was the norm for there to be china pot under each bed which was emptied in the morning. In my home in the 50s & 60s we had this arrangement, there was one loo down the corridor but when there is ice on the inside of the windows it's a long way at night! In the mid 60s we moved to a new build with rudimentary heating and a bathroom near the bedrooms and - such a luxury - a downstairs loo!

I was a teenager between 18-19 so not a child per se when I visited the home of my friends boyfriend. There was a big group of us, we had been to the pub and decided to play on an Xbox or something. It was well known that friends boyfriends dad had a very senior job on the NHS and was well paid, the house was huge. Friends boyfriend opened the front door and the entire group had to climb over actual piles of mail/clothes/broken furniture/toys/ski equipment to get through the front door. The living rooms were all the same and we had to pick a pile of stuff to sit on which was precarious as they weren’t stable and three of us fell down with mounds of stuff. The kitchen was huge but the frankly impressive amount of rubbish/dirty plates/mouldy containers etc made it impossible to find even the toaster. We were all invited to sleep on the floor but every square inch was covered and piled high with belongings and rubbish so I didn’t. I was thoroughly impressed.

Oh yes, I remember the coalman coming (1960s Yorkshire dales). We had a coal shute (shoot?) in the front yard covered with a metal man hole cover. It was my job to count the bags as each one was emptied down the shute. 40 bags to last the winter. My dad was paranoid that he'd be sold short, hence the counting.

I was born in 1966 and remember the rag and bone man and having coal delivered also from a wagon pulled by a horse when I was very tiny. We didn't have central heating til I was in my late teens, just an open fire and later a gas fire downstairs. And a portable parrafin heater in the bathroom. My Dad would light it on a Saturday night in winter before we kids went up for baths. I was youngest so got to go first. If I smell parrafin now it takes me right back to my childhood.
Ice inside the windows in the winter wasn't uncommon and I used to lie my clothes out at the bottom of the bed at night, then in the morning pull them inside and get dressed under the blankets. No duvet then either - sheets, a couple of wool blankets and then an eiderdown in winter. Our boiler broke down recently and we were without heating for a few days. My kids wouldn't believe me when I explained that this was absolutely normal when I was growing up!

My grandparents had chamber pots under their beds in the 70s and maybe even 80s. They had indoor toilets by then but used the pot at night.