Good riddance! Things you don't see anymore, thank heavens!

Hey, I still buy woodchip to cover my cracks and blisters.

For the first time in my life I'm living in a flat with perfect walls. The property is only 12 years old and no previous owners have put up pictures and the walls are pristine. People ask when I'm going to put up pictures etc., but I just love the sheer smoothness of my walls.

After years of living with flaking wallpaper, bulging wood chip, worrying cracks, damp patches etc., I look at my smooth walls and feel happy. Also the minimum of spider webs thank goodness.

PS. Does anyone remember the Flatley Clothes Drier?

For really old, bulgy or otherwise walls, woodchip used to be a good thing, covered all sorts of things.
Outside loos....shudder.
We didn't buy a duvet until about 1979.

You have a WC on the wall, rubysong?

Do you have to use steps to get up to it?

(sorry, I know what you meant, couldn't resist! )

I would just like to say a word in favour of woodchip. We still have it in our spare room. This is an old cottage with uneven walls and the WC has been on the walls for many years; a quick coat of emulsion freshens it up no end. DS2 had it covered in posters with blu tack and when he left home I took them down and now it is a cheery yellow. I know it isn't fashionable but I like it!

Nananina I think duvets came into use in the early 1970s. We got married in 1971 and ordered one from a catalogue with one bright blue and one bright orange cover, very 70s.

Sorry haven't read all the thread but someone mentioned eiderdowns. We had sheets, blankets, a counterpane and an eiderdown - yes? It was only recently that my DH was talking about the "eider" duck and these eiderdowns were of course made from the feathers of the "Eider duck" - and as I recall they were stitched into small squares just like a duvet, but used on top of the blankets and counterpane.

I wonder why no one ever realised that the eiderdown was in fact a duvet!! And can anyone remember when duvets became the norm? I think I thought it was an "Ididown" when I was a kid.

Oh, I don't know so much, gillybob, that woodchip's tough stuff. We stripped our bedroom walls back years ago and there's still a couple of small patches we gave up on and just painted over. I could imagine it bobbing about in Ana's toilet after the apocalypse. Woodchip is the cockroach of the wallcovering world.

Sorry for repeating myself a bit, I had forgotton that I had already posted on this thread

Corporal punishment in schools.

I can still feel the sting on my hand caused by the thick leather strap. My brother had a teacher who was a priest and he used a meter stick on pupils who misbehaved.

Outside toilets.

Ours was at the bottom of the backyard. I can remember going in there at night through the snow and ice in the winter.My father would put a pariffin heater in there in winter to stop the pipe freezing.My mother would tell us never to touch the heater or we would get burned to death-lovely thought.

Polystyrene ceiling tiles. Yuk. Highly dangerous if I remember rightly especially if like my parents you painted them too.

Somehow I don't think woodchip wallpaper would have lasted long in the "actual" toilet Ana

(the room it's in, not the actual toilet of course...)

We still have woodchip wallpaper in our upstairs loo!

Wood chip wallpaper. I had it in my bedroom in the late 1960's early 70's . It was painted and I remember lying in my top bunk picking the little bits of wood out of it. Actually scrub that. It was rather fun actually.

The outside toilet that we shared with the downstairs flat ( a scruffy old man) I was terrified of "going" down the yard and totally blame this for my "toilet issues" that I have today.

I agree about the bri-nylon sheets from Brentford Nylons. I had the nightie and the quilted dressing gown too. I remember having bright orange sheets that gave me a static electric shock.

You can still get toothpowder - most pound shops and Home Bargains sell it!

I was trying to explain to GS about Gibbs Dentifrice! And about the fact that his great grandad cleaned his teeth with soot and salt!

Oh yes - that toothpaste in a tin - I really rather liked that. And more economical as you could get every last drop out.

Parafin heaters: smelly and temperamental. In use in our house in the early 60s for rarely occupied rooms and then carted off by me ten years later to my damp student flat.

Gibbs Dentrifice. It came in a small tin and was used by the whole family. It was a sort of pink paste.

As soon as I was earning money I bought a tube of MacCleans toothpaste - wonderful.

My mother has her girdle and it makes lovely scones (not a panty girdle by the way), she put her panty girdle on the open fire and set the chimney on fire and never did that again.

My mother has her girdle and it makes lovely scones (not a panty girdle by the way), she put her panty girdle on the open fire and set the chimney on fire and never did that again.

still have my toasting fork, you can use it on a gas fire.

Really? In the 60s? I took a toasting fork to University in 1958 and at school in the early 50s, we had flat irons in our DS class but used an electric one at home, but rubber hot water bottles were available in the 1940s. My granny referred to the stone bottles as 'pigs' and the rubber ones were 'bags' which is a more accurate description than 'bottle'. In the 60s I bought Carmen rollers which were heated by electricity. I was so happy when I no longer had to go to bed in rollers!

hair curlers you put in the fire to heat up and they sizzle your hair, irons that you put in the fire (flat irons), toasting forks, stone hot water bottles, salt bags and many others that were part of my upbringing in the 60s.

Communal showers-ugh. I had forgotten about them! The excuses for getting out of them were many and varied-colds, periods, bandaged arms we used everything in the book. I was in a co-ed school and we had one male teacher who used to put his arm around the girls whilst he marked their books. He also ran his finger up and down your back-the older girls said he was feeling to see if you were wearing a bra. They would lock him up now!!!