Silly things your mother did (lighthearted)

[RaraRachael]

Trying to lighten my current mood and started to think about things my mother did - and insisted that I do - as they were "the done thing" back in the day.

Turning the clothes inside out to put on the washing line in case a bird shat on them
Lining every shelf in your kitchen unit with patterned greaseproof paper
Stuffing the chicken and then sewing it up with a needle and thread

Suffice to say, I stopped these ridiculous traditions when i realised there was no valid purpose to them

My sister and I always had to wear an extra pair of knickers over our tights so that they wouldn't fall down.

I wasn't allowed to put mg freezing feet against the radiator on a cold day because I'd get chillblains

@Oreservoir my Gran, Mum and all Aunties used to insist no laundry New Year's Day or you would wash a member of your family away. Even now I can't do it, not because I believe it but because I know how upset they would be with me if they were still alive.

A lot of Mums and Grans obsessed with pneumonia!

You’d ‘catch pneumonia’ if you...

Walked around the house with bare feet.
Went out with wet hair.
Went to bed with wet hair.
Wore your coat indoors (you had to take it off inside to ‘get the benefit’ when you went out).

Making "splodge" which was everything left in the fridge stirfried on a cast iron griddle to use it up before the big shop.

Writing down all expenditure, "reconciling" it with bank statement, querying bank if any difference, even one or two pennies.

Saving pennies in an old Johnnie Walker whiskey bottle.

Washing foil to re-use.

Saving old terry nappies to use as cleaning clothes.

See also "rags" which were all our old clothes. They went in the rag basket and yes, of course included old pants.

Washing all floors with Dettol. I still do this periodically!

Calling things by slightly the wrong name - e.g. next door's dog was called Dylan and she referred to it persistently as "that Leroy" until it died (not as a result).

Claiming random things make her sick if she doesn't like them - "I hate Picasso. Makes my intestines feel funny."

Putting utterly random foods in otherwise normal meals, like recently serving a very nice roast with a plate of mini croissants on the side, or making proper tapas for my birthday meal with bread and dripping as one dish.

Shaking her bedsheets out the window "to get any bits out" every morning.

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I do the spaghetti thing.

I also remember an example from a boyfriend's Mum in my teens after staying over at a boyfriends parents. His Mum was really upset he hadn't decanted the milk into a jug at the breakfast table and had just plonked the milk bottle on the table. This was "common" apparently

I remember the fear that was instilled in you in case you did anything that would lead others to label you 'common'.

My gran used to call Thursdays “common sense” day - basically cos payday was a Friday so on Thursday you made the best of what you had left in

@JustNotFunAnymore

My aunt still answers the phone by saying her landline number. Which I always found weird as a kid because I knew what number it was, I'd just dialled it in!

That's still a good idea; if you ring 1234 and the person who answers says 4321, you can just say "sorry, wrong number" and hang up.

My DM doesn't have any of these weird quirks - my nan on the other hand did. I think.mum purposely doesn't have any because of that.
My nan ironed everything. Pants - socks - handkerchiefs - towels - sheets. She was in her 60s before relenting to a tumble dryer.
Whites HAD to go on a boil wash to keep them bright.
She always went through any small bins - like the kind you have in a bathroom or next to a desk - incase any of the screwed up paper in them was needed.
She cooked some pretty horrible dinners too. One of which consisted of cod boiled in milk. Not parsley sauce. Just milk. No seasoning or anything. She did that with boiled new potatoes and peas. It. Was. Vile. But she insisted it was good.

A hysterectomy was referred to as 'everything taken away', Overheard an old dear on the bus saying 'I had everything took away. I'm on my way to the doctors to see if I can have it all put back as I've just met this bloke'!

Regarding mums telling us to ask Mr Magpie about his wife.....

In today's Guardian magazine! 😂

Boiling fish in milk was an HE lesson for me in the 1990s!

@Miljea
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@Eleoura you must not swallow cherry pips, as they contain arsenic. The NHS poisons unit will confirm it.

My Mam irons everything, is horrified I do the bare minimum!

Has a drawer full of tea towels, a full cupboard of towels.

Always makes spaghetti bolognese with a tin of oxtail soup.

Calls a swede a turnip (genuinely didn't know they were separate vegetables until I was about 25).

Refers to Costa coffee as "costa-fortune tinkly laugh" so when we could meet for a coffee we would have to go to the Wetherspoons as they did refills...she would then always say "shall we just get a proper drink?"

Refers to the kids as "the bairns".

Wouldn't eat anything "foreign" for years but now loves chilli and Chinese...she even gets a chow mein now she's that brave!

Your mam's a Geordie then @Mammyloveswine !

@GreeboIsMySpiritAnimal

Your mam's a Geordie then *@Mammyloveswine* !

I expect so; my Mum was a Geordie, and said bairns, and called a turnip a swede and vice versa.

Haha yes @GreeboIsMySpiritAnimal and @sueelleker she sure is!

Same here!

Antibiotics became widely available mid 1940s. Before that, pneumonia (bacterial pneumonia can be developed after a cold or flu) was more often than not a death sentence. This would have been the case for many of these women's mothers, I would have thought. It's interesting to see where these ideas stem from.

Weird obsession with scissors. Hates knives. She'd slice bread with scissors if she could.

All (recycled for decades) Christmas wrapping paper had to be carefully snipped along the tape lines, smoothed out & put in a neat pile. So every family member would be issued a tiny pair of sewing scissors (kept in the Xmas decorations box & used for no other purpose) & we'd all sit there solemnly snipping away. Often it kept us peacefully occupied until the turkey was ready.

She also uses scissors to cut pizza (it's never a meal; it's one medium pizza snipped into a dozen slivers to serve as part of a buffet for a large family gathering).

She got given a proper pizza cutter once as a wine order freebie, & you'd have thought they'd sent her a live rattlesnake. I offered to take it off her hands - it was rather a nice one - & her response was 'You can't have that in the house with the children!'

Who incidentally are all hulking teenagers who routinely deploy all my kitchen knives to whip dinner...

Not my mum but a school friend’s mum wouldn’t let any of them sit on their beds in case germs transferred from their clothing.

@Mumisnotmyonlyname So true, my gran and my mum would always implore you to wear a vest and keep warm so you didn’t get pneumonia (newnaxy they called it)

My mother warned me not to put my mouth up to the tap to drink as her brother had done this and a worm had come down the tap and he'd swallowed it - hotly denied in later years.

We were told not to eat the cheap, nasty cooking chocolate as it was poisonous. It never occurred to me how it stopped becoming poisonous when used on cakes - again denied later on

We didn't have tuna because it was "inferior" to salmon, so instead of just chucking some tuna in a bowl with mayo we had to fiddle about removing skin and bones from her precious tinned salmon.

Inferior was one of her favourite words. I think she thought it made her sound grand

My mum would like to think she's some kind of lady of the manor... She always over pronounces any non British words that crop up in conversation in a totally forced ridiculous accent because I think she thinks it makes her look cultured. E.g croissant and Gabor (shoe make)... Used to make me die inside when I was younger.