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Everyday things from back in the day that seem really weird now

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  • MrOneLung
    MrOneLung Posts: 26,849
    Kids queuing up to touch the hair of the (only) little black boy in our primary school. Still remember his name, Timmy and can picture his face. This was early 90’s in Maidstone but it was like he was an alien. Crazy!!

    Videoplus. Blank vhs tapes. Still remember accidentally taping over Diana’s funeral with the spice girl concert at the brits (Geri Union Jack dress) and being mortified at how I’d explain away a clear wank bank attempt to my parents.

    Kids having water fights in the street (super soakers), playing curby, skateboard races, climbing trees. 

    Teachers fighting pupils.

    Huge fights between local schools? Do they still happen? All word of mouth organisation then.

    Gazetta Sat am and Sun pm

    Newspapers a day behind on holiday. My mate collating all the transfer news whilst I was away.

    Cap guns.

    Effectively looking at porn with out IT teacher after school when the internet was not long out.
    Schools in Kent were pretty wild. 😕
    It's where Borstal was invented. The Organiser sounds like the star pupil.
    At Dartford Grammar we always used to get rumours of Picardy school (Belvedere?) are coming down after school for a fight. 
  • Fanny Fanackapan
    Fanny Fanackapan Posts: 18,737
    MrOneLung said:
    Kids queuing up to touch the hair of the (only) little black boy in our primary school. Still remember his name, Timmy and can picture his face. This was early 90’s in Maidstone but it was like he was an alien. Crazy!!

    Videoplus. Blank vhs tapes. Still remember accidentally taping over Diana’s funeral with the spice girl concert at the brits (Geri Union Jack dress) and being mortified at how I’d explain away a clear wank bank attempt to my parents.

    Kids having water fights in the street (super soakers), playing curby, skateboard races, climbing trees. 

    Teachers fighting pupils.

    Huge fights between local schools? Do they still happen? All word of mouth organisation then.

    Gazetta Sat am and Sun pm

    Newspapers a day behind on holiday. My mate collating all the transfer news whilst I was away.

    Cap guns.

    Effectively looking at porn with out IT teacher after school when the internet was not long out.
    Schools in Kent were pretty wild. 😕
    It's where Borstal was invented. The Organiser sounds like the star pupil.
    At Dartford Grammar we always used to get rumours of Picardy school (Belvedere?) are coming down after school for a fight. 
    And that was just the girls ! 
  • Stig
    Stig Posts: 29,022
    IdleHans said:
    Sing Something Simple on Sunday evening radio. Utterly awful but my parents insisted on it.
    Good shout. I absolutely loathed this. It was worse on a day when we'd gone on a shopping trip into town (something else I never much cared for) because that programme would last all the way back and I'd be imprisoned in the car with no chance of escape. I hated Cliff Adams with a passion. 
  • Stig
    Stig Posts: 29,022
    'A Roads' that were almost entirely single carriage ways and frequently took winding routes through urban areas. The one that sticks in my mind is the old A13 at Thurrock that winds its way past the Circus Tavern.
  • Stig
    Stig Posts: 29,022
    Charlie Chester's radio programme that was a bit like Swap Shop but for adults to get or give away normal household stuff. 'Someone in Lancaster has a chair to give away, whilst Mike in Maidstone is trying to find a copy of Clement Atlee's wartime diary'. I can’t imagine this format would make the poorest of local stations now, but back then it was peak programming on Radio 2. I guess it's a sad commentary on how poor people were and how difficult it was to obtain stuff.
  • JohnfromNorfolk
    JohnfromNorfolk Posts: 1,324
    Peter Brough with his dummy Archie Andrews the ventriloquist on the radio. 
  • seth plum
    seth plum Posts: 53,448
    The light programme, the third programme and the home service.
  • McBobbin
    McBobbin Posts: 12,051
    Peter Brough with his dummy Archie Andrews the ventriloquist on the radio. 
    Remember something about him appearing on the TV and it being realised he couldn't actually do it
  • SoundAsa£
    SoundAsa£ Posts: 22,477
    Peter Brough with his dummy Archie Andrews the ventriloquist on the radio. 
    Another Cockney rhyming slang name used for not feeling well…….”I’m feeling a bit Peter Brough.”
  • cafcfan
    cafcfan Posts: 11,198
    Cafc43v3r said:

    This made me laugh out load as it reminded me of a strange incident many years ago.

    I went to this house to get some witness statements written and signed off. When I arrived I was shown into this room with the most enormously deep pink shagpile carpet I had ever seen. I walked over to a sofa and sat down. I noticed that I had left a trail of deep footprints in the carpet. But strangely the woman sitting on another sofa opposite me had no footprints leading across to her. 

    But then I found out why, out came the carpet rake and all my footprints were carefully removed as the rake operator gradually reversed away to the hall door. 

    Everything in the room was pink. Including this weird telephone with giant-sized numbers. I needed to make a telephone call and the battery in my Motorola brick had died, so I asked if I could use their phone. I was told, yes but the pink one didn't work it was just for show. I could use the one in the hall. So out I went leaving more footprints in the ridiculous carpet. Before I returned my footprints had gone. 

    This went on all evening, I was given a cup of coffee and, yes, the footprints had to be removed again with said rake. It really was a bizarre evening.
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  • Greenhithe
    Greenhithe Posts: 778
    Hal1x said:
    We had a knife sharpening bloke come round who'd operate from his van - knives, scissors, shears, tools - he was quite popular.

    Also the French onion man on his bike.  
    I lived in Bean, and as a child we had a veg lorry come round, a bakers lorry, grocery lorry (sweeties!), mobile fish and chips and on a friday a Corona fizzy pop lorry.

    We also had someone selling charity lottery tickets made of thick paper, with perforations around the edge, which you had to tear around to open and see if you had won.
    Grocery Lorry?  Not Gerry’s van?  A removal lorry you go into the back of ?  I’m from Greenhithe it must be surely?
  • Badger
    Badger Posts: 4,842
    Making a payment by cheque.
  • Indoor fireworks
  • cafcnick1992
    cafcnick1992 Posts: 7,413
    Pulling out the choke
    Thankfully my truck has an electric choke. 
  • Oliver Street
    Oliver Street Posts: 5,132
    edited June 2023
    Buying potassium nitrate and sulphur from Cuffs department store for my chemistry set.

    Thriving department stores in Woolwich.
  • Cinemas in Woolwich
  • Hal1x
    Hal1x Posts: 4,265
    Buying potassium nitrate and sulphur from Cuffs department store for my chemistry set.

    Thriving department stores in Woolwich.
    Department Stores in general.
  • SporadicAddick
    SporadicAddick Posts: 6,855
    Woolwich
  • I can can remember collecting bubble gum cards as a primary school kid in the 1960’s. There were series based on the American Civil War and WW2. Having just looked them up on the internet I am reminded of how bloodthirsty and violent they were. 
    Also one of the petrol companies gave away free with every purchase a sealed pack with half a facsimile note of the realm. If you matched up both sides of the note you got the money back. Normally it was a ten shilling note. 
  • Turkish and Russian Vapour Baths, Plumstead High Street.
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  • paulbaconsarnie
    paulbaconsarnie Posts: 9,423
    Not an everyday thing but I could never understand why the bbc shipping forecast interrupted the test match commentary.
    Just how many captain birdseyes did the bbc think were cricket fans.
  • BR7_addick
    BR7_addick Posts: 10,210
    “And if you don’t want to know the scores from todays matches, look away now”
  • iaitch
    iaitch Posts: 10,228
    edited June 2023
    I can can remember collecting bubble gum cards as a primary school kid in the 1960’s. There were series based on the American Civil War and WW2. Having just looked them up on the internet I am reminded of how bloodthirsty and violent they were. 
    Also one of the petrol companies gave away free with every purchase a sealed pack with half a facsimile note of the realm. If you matched up both sides of the note you got the money back. Normally it was a ten shilling note. 
    Not forgetting Man from UNCLE cards, when you laid them out you had a picture of Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuriakin (sp) on the reverse.

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313572252127?hash=item49025cd9df:g:5lQAAOSw2Hxgzfa5&amdata=enc:AQAIAAAA8AVo3yjVNmuV8/KqzGFG7pYW0hRs1ibyZlbO9kQNVUEyCUIV7WX0SgpvmZJbwmFVu/ErgEdAQizRI1oHhSdwkPCjaQ/gmGbM4b8mzsGweKKagQJgfu3NGAbDAnqFNDbvW+W2wcB+9dbZNTTe4dZ1gqN6DC9HSFN2FSgabR2y0MwKaKuoSbF4Iel1s/HjFCZv9f6OrfvxL2te9i+TLI6cEaY7q0o1CQc6rvtz7bIK3/ioN8bA5HldoqSBhiIuRGpXWxIiyptgZkwZQNDmtiSRR42BtryAmF4Oqn6U179nwQ+Kg6A/EfupsiOQV44J/p+5YA==|tkp:Bk9SR8ajgu2OYg
  • Valiantphil
    Valiantphil Posts: 6,410
    Being put on a bus by an adult who would ask the conductor to put me off at a certain stop, where another adult would then meet me, or I would walk. 
  • Saturday morning pictures.
  • Stuart_the_Red
    Stuart_the_Red Posts: 1,850
    Those war comics called Combat, etc.
  • fadgadget
    fadgadget Posts: 1,391
    edited June 2023
    Those war comics called Combat, etc.
    You can still get them .
    https://www.commandocomics.com/
  • fadgadget
    fadgadget Posts: 1,391
    White Dog Poo
  • Stuart_the_Red
    Stuart_the_Red Posts: 1,850
    fadgadget said:
    Those war comics called Combat, etc.
    You can still get them .
    https://www.commandocomics.com/
    Didn’t know that, thanks!
  • Hal1x
    Hal1x Posts: 4,265
    edited June 2023
    T_C_E said:
    Women scrubbing the porch - seemed to carry a lot of importance years ago.
    Still does on the special channels 😉

    the hand wash car cleaners round my way don't quite look like this, :/