Funny stories that show your age.

When I was about 6 -early 60s- I was playing at a friends house and her mum asked if I wanted beans on toast. I said no thank you as I thought she meant runner beans which were the only beans I had ever had (and didn’t like very much). I couldn’t think why anyone would want them on toast🤣!
I was also very impressed that the toast was made from pre sliced white bread. I had silver shred marmalade on mine - another rare treat!
I still feel bad for my poor mum who tried to feed us with healthy fresh food! I didn’t appreciate it at the time.

Great thread by the way! Some really funny posts 🙂

DH still has Vesta Chow Mein (as an occassional treat)

In the 1940s we were lucky enough to always have a turkey for Christmas dinner. It came to my grandmother’s house in Birmingham from her nephew who was a farmer in Shropshire -by post! This was not uncommon, they were not in boxes but wrapped with the legs showing. Another relative worked in a large post office where turkeys which were undelivered by the afternoon of Christmas Eve were given to staff as they would be inedible when the PO opened after the holiday.

This thread has been so entertaining and has triggered many a memory from my childhood.
Can anyone remember Batchelors Savoury Rice? Part cooked rice that you boiled up for about 15 minutes and came in a range of flavours. Far nicer than the microwave rice that seems to have replaced it.

Some good stories on here. Here is another one from me. When I married in the early sixties we were lucky enough to have saved a deposit to buy our own house. To get the one we wanted we had to take on the maximum mortgage we were allowed so money was very tight more so when our daughter arrived a few weeks after our first anniversary. My husband came home with a message that his Mother and her friend would visit at the weekend arriving early afternoon ,staying for an evening meal and then being driven home in our very elderly battered car. This really messed up our food and fuel budget but here was nothing we could do. I planned themenu, lamb chops, new potatoes and peas followed by apple pie and cream. On the day I made the pie and went to get the rest of the things I needed leaving the chops until last. I had made one mistake in the calculations forgetting that I was buying g double the quantity of chops. When the butcher packed them up a d told me the price I must have .looked a bit surprised but then I started to feel very faint. I vaguely remember someone bringing a chair, when I looked up I saw that the butcher had come from behind the counter and was apologising profusely for the price of his chops! I assured him that I was just a bit under the weather and left with my parcel of chops and just two pennies and a threepenny bit left in my purse. On the way out I realised that the only time this had happened before was was when I was first pregnant with my daughter !

OMG yes! I well remember the coal man and the milkman, and the electric meters that took 10p, then onto 50p!

And I loved the original bulky 50p coins and the little 1/2p coins too!

I also remember, when I was between 5 and 8, a neighbour and his missus who were regularly in court for fiddling the electric meter by removing the coins!

Ours was a shilling meter as opposed to the penny ones, some people really couldn’t afford a shilling at a time, oh the indignity when I think of it now.
When the gas meter man came to empty the meter you got a few coins back as a discount depending on how much was in it.
Very hard times indeed.

For my 18th birthday many moons ago I went out for my first Chinese with my friend Cynthia Jones. I can’t say that I was that keen on this very strange slimy meal that we had, but he gave me something to remember all these years later. Another memory is off my boyfriend who eventually became my husband Giving me a gourmet treat when I went to visit his bed of a chicken chow mein from the Vesta . I thought it was absolutely amazing, but then I did
only get mince and peas as it was called at home.

I remember my MIL cooking a chicken in its plastic wrapper. She didn’t realise she was meant to remove it.

Aged 17, I stayed with a friend whose mother was a model, the house very trendy and I thought very sophisticated. She asked me if I wanted butter with my jacket potato. I was confused as we only ever had boiled at home. And ordering steak tartare in France was a shock…

maxmeyers I have put sultanas in rice and curries since the 70s!
Blossom I hope you enjoyed your boyfriend’s “bed of chow mien rice”😁

Not rice🙄

I was invited to my friend's house for tea when I was about 15 in order to meet her older brother who was on leave from the navy. Already really nervous, as I sat down at the table my suspender came undone with a very loud 'ping'. I was so mortified I couldn't actually speak to anyone, let alone the gorgeous older brother.
I remember the first time I went into a pub when I was 19 and had a drink. When I got home Mum could smell alcohol on my breath and she said I looked 'bloated with drink'. But I'd only had half a pint of shandy.

A romantic home-cooked meal with my boyfriend in the late 60s was a Vesta Curry.

My parents bought a Victorian terraced house in 1952 and were the first in the row of 14 to have electricity put in. They were also the first in the close to have a car, but the last to do away with the outside loo. My siblings and I had long left home before the back bedroom was converted to a bathroom, in the late 1970s, most of the other houses had added the bathroom as an extension beyond the kitchen (or scullery, as we called it).

Lahlah65

I remember having people over for dinner and doing trout meunière. I left four trout carefully prepared in the kitchen, ready to pop in the oven when our guests arrived. When I went back out there, the cat was busy eating one of them in the middle of the kitchen floor!

Luckily she started at the head end - I picked it up and put it back in the tin and into the oven. When it came to serving them, I was careful to put lots of extra parsley to disguise the half-eaten head and made sure that I got that one!

🤣 Brilliant!

In the 1950s we used to eat rabbit a good deal, roast or stewed. At some point we started to have chicken at Xmas and then chicken replaced rabbit - probably because of myx.

My daughter took her family veto the Museum of childhood in Edinburgh this week. She sent a photograph and said we didn't really need to come here, we should just have come to Grandma and Granddad's house. The display was of many toys, mostly Fisher Price that were hers in the 1980s which have been played with for 40 years & our young grandchildren still play with here at our house 🤣. Toys were certainly built to last then.

Our Fischer Price toys have been played with and passed on except for the the schoolhouse which was my younger daughters favourite. She is now 46 and still likes looking at it.

The garage, record player, circus train witn animals and camera were passed on still in tip top condition. Wish I had taken photos of them. Toys were all so well made in the 70s and 80s.not sure where they were made.
I must have a trip to the Museum of Childhood again. I went many years back.