What do you remember- seems impossible now

[LizzieW]

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

We didn't even have that, our teachers had a blackboard and easel, which they cleaned with a brick shaped board cleaner.  One teacher used to lob it at the boys when they misbehaved.  Everyone thought it quite funny, nowadays the poor teacher would be hauled in front of a court for child abuse.

Can you still remember your old telephone number?

Altrincham 1072.  It must have been about 1946, we had a shop so the telephone company had to ask my mother's permission to change our line into a party line.  I think she got a reduced rent for agreeing.  Next one when we moved into our first house in 1954 was Ringway 3050.  Funny, I can't remember the telephone number we had 2000-2005 in our last house

And my Dad sending me to the shop to get his tobacco for him (I was about 10 years old at the time - it wouldn't work now).

I used to get them from the off-licence when I was about 10 (for my parents, I don't and never have smoked).  Imagine a 10 year old going into an off-licence where drink was available and buying cigarettes and no-one thinking it was anything but normal.

Top of the list of things I wish we'd had when I was young, has to be a mobile phone.  Imagine being able to ring or receive a call from, a boyfriend without your parents listening in on an extension.  Or getting a text rather than a letter which your mother had already opened when you got home from school/work.  When I'm out and about the people I envy most are the young, not because of their youth necessarily, but all the opportunities they have today for education and travel.

Lizzie

[Jean McGurn]

How about at school using the school pens which were a metal nib on a long piece of wood and you dipped it in the ink well? Was always a hassle to get a pen that hadn't got a bent nib

Also when lering to write using the books that were full of close lines - bit like music score without the musical pieces - and lines and lines of the same letters until you could do them without the lines. I can even remember sitting at the kitchen table having to practice when all I wanted to do was go and play outside.  

Jean

[millymcb]

We used to get sent to the shop for "mum's cigarettes" when we were very young too.  

The thing I hated most though was having to go to the corner shop for potatoes.  They were kept in a big Tack and we had to rummage around to find ones all the right size. They were always dirty and sometimes there would be a mushy smelly one in there. Yeuch. I suppose its all the rage now and would probably be called organic and twice the price

And that has just reminded me - in the early 70s we also used to get sent to "town" to go the British Home Stores to buy Grandma's bacon and cheese. It was the only place she would buy it from.  She always had crumbly white Leicester cheese - and by the time we got home we would usually have eaten half of it!   They don't have a deli counter at BHS any more - it would seem a very odd place to buy bacon and cheese from these days
 
Milly

[LizzieW]

Oh yes, I remember those pens, Jean, I was always in trouble for getting ink blots all over my work and ink on my fingers.

Lizzie

[millymcb]

Also when lering to write using the books that were full of close lines - bit like music score without the musical pieces - and lines and lines of the same letters until you could do them without the lines. I can even remember sitting at the kitchen table having to practice when all I wanted to do was go and play outside.  

Jean

We used to have that too.  And my writing was always so terrible my mother used to make me copy out poems every day.  can't imagine getting a child to sit and do that these days.  Not that it seems to have done much for my handdwriting of course

Milly

[Deb D]

My OH grew up on a dairy farm on the mid-north coast of NSW ... they used to get bread deliveries, in a special box or container (an old milk churn, perhaps) mounted next to the letterbox, and it was OH's job to ride his bike to the gate and retrieve the bread.

The loaves were the old-fashioned double ones ... many's the time OH's mother went to cut into a "fresh" loaf, only to discover that the two crowns of the loaf had been carefully separated, and the still-warm bread had vanished from inside.  All that was left of the middle of the loaf ... was the crust!

[cosmos]

Must have been 1987. Went with Dad one morning on the bus from Angmering to his solicitor in Rustington (both of these in W.Sussex). Got back about 2:00.The solicitor's letter comfirming letter was on the mat! And I dont think the post man was on the bus.

[meles]

Loose biscuits in large tin boxes, which were weighed out into a paper bag.

Mike.

And broken biscuits much cheaper!

meles

[meles]

In the haberdashery department of our local Coop, you gave the sales assistant the money and they put it into a small cylinder with the sales chitty and then put the cylinder into a pipe.  Compressed air took the cylinder to an upstairs office (I presume) where some clerk put the correct change into the cylinder and sent it back down to the sales assistant who then gave it to the customer.  This system made a lot of hissing and popping noises as you can imagine and as a 6 year old, I was fascinated.  I was really disappointed when they dismantled it     

This seems such a bizare system, I have wondered if I have imagined it, but I'm sure it really existed - and our divvy number was 125042

Remember that sooo well.

Dad insisted I spent my pocket money at the Co-op, so we got the divi.

Many years later, I had to arrange his funeral. All things settled, the lady asked, "This is a little embarrassing, but are you members?" "Of what?", I asked, confused. "The Co-op", she replied, "we are Co-op undertakers." I could still remember the number after all those years of training.

So Dad got his divi for his own funeral. He would have been delighted! 

meles