Things you never see nowadays

Lilygran

The smell of TWINK home perms and the rollers with the tissue paper with them. Mum sitting under the hairdryer with the plastic hood. Not that there may be some on G.N who might still have one of those

Beer shampoo came in a little barrel shaped container. Sometimes we rinsed our hair with real beer - until we got a taste for it, that is. Home perms - 'Which twin has the Toni?' My mum had trained as a hairdresser and used to perm her friends' and relatives' hair. We'd come in from school and find the house stinking of perming lotion!

Oh, yes. Home perms!

Friday night was Amami night!!
Some kind of setting lotion I think it was...

POGS, I have a hair dryer with a plastic hood-sit under it every week to dry my hair and ,incidentally, to have a bit of 'me' time.

Mamie The light patters on the ceiling from paraffin heater were part of my childhood.I found them very comforting.
We also had outside loo -very cold and spidery.No Andrex toilet rolls.Cut up newspaper instead.!

Hunt

Putting my mum in my mind now. She too would give herself 'me time', just see her doing her knitting or reading a book.

My Mother had the me time when she was under the hair dryer, head bristling with rollers, and the hood, she always looked over heated at that point, it never looked very comfortable.

I think my mum's 'me time' was in her nightly bath. She used to read in it and if she couldn't find her glasses we always knew where to find them.

Maniac, I was terrified by a goblin who I believed lived in the paraffin lamp in the outside loo!

Mamie

Ahh, the outside loo. Lovely. Fight your way through the cobwebs, Izal paper if you were lucky or newspaper. Pitch black, freezing cold and scared to death what was crawling around the floor. Happy days, not!!.

Paraffin heaters remind me of the time my dad left one on in the hall overnight. I got up - always first up - next morning, opened my bedroom door and found the hall, stairs and dining room covered in black sticky soot - it showed up every single cobweb!!!!! Needless to say it only happened the once!

We used to have a man come round on a bicycle selling garlic! He must have pedalled over on the ferry because we lived on an island. Whether he was French or not I don't know. I do know that my mother bought the stuff but I don't remember her ever using it. Her cooking as she was proud to tell me was 'good, plain cooking'- and salads galore.

What about pea - soupers?? The fog we used to get before the Clean Air Act.
We don't get those any more.
I had saved up my pocket money for ages to go to see Adam Faith at our theatre. But on the night he was on there was thick thick fog and the buses stopped running so I couldn't go. Mum had to physically stop me because I said I was going to walk it and she yelled at me "Look outside - you can't even see the garden gate!!!"
I later asked the theatre for a refund and they refused, saying the weather wasnt their fault. Oh I was devastated.! Cruel world!

The Co-op mobile shop which came round our estate. I can still remember what it smelt like inside (nice). The Sainsbury's man in his brown uniform who would take our order and deliver it a few days later. Who needed the internet?

Soot. We lived opposite the steam railway line (Victoria to Margate) and the window sills were always covered in soot you could write in! My mother was always scrubbing the front door step and wiping the window sills. The road was a cul de sac and I loved seeing all the boys on their bicycles arriving to train spot. We all played in the road, there were only four cars in our street; the taxi driver, the painter and decorator, my Mum the district nurse and one lucky person who had one because he could afford it!

What WAS the point of Izal loo paper? My German helper called it "grease proof paper" and could never understand why we used it, when they used a sort of recycled paper. Newspaper even, was more absorbent. Please tell me, it has worried me for 50 odd years. (Very odd, some of them!)

I have no idea, Ariadne! My grandparents used it - my granny did buy some of the new-fangled softer paper when it came out, but granddad didn't like it......

My in-laws were still using Izal-type loo paper in 1970 when I first met them - for reasons of economy, knowing them!
The staff loo I used at the college where I taught from 1985, was still using it until staff protests got too much for management who, no doubt, had their very own Andrex.

Oh yes, Izal toilet paper, I think I preferred newspaper, and the outside loo with the bench seat, spiders and a little yellow paraffin nightlight which was supposed to stop the pipes freezing.
The treat for the week was feeding wobbly carrots to the shire horses delivering beer to the pub next door. I can even remember their names - Donald and Sidney, Bill and John and William who refused to go as a pair. It was the start of a life long love of horses. (Now I can't remember the name of someone two minutes after being introduced)

Why didn't Izal and/or newspaper block the toilets? Given that everything these days seems to block them if accidentally put down them.

Nothing stuck to it!

crimson the toilets where you used newspaper often weren't water closets!

Chocolate Wagon Wheels were loads bigger and sherbet fountains had liquorice straws and we could buy loose sherbet in paper cones and WalnutWhips had half a walnut inside as well as on top (only had those at Christmas) and gob stoppers really did.

We used to call Izal and Bronco "skiddy" - they were best for comb and loo paper recitals though!

My mum and dad moved into a multi storey block of flats and my dad still used newspaper . A friend of my ex husband's once remarked on somewhere he'd been where they still used newspaper and my ex was so embarrassed to realise he was referring to my parents. He was SO ashamed of me.