Things you never see nowadays

Yes! A lady sat in the window of what was the roller skating rink on Abington Square in Northampton. It was a full-time job....repairing nylon stockings.

Anyone remember seeing nylons being MENDED?

In Hale, near the railway station (you see less of those these days!) a woman sat in a shop window, using a tiny hook to hook up the ladders in stockings.
It must have done her eyes in!

mrsmopp

Oh yeah, my first car was a Morris Minor and I had to do that.

Car drivers doing hand signals (not that sort!) for "i am slowing down, turning left or right" etc, then later cars had orange indicators that popped up out at the side of the car.
Big improvement as there was no need to open the window to indicate, - the rain used to come in!

Going to the farm up the road to get (really, really!) fresh milk.

Taking our food slops to the small holding over the road and throwing them over the wall for the pigs.

Taking the 'order' to the shop on my way to school and it being delivered shortly after by a boy on a bike. The order was always the same and always cost the same! The grocer's had one of those enormous black and brass coffee grinders in the window. We thought it was a real treat to be allowed to turn the handle - bit of clever marketing from the owner!

Lots of children potato picking in the summer AND not being allowed to join them - they seemed to have such fun. I have told you my mum is a snob haven't I?

Our television which was huge (!!) at least a 12" screen which had an integral radio and massive knobs that looked like gold cake cases.

My birthday cakes, which were always victoria sandwiches (with strawberry jam in) and icing on top, decorated with fruit pastilles cut in half and balancing precariously round the top edge! One year my present was red ballet shoes!

The greengrocer's horse drawn cart coming on Saturday morning and being allowed to have monkey nuts, which cost 3p.

playing in the road and pig bins

People having a singsong around the piano.

The cool box outside in a shady part of the garden to store the weekend's meat and cream etc in. It was wooden with mesh sides.

Lady next door had an outhouse at the bottom of her garden with a copper heated by a fire underneath I can remember the chimney stack smoking. She used blue for her whites, and hard green soap to scrub the washing.

Lady down the road who made cream down the bottom of her garden - we would potter over with a bowl and buy it for tea - bread jam and cream -- utterly divine.

Monica the milk lady who had a black van and sold milk ladled into our jugs. I can remember the smell of the van.

Marelli

Your DH sounds a good old soul. He would have gotten on well with my mum. She loved 'doing the brasses'. Her favourite was the fender and horse brasses. I feel bad to this day I gave the brasses away but I HATE cleaning brass, too messy.

the demise of cowslips, primroses and violets on the banks and hedgerows.

Obridges cough medicine.

xmas/ sugar mice paper chains etc.

school satchels, boys wearing school caps.

My favourite. The beautiful silver cash tills and money shoots in shops.

The rag and bone man with his horse and cart. The man who sat on a bike and sharpened knives and such. Three deliveries a day by a postman in full uniform, complete with a smart hat. Schoolchildren wearing smart uniforms and not eating and drinking in the street/on the bus [because the school had strict rules.]

MacFisheries shops.

Horse-drawn milk cart. All the kids waiting with a bucket & shovel to collect the horse's droppings to take back for the veg patch.

Bags of coke or coal being wheeled home in an old pushchair.

Gulleys at the front of butcher shop windows where the blood ran off the slab and gathered.

The late Mr.G used to reminisce about those stone hot water bottles; said he used to stub his toes on them in the night and also got chilblains!!
Grannylin I think my (newly polished) stair rods are fixed for life now - it took ages to get them into place over the new carpet!
I remember my Mum's Mrs Mop (Kitty) polishing the tiles and steps with Cardinal polish. She used to give me a rag so I could help her.
I remember crouching on the playground playing Jacks. In fact I still have them although the little rubber ball has disintegrated.
We had a 'pig bin' into which all leftovers were put. Strange isn't it that Fife Council have just 'discovered' Pig Bins after all these years and have issued us with the modern version in brown plastic. It all goes in with the garden refuse and gets macerated!
The pay-booth in Sainsburys. Mum would go from counter to counter buying half a pound of butter which was patted into shape and then wrapped in greaseproof, a quarter pound of biscuits from a box with a glass lid, bacon cut from an actual beast and then it would all be paid for at the booth.
The knife grinder who wheeled his barrow along the street every few months.
The Gypsies,(toothless mostly) dressed in long skirts and shawls selling wax flowers and pegs at the door and subtly threatening you with damnation if you didn't buy!
It sounds like Victorian times but all this was in the 50's and 60's

Lots of old and interesting things

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=stone%20hot%20water%20bottle%20pig&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CD8QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oldandinteresting.com%2Fwarming-the-bed.aspx&ei=WfJvUKJi46fRBaK9gLgN&usg=AFQjCNFboMprWtVOmaQPl0Gr2eoq_Dbnkg&sig2=jNDc7dXqwuImtl8kjvsAtg

Those big stone pop jars that we used as hot water bottles, to stop us freezing to death!
Little Tilly lamps that we hung in the outside toilet to stop the pipes freezing up.

I think I must have had a very cold childhood

What about brass stair rods...I noticed gally had those because I want some!

I'm 68 years old but gas lighter - don't remember those, but then I lived in Canada during my early childhood. Memories from then: the ice box at the side of the house, the iceman and his horse coming by a couple a times a week. He had a leather cape, he's lift a huge block of ice with a pair of tongs, heft it onto his back and stagger up the front path to the ice box. There'd be lots of chips of ice that we would dive on to suck or chuck. The milkman and his horse, the latter with a nose bag with his food, as the milkman went from house to house the horse would patiently walk alongside. So many things we had then have now been adopted here. Lunch boxes, ours were metal , Halloween and carved out pumpkins - our parents didn't come around with us. We went door-to-door on our own. If we didn't get a treat we'd trick, we'd toilet paper your house [getting a boy to lob loo paper over your house] or we'd car soap your car windows. Little asbos that we were!! Saturday morning comics and movies, tootsie rools,lifesavers, oh henry bars, cracker jack etc. [all these sweets still available in the US]

Steamrollers - noisily chugging down the road
Gas lamps indoors casting shadows up the stairs and passages - scary
Dolly & tub - still have my nan's though one of the peg legs is a bit dodgy. I don't need to use fortunately!
Mangles - used to love helping my nan with mangling
The boxes in small department stores in which the money is put and is whisked away and then comes pinging back with the change
Seats in the grocery store where you can sit and let the grocer do all the running around!

It was Cardinal red polish, baubles! My mum used to polish our front doorstep tiles with it. Woe betide any of my friends who trod on it on the way in....! I don't know where I went wrong...DH polishing the knocker and my mum polishing the step....sometimes I give things a bit of a 'blow' as I pass them or at the most a flick with a duster, or whatever I have handy!

Gally I for one didn't even notice a brass doorstep, now I'm imagining an entire step made of brass. Is that what it is?

I never see those deep red doorsteps any more, was it red paint?

We always knew when my mother was angry with my father - the black range would positively gleam because she put so much frustrated energy into using the Zebo on it.

Gally - he'd be in his glory! He'd also keep an eye/ear open for the philandering 'love-bus' driver! I didn't even notice you had a brass doorstep!!

Marelli Could you please put him on the train for A......r next week along with his Brasso and rag so he can polish up my brass doorstep . I was so embarrassed at the state of it when all you GN's arrived last week; it hasn't been done for years - it would keep him out of mischief for at least a day! (and he could listen out for my village gossip at the same time)

My mother was told by her mother that she must look after the 'brass and glass' because 'more passes than comes in'.
We got our donkey stones from the rag and bone man - he used to let us give his pony carrots. Sometime, the boys would beg a ride but the girls didn't like the stench of old clothes.
The first time I rode in a car was at my older sister's wedding when I was 12.

POGS - we have very shiny brass door-ware, because DH polishes it up regularly - especially if he's heard that there's likely to be a bit of gossip in the village about something or other! He dashes out of the front door with the Brasso and a cloth, ready to polish up the knocker! If he's out there long enough, there's bound to be someone passing with some piece of news....

Theseus wants to join in: log tables; slide rules; starting handles on cars.

Me: wrap over pinnies; hair nets; motor bikes and side cars (every day!) pipe smokers.