I used to think the comment “do you remember when” and “back in the day” was exclusively the province of the elderly. Thinking back, “I can remember when” as relatively young men we used to reminisce about days gone by. I find when talking to friends, we will often dredge up events and people from the past. I can actually remember when crisps actually had a blue paper twist in them containing salt , not a sachet, but a bit of twisted blue paper. I even remember my very first packet and coming across this contrivance, having to be shown what to do. Untwist, shake the bag, of course with the level of motor control of a very small child, this usually ended badly. Within a very short period they changed to “ready salted”…and innovation, then came flavours, starting with salt and Vinegar…which I swear tasted better than todays artificial version. Or perhaps you remember the time when gas cookers had a pilot flame (permanently on) in the centre and a little gas wand on a tube (clipped to the side of the cooker) with a button. You lit the wand from the pilot and then used it to light the oven or overhead grill. Incredibly dangerous, especially as it was coal gas, but no one thought anything of it. As a small child I wasn’t allowed to touch the gas wand…My mum had a Parkinson Cowan like this, right up to about 1975,

God, this thread is made up for old timers! I can remember when a Mars Bar was 2d and you needed two hands to hold it. The chocolate was soooooooo thick! My neighbour (I was around 4 or 5) used an Isetta Bubble Car for her everyday drive. In winter, you woke up (pre central heating) to chipping ice from the inside of thesingle glazed windows and you wore jumpers indoors. You ran downstairs when it snowed to find the bloody Blue Tits had pecked through the silver top milk bottles and had stolen the inch or so of cream that used to settle on the top. I remember watching the first episode of a new cutting edge drama, Z Cars…….I could go one and on! Tell you one thing though, life was simpler but were they really the good old days?

dfk41 Definitely remember the ice on the inside of the windows and as a kid dragging my cloths into the bed to warm them up. Big old cottage with no central heating brrrrrrrrr.

Do you remember Spangles? When Curly Wurlys were massive, you could use them for a ladder. Bri Nylon shirts. Nylon bed sheets! Some shops still had Lamson pneumatic tube systems that would shuttle away your payment and bring back your change.

Gagaryn Do you remember Spangles? Bri Nylon shirts. Nylon bed sheets! 3.Some shops still had Lamson pneumatic tube systems that would shuttle away your payment and bring back your change. Spangles, yes..my favourite sweet, I like the old english ones too, but only certain flavours…the red one was to die for.. Mum thought it was a brilliant idea for school, I hated them. I think it was the stain resistance and one shake they were dry. Remember the little blue sparks that came off them in a dark room in the morning. Nope, I refused to sleep in those…absolutely refused…used to make me itch like mad all night Bentalls used to have those back in the day, always fascinated me as a kid. Shluwooop, pshhhhh. I always wondered where they went and they used to come back with the recpt as well I think. We had another shop near us, Digbys general store, like something out of 1920…used a system of wires, The stuff was put in a tube on the wires, then a sharp pull on a handle, and it went flying across the roof of the store. Those cheap bastards kept the store the same and the system going until the mid 60s..open sacks of flour, beans, tea in large cases, butter pats etc.. Can you imagine how well that would have all gone down now.

Gagaryn If ever you go to Beamish Museum, my friend provided the tube system they use in the shop. To carry on, card with starter handles although by my time they were more of a standby than actually needed on the modern car. Telephone kiosks with the old A & B system for putting your money in (ask your parents!), bus conductors!

Sharing your phone line with the neighbors “party line” I think it was called. Picked the phone up and you caught half their conversation - nuts!

Lake_M Sharing your phone line with the neighbors “party line” I think it was called. Picked the phone up and you caught half their conversation - nuts! As a kid my parents had one…It always puzzled me how both phones didn’t ring when an inbound call came in, and it was only years later I found out how they did it.

Down Memory Lane

dfk41

DavecUK Share then

DavecUK

dfk41 Share then

fotr the phone is was tip and root earthing of the phone to the ring wire and the exchange could decide which one to make ring by earthing the exchange end for the ring signal of one hpne, vs sending it down the line for the other. very clever really. But you could only hold one conversation at a time.because you both shared the connection to the “linefinder”, as they were all on old Strowger electromechanical exchanges.

Hotmetal Anyone remember those ‘chocolate vending machine’ piggy banks where you loaded them with Neapolitan sized chocolates and had to put a coin in to get one out?

yes, always wanted one, never got one….I think they might still make something similar.

Pompeyexile

Does anyone remember these…. Once a month a man would come round and empty it and if there was more than what the monthly payment was, my mum would get back what was over. It was the only way we could afford to have a telly. Mind you, it was a bit frustrating when you’d be watching a really good programme and the chuffin thing would click off because the timer ran out, and mum and my older brothers would be scrambling around to quickly find a two shilling piece (two bob bit) to put in it.

Hotmetal

We had a telly like that but mercifully without the prototype pay per view box!

Old English flavour Spangles were the best boiled sweets ever. Nobody ever knew what actual flavours they were but they were the best variation of Spangles for sure. I liked the light brown opaque one and the deep red translucent one best but they were all nice.

I had a ‘piggy bank’ from Lloyds that was a black plastic horse head.

Anyone remember those ‘chocolate vending machine’ piggy banks where you loaded them with Neapolitan sized chocolates and had to put a coin in to get one out?

Flat_Eric

When I started school I used a slate and slate stick to learn my letters on. The school had a set of BIC biros locked away in a cupboard, you got to use one of these for the day if you had done particularly well in something, but it had to be handed back to the teacher at the end of the day. My first school also had a coal monitor who’s job it was to bring coal in from the bunker every morning.

-Mac

Spangles/Texan bars/Mars bars in waxed paper wrappers
KP Wickers/The KP friars
Eye level grills on cookers
Vinyl car seats that would give you second degree burns on summer days
Nat West piggies
Mousetrap/Kerplunk/Buckaroo/Evel Knievel/Big Trak if you were rich/ Atari with wooden sides/TV games
Budgie/Tomahawk/Chopper/Grifter/5 speed racer/Burner
Brotherhood of Man/Lene Lovich/Baron Knights/Adam and the Ants
Panda Pops/deposits on glass bottles

Lake_M

-Mac

“Vinyl car seats that would give you second degree burns on summer days”

Haha yes - Red Hillman Avenger “Sport” with black vinyl roof and black vinyl seats. Air con?,,,,,Ha! It had a horizontal speedo that juddered a lot - you could be doing 30, 40 or 50 mph you had to take the average!

-Mac

Teachers smoking pipes in class

JonC

I remember my grandad having a washing machine with a powered mangle above, all the grandkids were warned it was the most lethal thing in the house and would rip your arm off. I was born mid 70s, grew up in a house with no telephone, a black and white TV that had to be hidden from licensing, no central heating and it was ****** freezing in winter. Think my parents got their first car early 90s, telephone about the same time.

Uncletits

How about an 8 hours drive to Woolacombe in the Ford Anglia!

DavecUK

This thread is bringing back memories of so many things I thought I had forgotten!

CafeNoir

DavecUK Oh dear lord, you called that right….B&W tv with a single channel that came on at 5pm and off again at 11.30pm (NZ), Aniseed balls, wine gums 4 for a penny, that pneumatic tube system in department stores, the first car of Dads I can remember was a Vauxhall 14, then a Vanguard (big leap forward, lol), the neighbours had a “Beverley Hillbillies” style Model A Ford - way before the tv show - as their only car… and yes, eye level gas grills, heck yes. Mum had a Ford Popular as a second car…the post War model, lol.

Thinking about how naff it was that people would pay to see Elvis’s car when it was on tour - just the car, mind.

My first motorcycle was a 1949 Matchless 500 single, thought I was Christmas. You’ve unleashed a veritable torrent of memories, lol.

Playing Beatles records on Dad’s suss little portable record player with the speaker in the lid - and Beatles wigs, lol

Hotmetal

OK we never had a Ford Anglia thankfully but we did have a Triumph Herald. That had leg burner seats IIRC and of course as a nipper in the 70s had to wear shorts to school, remember hating the summer for getting picked up in the car.

The caretaker at our school had an Anglia, with its wrong way round rear windscreen. The headmaster had a DAF Variomatic belt drive car that AFAIK basically had the same transmission as the pillar drills in woodwork room!

BBC Micro. We were lucky, had the “model B” which had 32kB (yes kids, kilobytes not gigabytes). My dad hoped I would learn programming but I just copied the BASIC for games like Asteroids, Space Invaders, Scramble and Defender. After hours of typing you had to save it to a C15 cassette tape. Saved the C60s and C90s for taping songs off John Peel on the radio.

DavecUK

Hotmetal BBC Micro. We were lucky, had the “model B” which had 32kB (yes kids, kilobytes not gigabytes). My dad hoped I would learn programming but I just copied the BASIC for games like Asteroids, Space Invaders, Scramble and Defender. After hours of typing you had to save it to a C15 cassette tape. Saved the C60s and C90s for taping songs off John Peel on the radio.

rrrrrrr, eeeeee, rrrrschhrrr, chrrrss. wheee, boing

I do remember, I couldn’t afford a BBC, but I had a Spectrum 48K. I think I threw it out many years ago, but might be in the eaves storage?

Norvin

DavecUK

48K? Luxury, I used to dream of 48K, I had to make do with the 16k version.

I had a friend that worked in a London Poly as a programmer. I used to go in with him on Saturdays and he would sit me in front of a terminal so that I could play Adventure! That would be about 1978. I’m not even sure that there was a screen, played via keyboard and printout. I used to come home with reams of print out. I later got to play it on the Spectrum at home and thought that was bloody brilliant. I must have been a very early gamer.

Rob666

DavecUK My first computer was a second hand ITT2020, the UK version of an Apple II. I had a spectrum - briefly and sold it very quickly. Also had a BBC B thanks to a staff purchase scheme. Never got on with it. Next came an Atari 1040 which was used a lot. A Mac Plus followed and then a Mac IIF which I sold for roughly what I paid for it. From then on it was PCs all the way starting with a Gateway tower, which is still in the loft somewhere…

Hotmetal

DavecUK rrrrrrr, eeeeee, rrrrschhrrr, chrrrss. wheee, boing

You win the Internet for best impression of early data storage and transmission sounds. Definitely nailed it! Like when you dial a fax machine number. The worst thing was, if you turned it down it didn’t work. That was when data speed was measured in baud, 1 baud was 1 bit per second for a binary signal IIRC.

I remember burning my finger on one of those little always-on pilot lights on a gas stove as a kid.

Eye level grill was what we had where I lodged (and made my first ‘espresso’) until I moved into my own house. I remember the landlady’s son coming home from the pub and making a bacon sandwich before passing out. I was asleep on the 2nd floor and was woken up by smoke. Went to the kitchen, he was unconscious on the table. Eye level grill full inferno! I could not rouse him so I put him in the garden for air and left a note saying “I’ve saved our bacon, yours was too far gone” and went back to bed.

Elcarajillo

DavecUK They could be extremely lethal, many years ago I would go from work, get something going for my evening meal (tea or dinner ?) in this case a chicken curry, have a shower while it cooked. On this occasion I came from the shower in just jeans, drained the rice (thinks) put it on a plate in the oven to keep warm.

Opened the oven door–to a huge bang& flash and the smell of burnt pig and singed hair, I was also covered with embed rice.!!!! ***. The pilot was alight but the burner wasn’t= coalgas +air =😵.

It had removed the hair from my chest, arms and eyebrows ,fortunately no real burns. Just some clearing up🤗

Pompeyexile

Remember the Austin 1100 with the speedo that was a red strip? That was my first car.

I also had a Wolsley Hornet which I had to bump start every time come rain or shine, because there was a tooth broken off the starter ring

….I now drive a e-niro all electric…..Oh how times have changed.

My first bike had hard tyres which in the summer freewheeling down the steep Portsdown Hill road made them smoke. My favourite toy was a Johhny Astro…

Oh, and born at home in Portsmouth for the first 6 years of my life, we only had an outside loo in the back yard and when at that age you are scared of spiders and of the dark, you learned to hold it in… a lot!

Elcarajillo

Pompeyexile I had the MG version, bloody rot box, you had to be careful when you jacked it up in case

the cill gave way and went into the door. Had to replace cill’s , subframe and heel board on mine amongst other items.

CafeNoir

Pompeyexile Oh dear lawd, talk about a blast from the past!! My first car too….1967 model IIRC, knocking CV joints and all

Dumnorix

I remember a road trip to Italy in the 80s in my dad’s Morris Marina- it was sprayed 3 different shades of orange. We were going through the Gotthard tunnel in Switzerland-I believe one of Europe’s longest road tunnels- and the temperature gauge was getting closer and closer to the red. No sooner were we out the other end than my dad pulled over and there was a spectacular radiator eruption. The car finally died in Lugano on the Swiss/ Italian border- right next to the forecourt of an AA approved garage!

DavecUK

Dumnorix I remember a road trip to Italy in the 80s in my dad’s Morris Marina-

Wow, I didn’t think they could go that far without a problem….they were British built you know….and I am sure owned by the great British Leyland at that time….a truly wonderful company!

Lefteye

Dumnorix my dad had a marina too. Brown. Leatherette retractable sunroof that leaked a bit I seem to remember. Also lovely velour seats. I remember he upgraded the car aerial to a remote one with a switch he’d wired into the dash. Took about 2 minutes for the aerial to go up and down.