What "back then" inconvenience would annoy today's youngsters?

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?

We had a paraffin stove in our hallway.
Anthracite fueled aga and coal for the fire.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 😊

Making and lighting a coal fire. Carrying the coal in, emptying the ash pan.

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.

Phone boxes!

Horrible suspenders and stockings for everyday before tights came in.

(Anyone who wants to dress up in such things these days of course is welcome to do so.... 🤣)

A bath, hair washed once a week. No daily shower. The one, then two tv stations closing at 10 pm. No live sport shown. No shops open after 6 pm, closed Wed afternoon (in my area) and not open anytime on a Sunday. How times have changed.

No central heating, outside toilets at primary school.

Rewriting essays and projects at school/college…..everything was hand written and my handwriting was unreadable, which has not improved with age 😂
No computer or laptop then, where you could edit and print off your work.

Having to take a film to the chemists to get it developed then go back three or four days later to see the results - only to find you have far too many copies of the same photo. 🤔

Having to wade through heavy telephone directories or yellow pages to find a number then wait for your parents to go out before you can ring it. 🤣

Having to go to school or work in all
weathers. No concessions given for 2 feet of snow or temperatures of 25 degrees+
Strangely, everyone turned up, teachers and pupils and traffic seemed to get where it was going, even if slightly delayed.

We're we foolish or just more sturdy and determined back then?

Were, not we're. Grrr.

What's all those "only 3" or perhaps "just 2 TV channels"? When I was little, we couldn't afford a TV, I recall when I was maybe 4 or 5, being taken to Granny's house (mum's side, quite well off), and there was this polished wooden box in the 'drawing room'.

When the door was pulled aside, a TV screen appeared (it was a radiogram too?), so I could watch Andy Pandy, Woodentops, or Rag, Tag & Bobtail (my favourite).

When I was about 10 or 11, we must have gone up in the world (only slightly!), as we got a TV, it had a meter on the back so you got a rebate at the end of the week or fortnight. BUT - you had to have spare coins, it always seemed to click off just before the end of a show!

Other irritations for today's 'yoof', well, back then just about nobody had central heating, nor double glazing, in our house, icicles formed on the INside of the windows in winter.
In the big freeze (1963 - like Siberia) we still had to go to school, despite snowdrifts, black ice and all the rest.

I'd forgotten about Green Shield Stamps (someone mentioned), but we like the majority had no phone, there was a call box at the end of the road. Oh, and we had quite a lot of recycling way back then, you got thruppence (?) back on an empty lemonade or ice cream soda bottle, can't see today's kids collecting them for a trek to the shop?!

For quite some years, a 'treat' was toasting a slice of bread on a fork in front of the fire/stove, then spreading some dripping on it. But we DID have 'takeaways' (another treat), it was fish and chips or . . .fish and chips, possibly sausage and chips or cod's roe and chips. I realised I was almost an adult (!) when first entrusted to ride my bike to the shop, hand over the list, and get the correct change.

We never had what folk call a holiday until I was about 10 or so, a week in a little chalet at a camp on the Isle of Wight. There was nothing to do, except play ball, go on the swings, or to the beach, but it was wonderful. We'd only ever had day trips on a train until then.

Oh, and we never had a car, everything had to be by bus or train, though my dad had a bike (several miles to get to work and back!), then I got one. Nowadays kids in this village (& most others?!) get a car ride to school, just a couple of minutes, no wonder so many are . . . .a tad on the chubby side?!

No central heating. Having to make a fire in the grate. No fitted carpets.
No fridge
No phone.

Having to hand in homework on time, be quiet in class, not answer back, do chores at home, only use the phone with their parents' permission and for very short calls and as teenagers having to be home at what they, as indeed we did, consider a ridiculously early hour, plus not being allowed to go out on week-day evenings.

Oh, and being expected to eat what was put before one at mealtimes and wear the clothes Mummy bought you.

They won't believe we survived all of the above, but we did!