What do you remember- seems impossible now

[stonechat]

I remember even on into the sixties there was a gas street light in Egham
The lamplighter came out ever evening, with a long stick with a hook, would pull a chain to start the gas
Can remember how but he light the lamp.

If you were to relate this to younger people today  they would think it couldn't have happened as late as the sixties!

What are your memories of old ways that lasted well into relatively recent times?

[Charlesworth]

A couple of years ago I was taking a class in which we were discussing the environment, and were talking about how old VCRs and DVDs were difficult to dispose of.  One of my students asked "how did you deal with it when you were a teenager?" And of course I had to tell her that DVDs hadn't been invented when I was a teenager, and that VCRs were a rare luxury - that not everybody had a TV in their bedroom!  The looks on their faces - disbelief/shock - is something I treasure to this day 

[Sandymc47]

The bain of my life when I was younger was having an outside toilet.  No bathroom and no bath.  I didnt have a inside bathroom and toilet until 1963.
From being a youngster a toilet was up the street and shared by about 6 other families.  My elder brother had to take my sister and I up the street with a torch in the Winter. People dont understand why I personally have to take a bath everynight due to the lack of a priviledge when younger. When they say kids nowadays dont know they are well off, I do as I certainly wasnt.

regards
Sandymc 

[mike175]

Distilled Water in a big glass Carboy packed in straw in a wire cage.
Milk in Churns, instead of tanker lorries.
Corn in 2cwt sacks (100kg), instead of bulk lorries.
Loose biscuits in large tin boxes, which were weighed out into a paper bag.

Also queueing up at each shop in the high street in turn on a Saturday morning, waiting to be served by the man behind the counter: Grocer, Baker, Dairy, Greengrocer, etc.

I wonder if some of the people who talk about the demise of the high street remember all that queueing

Mike.

[cuthie]

I remember when most houses had an upright piano, even although no one in the household played the piano.  I expect the instrument was handed down from one generation to another.
Cuthie

[Geoff-E]

They still have some gaslamps in Malvern
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/herefordandworcester/hi/people_and_places/newsid_9347000/9347187.stm

[Kim1980]

I use my 1996 mobile phone in history lessons - they think it is a brick and were very shocked that although I had one at sixteen, not everyone had one and we rarely sent text messages.

The fact that computers made a noise when connecting to the internet and you had to wait for what felt like hours for it to load.

We didn't use MS Word but a blue screened Word Perfect to type documents

We had a black and white TV in our kitchen as late as 1985.

My classroom had one of the giant chalk boards that you rolled round, no Interactive white boards or plastic white wipe-clean numbers.

We had one computer for the whole school when I was at primary school in the late 1980s, but no ever used it because a) it only had one program on it and b) none of the Teachers could use it.

If I wanted to talk to my friends privately (or more likely, a boy, secretly) on the phone, I would have to walk into town to the red phone box and put money in it to use the phone.

Having yo fast forward a cassette tape in order to rewind the other side because not all cassette players had rewind buttons.

I teach primary aged kids, so I have this conversation all the time. I'm only 31 but so much from my youth seems alien to them, especially anything to do with technology.

Kim

[candleflame]

We didn't get gas central heating till the mid 1970's and as my body is always cold it was absolute heaven! No more iced up windows on the inside. Telling our kids that, they just looked at us as if we lived in the dark ages, not realising how lucky they were.
My Mum who died in 2004 never had a modern style washing machine - she had one with a manual wringer on the top and when she couldn't manage to use that, she hand washed bedding in the sink- and she was 4 feet 9 and three quarters high!!!

[eadaoin]

We had a black and white TV in our kitchen as late as 1985.

We had one computer for the whole school when I was at primary school in the late 1980s, but no ever used it because a) it only had one program on it and b) none of the Teachers could use it.

Having yo fast forward a cassette tape in order to rewind the other side because not all cassette players had rewind buttons.

My one techie boast is that I've been computer literate since 1966!

BUT we bought our first B&W TV in 1985 and didn't have a colour one till into 1990s.

And both OH and I had Reel-to-Reel tape-recorders - his is still working! (oh, the awful sinking feeling if you dropped a reel and it unwound itself as it merrily rolled down the room)

And then my first car (I owned one-third of it) had little semaphore things as indicators - none of your flashy mod things that lit up. If they stuck, you had to bang them hard on the inside of the car ....

eadaoin