The thread on microwaves got me thinking about other gadgets that were new in our lifetime but now standard. On Mumsnet, many younger people complain about how we are sitting on goldmines and bought our houses cheaply but they are now worth gazillions and how selfish we are. I realise that it is much harder to get onto the housing ladder now than perhaps it was for many of us but l can well remember high inflation and negative equity on mortgages. Appliances were much more expensive relatively then than now, too. We got married in 1989 and my husband already had a house. It had a washing machine, a gas cooker, a fridge-freezer and a television and that was it for gadgets. We considered ourselves very fortunate, too. A lot of our furniture was second hand (quite a bit of it still is) and we bought things as we could afford them. A cheque from my husband’s parents for Christmas 1991 bought us our first microwave. We had very little space for drying clothes indoors and bought a second hand tumble dryer for £50. It was already around five years old and lasted for about fifteen years after this. A small windfall a few years later bought us a video recorder and, in the year 2000, we bought a nearly new dishwasher. Many of these things are normal in houses now and expected on moving in but I think we appreciated them far more because it took some time to acquire them. I realise that we had more than many who are older than us. My parents were married in 1963 and had my grandparents’ old TV that had been bought for the Coronation ten years previously and considered themselves very fortunate to have a fridge and a Burko boiler. They bought a single tub washing machine and separate spin dryer a little later. I would be very interested to hear your reminisces on this topic.
What were the first ever records that you bought and when?
Angela Rayner lashes out and calls Sunak “pint sized loser”.