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Original poster

Why do older people always...

129 replies

UnquietDad · 01/12/2006 13:43

... go on about the fact that they had no central heating and no washing-machine, and "we certainly didn't have a car until we were 35, and do you know, a LOT of people weren't on the PHONE" etc, ad nauseam, ad infinitum, yakka yakka yakka.

I think it's to make us feel guilty that DW and I both work, and a hint that if we were prepared to give up these 'luxuries' we could live on one income. Oh, ho ho bleeding ho. Merry Christmas.

OP posts:
cat64 · 01/12/2006 22:28

This reply has been deleted

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hatwoman · 01/12/2006 22:28

god I do it all the time to dd. I told her that when dh and I were kids there was no tv during the day. and only 3 channels. not entirely sure she believed me. I tell her that I'd barely used a computer when I left university. and I huff at all the students at the university across the road from our house arriving in cars. CARS ffs. what's wrong with a bike? My favourite example is that when I was in univeristy accommodation I had to go down 2 flights of stairs outside, across a yard and into a different building to the nearest loo and shower.

UQD - I think it's a good example of how subjective measures of wealth are - how poverty and wealth changes and only makes sense measured in terms of your surroundings and your contemporaries.

Original poster
UnquietDad · 01/12/2006 22:31

I remember queuing for the phone booths at university, and buying phonecards from the porters. If you mentioned that to any 18-year-old today, they'd probably look at you as if you were mad.

So I HAVE turned into my dad.

OP posts:
hatwoman · 01/12/2006 22:32

UQD - you are confusing me. Bagpuss was orange. It's only when they started trying to sell fluffy ones that he became pink. no? I am right the manufacturers of modern fluffy bagpusses are wrong

motherinfurrierfestivefrock · 01/12/2006 22:33

I remember when phone cards were a novelty. In my university days we fumbled for coins. So to speak.

hatwoman · 01/12/2006 22:33

ooo phone cards - what a great excuse for only calling home twice a term. can you imagine it now? your mum'd be on the phone every other day. what a nightmare.

Original poster
UnquietDad · 01/12/2006 22:33

hatwoman - original Bagpuss

OP posts:
hatwoman · 01/12/2006 22:34

noooooooooooooo. my world is crumbling. this cannot be right.

motherinfurrierfestivefrock · 01/12/2006 22:34

I went totally AWOL from my parents in my second year - gave them a number they could contact me on, and that was that. Ah, those were the days.

Mercy · 01/12/2006 22:36

Mrs JC, where are you in NZ roughly?

Original poster
UnquietDad · 01/12/2006 22:37

The new ones are slightly brighter pink.
But he was definitely always pink.

OP posts:
expatinscotland · 01/12/2006 22:38

It was much easier to hide from your folks when I first went to university (1989), b/c you couldn't even get call forwarding.

You just got the roommate to lie and say you were at the library studying when really you were spending the night at your postgrad boyfriend's, who has his own flat.

edam · 01/12/2006 22:43

did anyone else who grew up without central heating perfect the trick of getting dressed before you got out of bed? My mother made me try it when we had no heating one winter. Not easy at all!

I think central heating killed off Jack Frost - because you don't get ice patterns on the inside of your windows any more.

expatinscotland · 01/12/2006 22:44

I grew up in places where you slept w/no covering most of the year b/c it was so bloody hot and humid.

Marina · 01/12/2006 22:47

Definitely edam. I had thick ice on the inside of my window a few times every winter (we had a Parkray stove with back boiler in the sitting room, and a free-standing Paraffin stove in rhe bathroom until I was 15). I could even tie my tie for school under the quilt.
Am PMSL at batters' dd, a career in the diplomatic service beckons. And like others on here, happy memories of dodging your parents quite legitimately for up to 14 days before they rang the Warden's home phone off the hook

hatwoman · 01/12/2006 22:47

iirc we had central heating, but it never seemed to get turned on. we slept in bed socks and several layers, plus extra blankets and it was brassic in the mornings. but I know there was heating because my mum talks about the first time they had it whihc was before I was born.

WigWamBam · 01/12/2006 22:49

Hatwoman, apparently Bagpuss was originally meant to be orange, and Oliver Postgate's wife (who made him) ordered orange striped fur to make him with ... but they sent the wrong colour, there wasn't enough time to reorder, so she used the pink and white that had been sent by mistake.

He's always been pink ... but shouldn't have been!

(A completely useless factoid there ...)

Marina · 01/12/2006 22:51

That is just such an Oliver Postgate thing to happen WWB! I wonder if Mrs P knitted the Clangers too. Have you read his autobiography? Dh says it is brilliant - the life of a truly eccentric genius

WigWamBam · 01/12/2006 22:52

Yes, apparently she knitted the Clangers too.

I haven't read his autobiography - but he was definitely a very eccentric man!

MrsJohnCuSackFullOfPresents · 01/12/2006 22:52

Mercy, I am in Christchurch

you know, we had friends to stay the other night and we sat there comparing stories of when we were young and how our parents would run the bath so that we could scuttle straight into it from bed, and how they'd warm our clothes on radiators (In our house, the floor we kids slept on had no central heating for years and a dodgy roof, whereas my parents' was). Also how we only got email in our last year of our degrees and it was really basic, and having to suddenly use computers in our last year, and phone cards, &c &c. honestly, I'm only 32. DD is going to HATE us in a few years!

WigWamBam · 01/12/2006 22:53

No, I'm wrong; apparently the Clangers were knitted by Peter Firmin's wife .

MrsJohnCuSackFullOfPresents · 01/12/2006 22:53

what a cool story WWB
I have a Bagpuss DVD but I can't watch it because it makes me weep - it's so nostalgic

expatinscotland · 01/12/2006 22:54

DH pronounces it 'BagPOOS'. Freaky Scotsman. They say 'u' so strangely.

Marina · 01/12/2006 22:56

Mrs JC, I can remember typing the first and only assignment I did for my postgraduate degree on a ghastly mainframe terminal, saving it to a 5.25" diskette and spooling it to a line printer in a basement somewhere else. The end result looked dreadful!
Everything else - handwritten. Including my dissertation . E-mail schme-mail, you don't know you were born etc young lady

edam · 01/12/2006 22:56

Personally I think Ivor the Engine was Postgate at his best but always seems to pass unmentioned whenever there's one of those 'classic kids' TV top 100' lists or 'creative gurus of children's tv' round-ups.

QI claimed the script for the Clangers included swearing and played a clip to prove they were whistling 'bugger it, the bloody door's stuck again'.

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