Things you never see nowadays

Refreshers (loved them!)
Spangles
Barratts Sweet Cigarettes (amazing, a packet of white sugar stick, each with a scarlet tip! Get children used to the idea)
Mackeson Stout
Concorde Wine
Babycham
Dripping ie beef fat (yuk!)

Children under 14 out on their own.
Wet fish shops
Brown overalls
Dachshunds
Isinglass for preserving eggs (eggs were seasonal once!)
Running boards on cars (they must have been so dangerous!)
Guard's vans on trains
Soot
Turn-ups on men's trousers

Diptheria
TB
Polio

A night-watchman sitting outside a wee hut, warming his hands over glowing coals.

Nonu Are you sure it was steam powered?

We are having lots of roads being repaired in the town , today I saw a steamroller . I don"t think they can lay roads without them, flattening etc.

We had the shiny stuff too - in packets of separate sheets, held in a ceramic dispenser on the wall - I think Bronco was the brand...

The other contribution is constant hot water on tap. Luxury - even when you restrict it to a couple of hours in the morning, as I do.

We used it for tracing paper as well as for comb and paper 'music'. Andrex is no use for either. I still insist that soft loo paper is the 20th Century's greatest contribution to the comfort of humanity.

Apparently, according to a recent BBC prog about servants, Izal loo paper was purchased for them to use, while their employers used the soft stuff. Mind you, my mother-in-law was still using it in the early 70s, considering it to be 'hygienic'. Since it was non-porous, perhaps she had a point. The roll used to sit on the cistern hidden discreetly under the frilly skirt of a Spanish-type doll.

My auntie and my step-sister both worked at the IZAL factory at Chapeltown, near Sheffield, back in the 1950s, we used it because they got it free!

Silly isn't it. I find it quite funny now.

How dare he - what is there to be ashamed about?

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.

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

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.

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

Nothing stuck to it!

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

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)

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.

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......

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!)

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!

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?

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!