Phone boxes!
Good Morning Tuesday 21st July 2026
Having to go out to blockbusters rather than look for a movie on netflix.
Phone boxes!
We were always doing things and had little time to be bored. Going and getting shopping, running messages and always walking everywhere.
Washing your hair took ages. Slow cold hair dryer. Helping with washing clothes, sheets and towels took the morning with endless to and from the washing line. No wonder we were thin kids. And then the folding of sheets with Mum for ironing. Me at one end she at the other. Even my DDs have never done that with me.
Days just playing on our local beach and the excitement of finding a half crown in the sand...or even a threepenny bit. That last sentence wasnt an "inconvenience" of course. But we were physically playing not sitting scrolling phones.
Life was just more physical.
Making and lighting a coal fire. Carrying the coal in, emptying the ash pan.
Gwyllt
Was life really that bad I thought it was pretty good actually
Anyway what you never had you didn’t miss
This. I thought we had the best years 60s, 70s, 80, & 90s 😊
tanith
Sharing a bathroom with another family 😱 or even an outside toilet and tin bath shared with 4 siblings in age order.
We had two tin baths. A larger oblong one for adults and a smaller round one for children. We lived in my late paternal grandmother's house until I was about eight years old with my parents and two sisters and we had no bathroom and only an outside toilet.
this is TRUE.
We moved at that point and the new house had a bathroom and toilet both indoors.
No telephone at all let alone a mobile telephone.
I think they might enjoy the old days
My cousins Gran, his Dads side, used to have a bowling green on the side of their house with immaculate outside toilets. She used to do cream teas and people would come round to bowl and it was such a joy. Where my Gran lived they did a strawberry tea afternoon
As kids we’d be out until dark and I can’t remember ever getting very dirty.
Life seemed much simpler
I don’t know how young people cope with such invasion into their heads and private life. It’s not at all healthy for them
Aerograms - the only way to keep in touch with my then fiance, serving on HMS Hermes in the far east ,while trying to organise our wedding
Only being able to buy PLAIN crisps !
TV NOT showing through the night.
Having to buy your music at a shop in vinyl form or listen by chance if your fave group was on the radio.
Not being able to shop on a Sunday When I tell my Granddaughters this kind of stuff, there eyes go all big and round in astonishment 
Grammaretto
I can still remember the thrill of getting a colour TV. My DM wanted to watch Wimbledon.
Queue for the bathroom in the morning.
Mind you there are plenty of inconveniences still mostly relating to the lack of banks, travel agents and everything on-line and never being able to speak to a human.
Back in the 70s dh bought a colour TV for his folks, in time for Wimbledon - his father was a tennis addict and was still playing into his 80s.
Someone mentioned finding information from the library, probably from an encyclopaedia. We did have a set of 12 but they didn’t cover a lot of things. How handy it is now to Google almost anything and instant success.
Charleygirl mentioned rural Ireland and outside loos. My grandad had one of those, a bit of a walk from the house. I was 4 or 5 at the time and didn’t really think anything of it.
I remember at home having toothpaste in a tin, a solid block that frizzed up when it was wet. That was probably a postwar thing. Pepsodent was the first tube of toothpaste I remember.
NotSpaghetti
We had a paraffin stove in our hallway.
Anthracite fueled aga and coal for the fire.
As a child, I burned my botton on a paraffin stove that my dad had popped in the bathroom to take the chill off!
No texts or phones so you could go to your room for a private conversation. I used to write long letters to my boyfriend as we only saw each other at weekends. There was always a letter from him when I got home the next day too. Young people don't write letters now.
We had a paraffin stove in our hallway.
Anthracite fueled aga and coal for the fire.
eazybee, a lot of schoolchildren around here walk, cycle, or use the bus or the train to get to the secondary schools.
Many primary aged children walk.
Is that not true in your area?
Having to walk across the room to change the TV channel on the set.
The thing that I think most people would have difficulty with today would be the potty under the bed. It had to be carefully carried downstairs in the morning to be emptied in the outside toilet. The joy when we moved to a house with an indoor toilet. Does anyone remember the smell of paraffin? We had a heater on the landing to take the chill off the bedrooms. I can't imagine my ice cream loving grandchildren running back from the local shop with a block of ice cream wrapped in layers of newspaper to stop it melting. Unlike some others we had a variety of fish at our local chippy. They sold cod, haddock, hake, rock salmon (huss), plaice and skate, maybe even whiting. But no Deliveroo, you had to collect it yourself.
Ice on the inside of the windows in winter. No namby-pamby central heating then.
Not mutually exclusive JenniRen
Happily!
We were discussing this with our daughter the other day, do we prefer unreliable sat navs, Google maps or a good old-fashioned map? OH and I decided that Google maps are good when driving but generally we like a nice map.
Probably everything!
Having to use a map to find somewhere, instead of using ‘sat nav’.
Ritual of trailing to the telephone box to wait for your date to call & make arrangements to meet up 🤣
Writing into the lonely hearts column in the local paper (my dad once wrote in on my behalf behind my back as I was so shy).
No ‘plenty of fish’, or ‘grinder’ back in the day 🤣
CrazyUSA
Having to go out to blockbusters rather than look for a movie on netflix.
I loved that ritual of choosing a film & across to threshers to get a nice bottle of plonk.
Sadly both have gone.
Finding 4d (four old pennies) then walking up the road to the red phone box to make a phone call to a friend to make arrangements to meet up. They had a telephone because her Dad was on call with his job.
SpinDriftCoastal
Being told off by anyone you were not respectful to, the neighbour, lady at the paper shop, friend's granny, the policeman, your parents, etc. It was easier just to say please and thank you and wait your turn rather than be told off. No self entitlement tolerated in those days.
Yes! I remember seeing a woman being really cruel to her dog - I would be maybe 9 or 10 at the time, and I said to her that she should stop hitting the dog. Well, of course living in a small village, she knew my mum, so she went and told her what I had said and I got hell for it. I thought I was doing the right thing in speaking up for the dog, but my mum was furious that I had dared to speak to an adult in that way and god, did she make me pay for it!
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